This article examines transparency of paid product rankings on marketplace platforms through legal certainty, consumer decision-making, ranking transparency, and the boundary between commercial disclosure and protection of platform trade secrets. It uses normative legal research and a structured analysis of applicable legal materials, supported by comparative and interdisciplinary scholarship where relevant. The revised analysis distinguishes legal design from empirical claims and identifies the principal regulatory or institutional gap. The study finds that existing law provides important but fragmented safeguards and that legal certainty depends on clearer decision criteria, procedural accountability, and proportionate remedies. It proposes an operational framework that specifies legal thresholds, institutional responsibilities, safeguards, and review mechanisms. The article contributes a more explicit research gap, a reproducible doctrinal method, and a policy model calibrated to legality, proportionality, accountability, and rights protection.
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