互联网反垄断能促进数据隐私保护吗?

Can Antitrust Law Improve Data Privacy in the Internet Industry?

数据隐私通常被视为产品质量的一部分,可以通过反垄断法的实施来提升对其的保护程度。但是,对于互联网企业而言,由于双边市场的特质,需要通过获取用户数据来提供服务。竞争的加剧会使得企业需要更多的数据来获得竞争优势。对于用户来说,由于数据获取的隐蔽性、认知的局限性以及对于产品价格过度敏感,充分的竞争也难以让用户选择隐私保护程度更高的企业。正是由于市场竞争存在这些局限性,所以通过反垄断法很难实现提升隐私保护的效果。

Data privacy is usually regarded as a part of product quality,the protection of which can be improved by the implementation of the antitrust law.For firms,however,the nature of the two-sided market requires access to the user data for providing services.The aggravation of competition will increase the firms demand for more data to gain competitive advantage.For users,due to the concealment strategy of data acquisition,cognitive limitations and over-sensitivity to product prices,it is also difficult to choose the firms with higher level of privacy protection in the competitive market.Because of these limitations of competition,improving data privacy protection through antitrust law is impossible.