Are you troubled by the abuse of "refund only" by the "wool party" as a merchant? Do consumers feel unfair due to the quietly shrinking membership benefits offered at high prices? The same airfare and hotel, different prices for different people, suspected to be "killed by big data"? These long-standing pain points that have troubled businesses and consumers have received strong institutional responses. The State Administration for Market Regulation and the Cyberspace Administration of China jointly issued the "Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Trading Platform Rules" (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures") in December 2025, which will be officially implemented on February 1, 2026. The "Measures" for the first time take "platform rules" as the core entry point, systematically delineating "red lines" and "bottom lines" for the standardized operation of online trading platforms, aiming to build a fair, transparent, and trustworthy online trading ecosystem. Highlight 1: Enhancing Transparency of Platform Rules and Implementing Multi party Participation Rights [Phenomenon] Recently, the Guangzhou Market Supervision Administration conducted a special investigation and found that several e-commerce platforms have problems such as non-standard rule disclosure, insufficient query convenience, and abuse of the "final interpretation power". Some platforms also hide lengthy and obscure rules deep inside the page, lacking prior communication for changes involving significant interests, and failing to timely publicize rule modifications. Chapter 2 of the Measures provides clear and easy to implement regulations on the formulation, modification, and implementation of rules. The core is to solidify the platform's main responsibility from the source of the rules, and to enhance the transparency of the platform's rule formulation and modification process. There are three highlights in this regard: firstly, to strengthen the requirements for rule disclosure. The Measures explicitly require platforms to continuously publicize rules or related links in a prominent position on the homepage, ensuring that consumers and merchants can easily access and download them, and set up search functions to quickly find key content, solving the problem of "not being able to find or clarify rules"; The rules formulated and modified shall be publicly announced at least seven days before implementation, and the formulation and changes of important rules shall be publicly announced 15 days in advance. The second is to improve the system for soliciting opinions on rule modifications. Before the platform modifies its rules, it must publicly solicit the opinions of users and merchants. This is not a formalistic "going through the motions", but requires the platform to fully absorb and adopt reasonable opinions. If opinions are not adopted, there should be reasonable reasons, and relevant records should be kept for more than three years for future reference. The third is to establish and improve a communication and negotiation mechanism for major issues related to platform rules. Through regular consultations, discussions, questionnaire surveys, and other methods, regular communication and negotiation will be carried out on the formulation, modification, and implementation of platform rules that involve significant interests of all parties involved. The unilateral decision-making of platform rules will be upgraded to collaborative governance through negotiation. Highlight 2: Targeting the Reduction of Membership Rights and Rectification Platform's Unilateral Willfulness [Phenomenon] The iQiyi "Celebrating More Years" advanced on-demand case is a typical case of the platform's unilateral change of membership rules and chaos. Many paying members who subscribed to iQiyi's "Golden VIP" originally intended to "watch hot dramas first", but after opening the service, the platform suddenly unilaterally launched a "paid advance on-demand" mode, requiring additional payment to watch the latest content of the dramas. Although iQiyi argues that this move provides additional viewing options, it actually significantly reduces the core rights of members to "watch hot dramas first", resulting in a much lower than expected viewing experience for members. The case ultimately ended with the court ruling that the advanced on-demand clause had no effect on the plaintiff and iQiyi compensated for the losses. However, the industry chaos reflected in the case is shocking - many platforms, relying on the "unilateral change right" granted by standard terms, arbitrarily adjust the boundaries of member rights, or quietly increase advertising time, reduce exclusive services, or raise renewal prices and set up unsubscribe barriers. After members pay, they fall into a passive dilemma of "reducing their rights as they please". The upcoming implementation of Article 32 of the Measures is a systemic punch that directly targets this pain point. This clause explicitly prohibits the platform from charging additional fees or reducing member benefits by unilaterally modifying platform rules during the agreed service period. Before consumers continue to purchase membership services, the operator of the online trading platform should inform consumers in a significant way of any changes related to membership rights in the platform rules. This is equivalent to clarifying the breach of contract identified by the Chinese court in the "iQiyi Advanced VOD Case" as a general illegal act prohibited by law. In the future, the court can also directly refer to this specific provision when adjudicating such cases, forming a clearer judgment logic and providing a clear standard for supervision and rights protection. Highlight 3: Clear text prohibits "big data killing" to protect the bottom line of consumer