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2018考研英语二 · 阅读理解 Text 3
本页为 2018考研英语二 阅读理解 Text 3的完整原文、正确答案与逐题解析（原文约 395 词，共 5 题）。建议先自己作答，再逐题核对解析里的原文定位与干扰项说明。
2018考研英语二阅读理解 Text 3 原文
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.
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.
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.
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.
答案与逐题解析
答案速查
31B
32C
33D
34A
35D
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31According to Paragraph 1, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for its ______.
答案B
解析原文写明 WhatsApp“doesn’t have any physical product at all”，Facebook 看中的是“an intricate and finely detailed web of its users’ friendships and social lives”。正确项 B 即用户信息。A 与“无实体产品”矛盾；C 物理资产被明确否定；D 服务质量文中未提。
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32Linking phone numbers to Facebook identities may ______.
答案C
解析文中指出即便不知消息内容，“who sent them and to whom was enormously revealing”，并举例政客想掌握 WhatsApp 群组构成。故关联手机号与身份会暴露社交关系，对用户构成风险，选 C。A 夸大政治争端；B 顾客记录与题无关；D 欧盟委员会只是被承诺对象，并非被误导后果。
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33According to the author, competition law ______.
答案D
解析作者说竞争法“very slow compared to the pace of change within the digital economy”，问题处理完时市场可能已变。故 D 正确。A 未主张服务新权力；B 未说会加剧失衡；C 并非“不止一种法律方案”，而是现有竞争法本身笨拙滞后。
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34Competition law as presently interpreted can hardly protect Facebook users because ______.
答案A
解析现有竞争法针对“financial disadvantage to consumers”，而“The users of their services are not their customers”，真正客户是广告商。因此用户不被当作消费者，难以受保护，选 A。B 财务可靠与否未提；C 数字化本身非原因；D 广告商付费是背景，核心是用户身份未被定义为顾客。
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35The ants analogy is used to illustrate ______.
答案D
解析末段将谷歌比作养蚜虫的蚂蚁：“Google farms us for the data”，说明数字巨头与用户的关系，选 D。A 双赢模式被后文“doesn’t feel like a human or democratic relationship”否定；B 并非巨头间竞争；C 受益对象是巨头而非顾客。
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