Study On The Antitrust Regulation Of Algorithmic Price Discrimination

In the era of Internet economy,algorithms and big data have become the core magic weapon for Internet platform operators to win.Algorithm price discrimination based on algorithms and big data has become a popular business model and is widely used by Internet platform operators.Algorithmic price discrimination refers to the irrational differentiated pricing behavior of Internet platform operators under the same transaction conditions by analyzing consumers’ consumption preferences,consumption habits,payment capacity and other data information in detail,and using these information to paint consumers’ images.the combination of algorithm technology and data elements has changed the traditional way of business competition,and price discrimination has become more complex and diverse due to the introduction of algorithm technology.Although algorithmic price discrimination is a pricing strategy implemented by operators in order to maximize the interests of enterprises,its behavior has seriously affected the stable development of the Internet market economy,damaged the legitimate rights and interests of consumers,and abused the market dominant position and user data.Therefore,for operators who implement algorithmic price discrimination without justified reasons and have a dominant market position,this behavior has constituted the abuse of differential treatment in the market dominant position.The legislative purpose of anti-monopoly law and the people-oriented concept of economic law reveal the basic logic of anti-monopoly regulation of algorithmic price discrimination.This article includes five parts in addition to the introduction and conclusion.The first part is the basic theory of antitrust regulation of algorithmic price discrimination.This paper defines the concept of algorithmic price discrimination behavior,and analyzes and summarizes the causes of algorithmic price discrimination behavior,including the high combination of algorithms and data,information asymmetry,and the increase of consumer personalized demand.Then analyze and conclude that algorithm price discrimination is mainly for user portrait,and use portrait and algorithm technology to implement personalized recommendation,and then develop personalized pricing strategy as the realization path,which is embodied in the behavior mode of big data "killing",intelligent recommendation algorithm,and user subsidy.The second part is the necessity of regulating algorithmic price discrimination from the antitrust field.First of all,it starts from the harm that algorithm price discrimination guild will damage consumers’ rights and interests,reduce social welfare and even cause market mechanism failure;Secondly,from the identification of algorithmic price discrimination behavior and the effect of algorithmic price discrimination implementation,it analyzes its illegality identification;Finally,it discusses the limitations of the current legal regulation of price discrimination and summarizes the advantages of the anti-monopoly law to regulate this behavior.The third part is the comparison of extraterritorial legal regulation of algorithmic price discrimination.By consulting relevant materials,we summarized the main ways in which Britain,the United States and the European Union regulate price discrimination.The United Kingdom mainly focuses on economic analysis and adopts the "principle supervision" approach.The United States pays more attention to the protection of consumer rights and interests,taking price discrimination regulation and consumer protection as the main means,The EU focuses more on personal information protection and strengthens the way of collecting algorithmic evidence to regulate algorithmic price discrimination.Through the analysis and summary of the ways adopted by the above countries,it is concluded that China should learn from the extraterritorial governance experience to strengthen the anti-monopoly regulation on algorithmic price discrimination in the main way of protecting consumers’ rights and interests.The fourth part is the dilemma of anti-monopoly regulation of algorithmic price discrimination in China.This chapter starts with the analysis of the difficulties in identifying the illegality of algorithmic price discrimination,clarifies the obstacles to identifying the illegality,and then summarizes the difficulties faced by law enforcement and justice.First of all,in the identification of algorithm price discrimination violations,there are problems such as the difficulty in defining the relevant market,the obstacle in identifying the dominant position of the main market,and the difficulty in matching the relevant defense reasons;Secondly,there are issues with outdated antitrust enforcement technology and deficiencies in regulatory mechanisms at the law enforcement level;Finally,at the judicial level,there are a series of issues such as unclear qualifications of litigation subjects,difficulty in consumer litigation and rights protection,and imperfect accountability mechanisms.The fifth part is the improvement of the anti-monopoly regulation path of algorithmic price discrimination.In view of the difficulties of anti-monopoly regulation of the above algorithm price discrimination,first,innovate the identification method of relevant market and market dominance from the aspect of improving the identification standard of illegality,and then put forward targeted suggestions such as strengthening the link between law enforcement departments,expanding the scope of application of litigation subjects,improving the accountability mechanism of algorithm price discrimination from the practical levels of law enforcement and justice,It is expected to provide different reference ideas for antitrust regulation of algorithmic price discrimination.