Consumer Traps in the Digital Age: Protecting and Challenging Consumer Autonomy

Consumer Traps in the Digital Age: Protecting and Challenging Consumer AutonomyThe digital wave has swept across the globe, making online consumption an indispensable part of daily life. To improve operational efficiency and payment convenience, e-commerce platforms and merchants constantly innovate marketing strategies

Consumer Traps in the Digital Age: Protecting and Challenging Consumer Autonomy

The digital wave has swept across the globe, making online consumption an indispensable part of daily life. To improve operational efficiency and payment convenience, e-commerce platforms and merchants constantly innovate marketing strategies. However, the inherent risks cannot be ignored. The recent rise of convenient payment methods such as "buy now, pay later" has enhanced the shopping experience, but it has also spawned numerous problems. Practices like default activation, inducement to activate, and mandatory bundlingoften referred to as "gimmicks"seriously infringe upon consumers' autonomy of choice. Furthermore, some apps embed irrelevant links in the payment process and excessively collect personal information. These actions share a commonality: they rarely obtain consumers' free choice through legitimate channels with full informed consent. Instead, they "mislead" consumers into making purchases through system updates, fleeting pop-ups, and marketing advertisements to achieve commercial goals. This not only violates consumers' autonomy but also undermines a fair, transparent, and secure online shopping environment.

• Every legitimate consumption act should be based on the consumers full knowledge and explicit consent; it should be a freely made choice. Platforms and merchants have no right to utilize any technological means to substitute for consumers' thinking and decision-making. Article 9 of the People's Republic of China Consumer Rights Protection Law clearly stipulates that consumers have the right to choose goods or services autonomously, including choosing operators, product types, service methods, and whether to purchase goods or accept services.

• Article 19 of the People's Republic of China E-commerce Law further stipulates that e-commerce operators must not make bundled goods or services a default option and must prominently remind consumers. The Implementation Regulations of the People's Republic of China Consumer Rights Protection Law explicitly prohibits operators from using technical means to force or implicitly force consumers to purchase goods or accept services, or to exclude or restrict consumers from choosing goods or services offered by other operators.

• Regulatory authorities have the power to penalize violations of consumer autonomy, including ordering corrections and issuing warnings, confiscating illegal gains, imposing fines, and, in serious cases, suspending operations or revoking business licenses. The Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Network Transactions also sets out specific requirements for the responsibilities and obligations of online transaction platform operators, including establishing sound platform rules and strengthening supervision and management of the behavior of operators on the platform.

Despite clear legal regulations, infringements on consumer autonomy due to improper marketing remain rampant. The difficulty in addressing this issue stems from several factors:

First, infringements in online transactions are highly concealed and diverse, often difficult to identify. Illegal merchants cleverly use technical means to hide their violations, making them difficult for consumers to detect.

Second, consumers often face information asymmetry during the rights protection process, especially lacking effective evidence in online transactions. Lacking professional legal knowledge, consumers find it hard to collect and organize effective evidence, increasing the difficulty of redress.

Third, the cost of violating regulations is relatively low, making it difficult for enforcement to serve as an effective deterrent. Due to insufficient penalties, some merchants take the risk and continue engaging in illegal marketing activities.

Fourth, existing regulatory technologies face challenges in examining a massive number of illegal links and determining their compliance. Regulatory authorities need to invest a large amount of manpower and material resources for effective supervision, which is often insufficient to meet actual needs.

To effectively address these issues, efforts should be made in the following areas:

I. Improve the Industry Policy and Regulatory System

• While existing laws and regulations provide general provisions on violations of consumer autonomy, their specificity and targeted nature are insufficient given the rapid changes in e-commerce platform marketing techniques. The People's Republic of China Consumer Rights Protection Law uses an enumeration approach, and while the Implementation Regulations of the People's Republic of China Consumer Rights Protection Law, officially implemented in July this year, addresses automatic renewal, its provisions on legal liability are insufficient, and the effectiveness of the legal rules has not been fully realized.

Therefore, it is necessary to further refine the rules protecting the relevant rights of consumers and operators, regulate the scope and conditions of use of new settlement and advertising marketing methods, clarify the responsibilities and obligations of merchants, define specific instances of illegal marketing practices, and provide strong enforcement basis for regulatory authorities. Only in this way can the legitimate rights and interests of consumers be better protected.

II. Refine Industry Standards and Strengthen Industry Self-Discipline

• In 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Evaluation Specification for User Rights Protection of Mobile Internet Applications (APPs), providing guidance for the standardized operation of e-commerce platforms and defining behaviors such as "random APP jumps." However, this specification still has room for refinement. Further improvement of relevant industry standards is needed to clarify the safety determination, transparency requirements, and user authorization conditions of relevant marketing behaviors, ensuring that e-commerce operates within a legal and compliant framework.

Furthermore, the role of consumer associations and relevant industry organizations should be strengthened to continuously improve the norms and standards for marketing behavior, formulate a detailed "negative list" to define behavioral red lines, and guide e-commerce platforms to practice self-discipline, jointly maintaining a sound market order.

III. Improve the Rights Protection Mechanism and Enhance Consumer Awareness

On the one hand, it is necessary to guide consumers to accurately identify consumer traps and enhance their awareness. This can be achieved through improved reward systems for reporting, building a convenient and efficient reporting mechanism, and promptly releasing typical infringement cases, combining guidance and reminders with daily supervision. Simultaneously, consumer awareness can be enhanced through the dissemination of consumer warnings and the provision of rights protection guides.

On the other hand, platform responsibility needs to be emphasized, strengthening internal regulatory mechanisms and requiring e-commerce platforms to conduct strict audits of merchants to ensure their marketing methods are legal and compliant. Platforms should also inform consumers of their rights and obligations through service agreements, fully explaining the advantages and consequences/risks of different services. Platforms should be guided and supervised to optimize the processes for activating and canceling services, ensuring that functions can be both "easily activated" and "easily canceled."

IV. Enhance Regulatory Effectiveness and Increase Penalties

Traditional administrative penalties and talks for correction are important for dealing with violations of consumer autonomy, but their deterrent effect is insufficient for some e-commerce platforms with high profit margins. Therefore, it is necessary to further increase the intensity of supervision and punishment and legally increase the cost of violations.

On the one hand, it is necessary to explore effective regulatory models adapted to the characteristics of the platform economy and online businesses. For e-commerce platforms engaged in illegal marketing, depending on the severity, measures such as restricting market access and public exposure should be taken to increase the cost of violations for enterprises and create a social environment where "a breach of trust in one place results in restrictions everywhere."

On the other hand, it is necessary to improve the accuracy and efficiency of supervision, enriching technological protection methods, and continuously developing intelligent regulatory system software tools suitable for the e-commerce field. This will allow for real-time analysis of marketing data on e-commerce platforms, timely identification of abnormal transactions, and early warning of potential consumer traps. A precise review system can efficiently identify and handle violations. Only through multifaceted and multi-layered measures can consumer autonomy be effectively protected, creating a fair, transparent, and secure online shopping environment.

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