Comment by pjc50
5 days ago
Ah, they said the T-word, presumably to invoke some political fire support from across the Atlantic. I wonder how that will go. Of course, this is not a tariff, for two reasons: firstly, it does not involve money (the UK's digital services tax does, but that's not this), and secondly, the same rules would apply to EU native competitors .. if there were any. It's what's knows as a "non tariff trade barrier". Of course those are all over the place, and many of them are there to protect consumer and public interests.
> The EU regulator also dropped Meta's Marketplace's designation as a DMA gatekeeper because the number of users fell below the threshold.
Now that's interesting. I think the threshold is 45 million? Falling EU userbase?
"the same rules would apply to EU maybe competitors... if there were any."
That can actually be an example of a tariff, though. Basically every country specializes in something, and imports things they're not good at making. For example: cheese, or luxury watches, or GPUs. If you have a special law that charges companies money only for the categories you import and you carve out exceptions for "small" (aka domestic) markets, a la the DMA, you have effectively created a tariff.
I wonder if eBay's free listings is taking marketshare back?
eBay's listings are no longer free. They are now extorting their pound of flesh via a so-called "Buyer Protection Fee" which forces buyers, rather than sellers, to pay extra when purchasing items from private sellers.
Which is ironic, as both Ebay and PayPal tends to automatically side with buyer 99.9999% of the time in disputes.
eBay is very different across countries. In Germany, eBay listings are free again for private sellers after they noticed the exodus to other platforms. I know this is not the case in other countries, so talking about eBay as a general platform is very difficult.
I'm a bit surprised usage was ever that high; that would imply that almost 10% of the population was using _Facebook Marketplace_!
I think I've looked at it maybe twice since it launched, to admire all the weird scams. Maybe it's gotten better since? It used to be sub-ebay levels of complete nonsense.
Remember that you're probably in a bubble. Marketplace was incredibly popular back in the days when I was at FB, and I'd have expected it to get more popular based on the people I see around me (kids stuff is all over it).
Maybe the gatekeeper thing is a reflection of less people in the EU using FB at all, rather than specifically Marketplace.
That bubble is the EU, which this law is about. I know a bunch of European countries have their own Ebay/Craigslist websites. Marketplace has never been even somewhat popular in my country.
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Facebook Marketplace is extremely popular depending on the city you’re in.
It has taken the place of Craigslist for younger generations.
What surprises me is how much people on this site underestimate facebook.
Facebook literally is the internet for millions of people.
Facebook marketplace is far larger than craigslist and ebay combined, even if you take both of those at their respective peaks.
The open web might seem huge, but it's actually dwarfed in size by Facebook.
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*US city. I think people in my country would be able to name Craigslist (not in use) over fb marketplace.
> the same rules would apply to EU native competitors .. if there were any.
By this same logic, I guess we can say that the EU isn't trying to build a trade barrier favoring local competitors. So, while, as you say,
> It's what's knows as a "non tariff trade barrier".
...It's also not that, since the goal isn't prevent them from competing equally in the market, where they have no competition.
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