第1段：巨额收购凸显用户数据的价值
以亚马逊收购全食超市和Facebook收购WhatsApp对照引入数字巨头的力量，指出没有实体产品的通讯平台提供的是用户关系网络。
2018 · 英语（二）· Text 3
数字巨头与用户：数据价值、竞争法与权力失衡
数字巨头通过收购和平台服务积累用户关系与生活数据，形成权力失衡；竞争法因速度及付费消费者框架难以充分保护用户，双方获益也不能使这种关系变得平等。
篇章路线
先看文章怎么展开
第2段：关系元信息与购物记录带来敏感知识
Facebook违背不关联身份的承诺，通信双方和群组构成本身即能暴露敏感关系；全食的客户购买记录也可能是其重要价值。
第3段：竞争法的速度与概念局限
竞争法处理慢，旧问题得到补救时可能已被新滥用替代；更深问题是现有解释关注消费者金钱损害，而免费用户并不是购买广告的客户，平台又主导广告市场。
第4段：蚂蚁类比揭示平台与用户的关系
平台售卖数据，用户贡献生活数据；蚂蚁经营蚜虫取蜜露与谷歌经营用户取数据形成类比，保护蚜虫或阻挡垃圾邮件虽让双方获益，关系仍缺乏人的尊严与平等参与。
查看全文段间逻辑
先从巨额收购提出数字力量，再说明用户社交网络及消费记录为什么具有价值；继以承诺破裂、敏感群组的反问和可能的收购动机，揭示个人信息暴露及权力问题。第三段从 appears to be the only way 转向 But it is clumsy，先分析执行速度，再以 deeper conceptual problem 推进到免费用户与付费客户的角色差异。最后从 data 产品论断进入 Just as ... so ... 类比，并以平行保护行为承认用户获得服务；even if 的让步收束说明双方受益不等于关系平等。文中收购、政治人物与平台行为按源文当时语境理解。
逐句精读
先读原句，再打开讲解
加粗词是本句重点词。每句话默认只展开核心主干，完整分析由你决定什么时候看。
01
第1段
The power and ambition of the giants of the digital economy is astonishing--Amazon has just announced the purchase of the upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.5bn, but two years ago Facebook paid even more than that to acquire the WhatsApp messaging service, which doesn't have any physical product at all. What WhatsApp offered Facebook was an intricate and finely detailed web of its users' friendships and social lives.
02
第2段
Facebook promised the European Commission then that it would not link phone numbers to Facebook identities, but it broke the promise almost as soon as the deal went through. Even without knowing what was in the messages, the knowledge of who sent them and to whom was enormously revealing and still could be. What political journalist, what party whip, would not want to know the makeup of the WhatsApp groups in which Theresa May's enemies are currently plotting? It may be that the value of Whole Foods to Amazon is not so much the 460 shops it owns, but the records of which customers have purchased what.
03
第3段
Competition law appears to be the only way to address these imbalances of power. But it is clumsy. For one thing, it is very slow compared to the pace of change within the digital economy. By the time a problem has been addressed and remedied it may have vanished in the marketplace, to be replaced by new abuses of power. But there is a deeper conceptual problem, too. Competition law as presently interpreted deals with financial disadvantage to consumers and this is not obvious when the users of these services don't pay for them. The users of their services are not their customers. That would be the people who buy advertising from them--and Facebook and Google, the two virtual giants, dominate digital advertising to the disadvantage of all other media and entertainment companies.
04
第4段
The product they're selling is data, and we, the users, convert our lives to data for the benefit of the digital giants. Just as some ants farm the bugs called aphids for the honeydew they produce when they feed, so Google farms us for the data that our digital lives yield. Ants keep predatory insects away from where their aphids feed; Gmail keeps the spammers out of our inboxes. It doesn't feel like a human or democratic relationship, even if both sides benefit.
读完再做
Text 3 真题检验
每道题选择后立即核对答案，再结合解析回到原文深度理解。