On the morning of October 13, 2025, an academic lecture themed "The Source, Shaping, and Legal Regulation of Platform Power: Towards a General 'Platform Responsibility Model Law'" was held in Conference Room 434, Xingmin Building, Xianlin Campus, Nanjing Normal University. The lecture was presented by Professor Wang Qinghua, a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Law, Beijing Normal University, and moderated by Professor Zhang Lei from the same school. Associate Professor Chen Hui participated in the discussion.

At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Zhang Lei warmly welcomed Professor Wang Qinghua and introduced his academic background and research achievements to the students. Professor Wang Qinghua first explained the "innovation of platforms" from the perspective of industrial organization economics, citing the example of Airbnb employees generating $2.6 billion in revenue in 2017. Based on this, he systematically explained the three sources of platform power: the first is "data". Platforms acquire massive amounts of user and merchant information, forming a network effect, where the more users who use a certain network service, the higher the value each user obtains from it; the expansion of user scale further attracts more users to join, forming user aggregation and data concentration, making the first-mover advantage significant. At this point, the platform assumes the role of a "gatekeeper", obtaining corresponding powers through legal authorization to verify and review merchant qualifications, decide market access, and connect merchants with consumers. At the same time, the platform extends its dominant position in core business to adjacent markets to gain competitive advantage. The second is "algorithms". Platforms launch proprietary products and services by monitoring merchants' sales behavior and acquiring merchant data, and prioritize the display of proprietary content in operations or participate in competition at a price below cost. The third is "architecture". Platforms determine the environment and architecture that users choose, building the basic framework for user interaction. In addition, Professor Wang also pointed out that "large models" are becoming an emerging mode of platform power, which are divided into general large models and vertical large models. Common examples such as "Doubao" and "DeepSeek" belong to the category of general large models.
Subsequently, Professor Wang analyzed the governance path of the platform one by one. Firstly, a rights protection mechanism centered on personal information control should be established to correct the information asymmetry between individuals and platforms. Currently, a dual system has been formed in the division of data permissions: individuals have control over basic data, while enterprises enjoy property rights over value-added data. Since personal information is an important foundation for algorithm iteration, and platforms, as artificial intelligence complexes, have data-driven characteristics, the strength and scope of personal information protection are directly related to the effectiveness of algorithm regulation and platform governance. Secondly, differentiated algorithm transparency requirements based on specific scenarios should be established, with the principle of algorithm transparency. Thirdly, the internal source of platform power comes from its independent ecosystem, while the external source comes from the authorization of public power. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the supervision of platforms from the outside, and at the same time, it is also necessary to rely on platforms to supervise commercial entities within the platform. This is an inevitable trend in platform governance.
Finally, Professor Wang proposed that we should respond to the regulatory needs of platforms from a legal perspective and promote the formulation of a general "Model Law on Platform Responsibilities". Currently, China has successively issued regulatory documents such as the "Guidelines for the Classification and Grading of Internet Platforms (Draft for Comments)", "Basic Requirements for the Management of Takeout Platform Services (Draft for Comments)", and "Regulations on the Establishment of Personal Information Protection Supervision Committees for Large Online Platforms (Draft for Comments)". Looking ahead, it is necessary to introduce unified general legal norms and establish a systematic regulatory framework for Internet platforms.