Reshaping corporate accountability in the digital economy: the ‘digital regulatory chill’ effect and investment protection barriers in ASEAN

ASEAN governments are trying to regulate digital platforms, and investment treaties may be making that harder. Investment protection clauses in CPTPP, in the signed but unratified EVIPA, and in surviving bilateral investment treaties give multinational platforms a legal toolkit for resisting the data governance and competition enforcement measures that Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand are building. Through doctrinal analysis across these four jurisdictions, the article identifies what it calls ‘digital regulatory chill’: a structural vulnerability to the constraint of host-state regulatory capacity, one that operates through treaty architecture rather than the threat of any particular arbitral claim. The argument is not that platforms routinely win disputes. It is the credible possibility of a claim, combined with limited institutional capacity and the irreversibility of digital market tipping, that is plausibly capable of influencing regulatory decisions. Four conflict vectors are examined: data localization, algorithmic transparency mandates, competition enforcement, and interoperability obligations. Existing safeguards are a patchwork designed for brick-and-mortar economies and ill-suited to platform governance. The article proposes a four-level reform strategy, from joint interpretive statements to investor obligation clauses in a DEFA protocol, to address the vulnerability this architecture creates for ASEAN states seeking to govern digital platforms.