Legal Supervision Of E-commerce Platform Algorithm Price Discrimination Against Consumers

In the era of digital economy,algorithms are an important support to promote the development of economic benefits of e-commerce platforms.In order to achieve the benefits of e-commerce platform operators,algorithms have been widely used in social networking,online shopping,travel and accommodation and other areas of life,and algorithmic price discrimination has also emerged.With the in-depth development of algorithmic technology,the manifestation of algorithmic price behavior is increasingly complex,and the implementation of algorithmic price discrimination on e-commerce platforms represented by Meituan,Ctrip Fulfillment and Taobao is also increasing,and negative effects such as infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and disruption of the normal market economic order emerge endlessly.However,the existing legal system on the regulation of algorithms is not perfect,and the relevant regulatory authorities still regulate the price discrimination of algorithms in the traditional way,unable to keep up with the speed of the update and change of algorithm technology.Therefore,it is important to carry out penetrating supervision of algorithmic price discrimination on e-commerce platforms and improve legal supervision measures to create a good Internet market economic environment and promote the protection of consumer rights and interests.E-commerce platform algorithmic price discrimination against consumers refers to the automated decision-making behavior of e-commerce platform to widely collect consumers’ personal information through algorithmic technology,infer consumers’ maximum willingness to pay through algorithmic procedures and make differential pricing.With the growing voice of consumers to strengthen the supervision of algorithmic price discrimination on e-commerce platforms,the academic community proposed to establish an algorithmic impact assessment mechanism,information disclosure system,and enhance the interpretability of algorithms to strengthen the legal supervision of algorithmic price discrimination.The National Internet Information Office also strengthened the review of algorithms by publishing the algorithm filing list.As of January 2023,there were 223 algorithm filing information in China,which means that the regulation of algorithm price discrimination in China has entered the formal operation stage.However,China’s legal regulation of algorithmic price discrimination still has problems such as rough legislation,backward regulatory means,and insufficient enforcement and supervision.It needs to be improved by combining the characteristics of online trading development of e-commerce platforms and taking the regulatory systems of developed countries such as the United States and the United States as examples.This paper adopts the methods of literature research,comparative analysis and empirical analysis to study the legal regulation of price discrimination against consumers on e-commerce platforms,and tries to put forward the following specific suggestions in view of the existing legal regulatory measures and the problems in the specific practice of algorithmic price discrimination.First,from the universal regulation of uniform rules to the in-depth regulation of specific fields and specific scenarios,to provide the basis for legal regulation by improving relevant regulatory laws and regulations;Second,distinguish between large e-commerce platforms and small platforms,and define specific regulatory departments for different objects to form a regulatory force;Third,use new algorithmic regulatory tools to cope with new algorithmic technologies with regulatory technology;Fourth,the regulatory authorities need to strengthen the law enforcement and supervision,determine the standards of algorithm transparency and the objects of partition disclosure to improve the algorithm transparency,improve the algorithm evaluation system by combining the framework governance and collaborative governance,establish the prior regulatory review of algorithm price discrimination,and carry out real-time monitoring and periodic review to improve the algorithm review system.