The Protection Of Consumers’ Rights And Interests Under Algorithmic Price Discrimination

The development of big data and algorithm technology ushered in the era of digital economy,which not only promotes economic growth and brings convenience to daily life,but also brings challenges to the protection of consumers’ rights and interests.In recent years,"big data discrimination" has been appearing in people’s vision,and the legal problems caused by it have also become the focus of scholars’ debate.The essence of "big data discrimination" is algorithmic price discrimination.This behavior charges higher prices to consumers with low price sensitivity through the collection of consumer attribute data and behavioral data as well as the application of the algorithm,which seriously exceeds consumers’ reasonable expectations.The implementation process and results of this behavior violate consumers’ right to personal information,right to know and right to fair trade.At the same time,it has affected the order of market economy and produced the crisis of consumer trust.In order to protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers,it is necessary to regulate the price discrimination behavior of algorithm and provide relief for consumers.The core of "big data discrimination" is price sensitivity,price fraud is just the appearance,algorithm price discrimination is the essence of "big data discrimination".At present,the research on the protection of consumers’ rights and interests under algorithmic price discrimination has difficulties in the aspects of legislation,algorithmic governance and relief respectively,resulting in the lack of effective regulation of algorithmic price discrimination,which not only infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers,but also makes it difficult for consumers to effectively safeguard their rights and interests.In terms of legislation,we should take the regulation of Electronic Commerce Law as the leading role,explicitly prohibit the price discrimination behavior of algorithm in the way prescribed by law,and improve the penalty measures to enhance the deterrent power.With the regulation of Anti-monopoly Law as the auxiliary,optimize the identification of the operator’s main status,clarify the specific provisions and judgment criteria of "legitimate reasons";In addition to the regulations of the Personal Information Protection Act,the informed consent rule and the relevant provisions of clarifying automated decision making provisions will be implemented.In terms of algorithm governance,we should regulate operators’ abuse of algorithm power by strengthening algorithm transparency and algorithm interpretation,and improve algorithm and data regulation system from three aspects: regulatory subject,regulatory object and regulatory method.In terms of relief,the reversal of the burden of proof should be applied to reduce the burden of proof of consumers.At the same time,the online complaint mechanism should be improved to provide consumers with private relief channels.Finally,the consumer public interest litigation system should be improved by expanding the subject of litigation and explicitly including the algorithmic price discrimination behavior into the scope of litigation.Thus unblock the consumer’s judicial relief channel.