The regulations on the recommendation of Internet Information Service algorithms will come into effect today.

The regulations on the recommendation of Internet Information Service algorithms jointly issued by the State Internet Information Office and other four departments will come into effect on March 1. For ordinary users, the algorithm can not be touched or understood, but it is widely affecting us to obtain Internet information services through various platforms.

Algorithms are abused everywhere.

Algorithm recommendation technology by grabbing users' daily use data, analyze people's behavior, habits and preferences, and then accurately provide information, entertainment, consumption and other services. While providing convenience, in recent years, unreasonable applications such as "big data killing ripe", traffic fraud, induced addiction and so on have also brought troubles to our lives. The China Great Security perception report (2021), jointly released by the Internet Development Research Center of Peking University and Internet companies, shows that 70% of respondents feel that algorithms can obtain their own preferences and interests and thus "calculate" themselves. nearly 50% of the respondents said they wanted to escape from the network and away from mobile phones under the shackles of the algorithm.

Zuo Xiaodong, vice president of the China Academy of Information Security: the push of these services is customized for us by the network service provider, so customization is easy to cause abuse, damage our personal rights and interests, and seriously endanger national security. Therefore, algorithm recommendation must be standardized.

The stipulation makes it clear that the application of algorithm recommendation technology refers to the use of algorithm technology to provide information to users, such as generating composite class, personalized push class, sorting selected class, retrieval filtering class, scheduling decision class and so on. Almost all kinds of Internet companies that provide algorithmic recommendation services are under supervision, such as all kinds of short video platforms, e-commerce platforms, social platforms and catering takeout platforms.

In order to break the "black box" that the algorithm cannot be touched or understood, the stipulation clearly requires that the user's right to know and choose the algorithm should be guaranteed, and the user should be provided with options that are not specific to his or her personal characteristics. or the convenient option to turn off the algorithm recommendation service.

The regulations require that algorithm recommendation service providers should adhere to the mainstream value orientation, actively spread positive energy, establish and improve the mechanism of manual intervention and users' independent choice, and shall not use algorithms to influence network public opinion, evade supervision and management, monopoly and unfair competition.

It is not allowed to implement differential treatment to "kill familiar" big data.

In recent years, some enterprises have used personal information to "kill" big data, set differential prices for different groups, and implement "price discrimination", which makes consumers very disgusted. In this regard, how will the "regulations" be cracked?

Ms. Hu of Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, booked a hotel room through a business travel platform and found that the room rate paid through the platform was nearly double the actual room rate of the hotel, and she was a senior member of the business travel platform and should have enjoyed a 25% discount. Ms. Hu suspected that the business travel platform through her previous consumer behavior, the existence of "big data familiar" behavior, the business travel platform to court. In July last year, the court granted the plaintiff's request for a refund of one to three in the first instance. This case is called the first case of "big data killing" by many media.

For the same delivery time, place, order, and takeout platform, members pay more than non-members; at the same time, taking the same type of taxi to the same destination, a taxi-hailing platform has been found by users to charge more for regular customers, and similar consumer complaints occur frequently. In this regard, the "regulations" propose that if the algorithm recommends service providers to sell goods or provide services to consumers, they should protect consumers' right to fair trade, and should not, according to consumers' preferences, trading habits and other characteristics, use the algorithm to implement illegal acts such as unreasonable differential treatment in transaction prices and other trading conditions.

Zuo Xiaodong, vice president of the China Academy of Information Security: some platforms will say that this algorithm is my intellectual property and my trade secret, and I cannot disclose it. None of these arguments can be established, and the algorithm of the platform should ensure the necessary transparency.

Experts stressed that the "regulations" also clearly protect the rights and interests of users, such as the right to choose and delete. By providing users with options that are not specific to their personal characteristics, or by providing users with a convenient option to turn off the algorithm recommendation service, and by providing the function to select or delete user tags for their personal characteristics, prevent consumers from being "calculated" by the algorithm.

Protect the legitimate rights and interests of workers from being trapped by the algorithm

In addition, in the regulations on the recommendation Management of Internet Information Service algorithms, if the algorithm recommendation service provider provides job scheduling services to workers, it should protect workers' legitimate rights and interests such as labor remuneration, rest and vacation, and so on. Let's learn about it again.

In September 2020, an article entitled "takeout riders trapped in the system" attracted a lot of attention. This paper describes that under the algorithm and data drive of the takeout platform system, the delivery time of the takeout rider is constantly compressed, and the rider is driven by a powerful system, in order to avoid bad reviews and maintain income, have to choose retrograde, running red lights and other practices in reality. Many takeout riders say that for dozens of high-rise buildings, elevators wait for more than ten minutes or even longer, but such an objective situation has not been taken into account by the "algorithm system."

Liang Zheng, deputy dean of the Institute of artificial Intelligence International Governance of Tsinghua University: as the machine is still in the stage of development, in view of some labor scenarios, handing the decision power to the machine has a great hidden risk of fairness and reliability.

The Internet platform optimization algorithm mainly calculates the best strategy of business operation through big data's analysis algorithm model, at the same time, it is accompanied by a set of strict performance appraisal mechanism, once it violates some of the algorithm rules, it will lose its "advantage" in the assessment, and may bring some vicious coping behavior. The "regulations" specifically propose that if the algorithm recommends service providers to provide workers with job scheduling services, they should protect their legitimate rights and interests such as labor remuneration, rest and vacation, and establish and improve the platform order distribution, remuneration composition and payment, working hours, rewards and punishments and other related algorithms.

Ensure that the algorithm is open and transparent, strictly prevent brushing quantity control and evaluation, and affect public opinion.

Hire network "water army" to implement traffic fraud, encourage "rice circle" fans to tear each other, brush quantity control and evaluation, some algorithms recommend service providers to intervene in hot search, the phenomenon of affecting network public opinion is criti