Antitrust Regulation Of “Big Date Discrimination” In The Digital Economy

The era of digital economy with data as an asset and algorithms as an important competitive tool has arrived and has shown a business operation and competition approach that is very different from the traditional economy,driving social and economic prosperity while changing people’s lifestyles.While people enjoy the convenience brought by technological development,they also unknowingly expose their interest preferences,consumption habits,price sensitivity and other information.The platform operators use their own advantages to collect a large amount of consumer data information,and use algorithmic technology to accurately "profile" each consumer,so as to use different pricing business strategies for different consumers,in order to maximize their own interests,this behavior is called "big data to kill ripe"."In2018,big data ripening behavior was widely discussed once it was exposed,and the majority of consumers believe that the behavior violates their legitimate rights and interests,violates the principle of honesty and credit in trading behavior,and should be regulated by law.A careful analysis of the complete implementation steps of big data ripening reveals that the act may be suspected of violating several sectoral laws,such as the Civil Law,the Personal Information Protection Law,the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law,and the Anti-monopoly Law,among which the Anti-monopoly Law should be the most comprehensive and value-objective-compliant sectoral law that regulates the act.Therefore,this paper starts from the perspective of antimonopoly law,discusses the big data killing behavior as the research object,and optimizes the regulatory path of dominant position abuse in the context of digital economy.This paper argues that big data killing may constitute excessive pricing behavior under the antitrust law,and excessive pricing is an exploitative and abusive behavior that directly harms the legitimate rights and interests of consumers,and seriously reduces the efficiency of market innovation and damages the competitive order of the market.Therefore,it is necessary for the anti-monopoly law to regulate such behavior,which is in line with the legislative objectives of China’s anti-monopoly law to protect competition,encourage innovation and protect the interests of consumers.However,big data is a product of the development of information technology in the era of digital economy,which has a new business model and technical characteristics,which makes the antitrust law based on the traditional economic theory slightly limited.This is mainly manifested in the definition of the market related to the digital platform,the determination of market dominance,and the backwardness of private antimonopoly litigation and anti-monopoly enforcement means.These problems do not only appear in the process of regulating the big data killing behavior,but are also problems reflected in the whole digital economy.Therefore,in order to solve the above-mentioned problems,it is suggested that the regulatory concept suitable for antitrust in the digital economy should be based on the principles of prudential regulation and reasonableness,and then recommendations are made to address the above-mentioned problems in a targeted manner.Specifically,the determination of abuse of dominant position can be improved by innovating the definition of relevant markets and integrating the factors for determining dominant position according to the characteristics of the digital economy;for antitrust enforcement,the professionalism of the enforcement team should be strengthened,enforcement techniques should be improved,and coordination with industry regulation should be emphasized;and the private antitrust litigation system can be improved by balancing the burden of proof,expanding the subject of litigation,and introducing the penalty system.The private antimonopoly litigation system can be improved by balancing the burden of proof,expanding the subjects of litigation and introducing a punitive damages system to increase consumers’ enthusiasm for litigation,so that the private antimonopoly litigation system will no longer be empty words.