fairness. "Big data killing" has become a prominent phenomenon in the platform economy that infringes on consumers' right to fair trade due to its algorithm concealment, and is very common in daily consumption scenarios. I believe many consumers have had similar experiences. On travel booking platforms, the hotel and flight prices queried by commonly used accounts are hundreds of yuan higher than those of newly registered accounts. When consumers raise doubts, platforms often use vague reasons such as "different promotional activities" and "price labeling differences" to evade them. Due to technological barriers and difficulties in providing evidence, consumers face an extremely difficult road to protect their rights. The author found 10419 complaints related to "big data killing" on the consumer complaint platform "Black Cat Complaints" under Sina. The Measures issued this time have refined and supplemented the principle provisions on price discrimination in laws and regulations such as the Consumer Rights Protection Law and the Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, forming more targeted and operable regulatory norms. Article 31 of the Measures explicitly stipulates that operators of online trading platforms shall not use platform rules to set different prices or fee standards for the same goods or services under the same trading conditions without the knowledge of consumers, effectively safeguarding consumers' right to fair trade. When consumers claim the existence of "kill off", the platform has an obligation to provide evidence to prove the reasonableness, legality, and non discrimination of its pricing mechanism. Highlight Four: Suppressing "Internal Competition" and Ensuring Business Autonomy. In May and July 2025, the State Administration for Market Regulation held two consecutive interviews with three food delivery platforms, Meituan, Ele.me, and JD.com, regarding the "subsidy war" for food delivery. They were required to fully understand the negative effects of low price disorderly competition, operate with integrity and in accordance with the law, strengthen subsidy information disclosure, ensure business autonomy, strictly prohibit false advertising, price discrimination, and induce food waste. On January 14th of this year, Ctrip was investigated for suspected abuse of market dominance and monopolistic behavior. Previously, the controversy surrounding Ctrip's "price adjustment assistant" being accused of disrupting market pricing and disrupting hotel operations has sparked discussions. Some hotel merchants have reported that this feature will automatically force the modification and reduction of hotel room pricing by comparing prices on competing platforms in the background. The frequent occurrence of "internal competition" chaos in the platform economy field, such as the State Administration for Market Regulation's interviews with food delivery platforms and Ctrip's investigation into suspected abuse of market dominance and monopolistic behavior, is an important signal for regulatory authorities to rectify such issues. The Measures accurately break through the situation from the perspective of substantive rules, and clearly stipulate that platforms shall not force or indirectly force merchants to open non essential value-added services such as "refund only", participate in promotional activities, or sell goods or provide services at prices lower than cost according to their pricing rules, thereby disrupting market competition order; The Measures also provide detailed examples of illegal situations such as "choosing between two", unreasonable charging of fees, and charging liquidated damages or damages that clearly exceed reasonable levels, in order to set clear red lines for protecting the independent operation rights of merchants. These regulations have shifted from focusing on protecting consumer rights in the past to building a comprehensive protection system that takes into account the interests of platform operators, practitioners, and consumers. Highlight 5: Clarify the obligation to inform and the right to appeal. The implementation of rules for cracking rules involves a "black box" operation. In the practice of platform governance, there has been a long-standing problem of "black box operation" in the execution of platform rules. Many merchants have encountered sudden account bans, deduction or even confiscation of deposits or payments, while the platform only provides vague reasons such as "violating platform policies" without presenting specific evidence of violations. When merchants appeal through official channels, they often only receive template responses, making it difficult to guarantee their right to appeal. The Measures have added a platform rule enforcement system to address this stubborn governance problem. On the one hand, when online trading platform operators take negative measures such as warning, account suspension, or removal of goods from merchants or consumers according to platform rules, they should inform them of clear factual and legal basis, as well as corresponding platform rules and regulations; On the other hand, the platform should also set up convenient appeal channels. Complaints raised by merchants or consumers should be reviewed in a timely manner, handled objectively and fairly, and only processed through technological means such as artificial intelligence. If the appellant requests manual judgment, it should be processed through manual judgment. In short, the above regulations have refined the procedural obligations of the platform at the level of rule enforcement, effectively deterring the crude management mode of "punishing" and "sealing" the platform, and building a transparent platform rule enforcement closed loop of "informed with evidence and channels for appeal". (New Society)