Comment by xvector

> The DMA is gerrymandered to exclude domestic businesses.

Except Booking (~EU, based in NL~*) falls under the DMA, and ByteDance (China? I think) does as well. All the same restrictions fall on them too.

> Users are free to just not use Meta services.

True in theory, not so much in practice. I work for a company that deals directly with WhatsApp in NL, and I guarantee you for businesses it's a death knell to not have a WA Business presence. Even the local gemeente (aka city council) and other gov't establishments are on WhatsApp too. Recently more people are moving onto Signal and Telegram, but that remains a minority.

Don't even get me started on Asia, especially India/Indonesia, where even despite the existence of Line and similar apps everything is still* almost exclusively on WA. A bit different in East Asia where Line and other apps are more predominant (hardly relevant for the EU though).

Spotify doesn't fall under the DMA because it's not gatekeeping anything and it does have plenty of competition, many of which pay artists better and have basically equal selections. YT Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, Bandcamp and I'm sure dozens and dozens of others all exist and are used.

> ... but plenty will be harmed once spyware/piracy sideloading becomes common

Interesting how this evil sideloading boogeyman hasn't happened on Android.

> ... Many small businesses will collapse due to ineffective advertisement

The same small businesses that are forced into paying 30% to Apple/Google for simply existing on their app store?

> (large businesses will love it though - it becomes a winner-take-all market).

So, the gatekeepers as listed under the DMA? Y'know, the giants that literally hold all the keys and can dictate how the entire market should work based on their rules? The very same ones that have opaque ad-bidding systems that they control inside-and-out and can do anything they want to with?

[**] Seems I'm wrong there (See andsoitis' reply to my comment), but didn't want to edit out my original comment.

Regardless, calling it gerrymandering of local businesses is simply incorrect, and I can speak for at least myself that if we even had any tech companies that big (and I hope we never do), we'd expect them be subject to the exact same rules and laws.

Spotify feels like a slightly marginal case, and it wouldn't be surprising to see it added to the list. It clearly wasn't big enough a few years back when all this was being defined, but it's gotten quite a lot bigger since.

I'm curious, what is your preferred financial regime? EU are basically enforcing market capitalism by disallowing monopolistic practices. Do you find that wrong in general?

Perhaps you prefer an industro-fascist regime where businesses are not bound by any tailored laws? Pretty sure there would already be alternative iOS app stores under such a regime - government controls (IPR system, computer security laws) seem necessary to enable these sorts of tech monopolies.

> Whenever the EU faces budget shortfalls, they know they can just make up some bullshit law and fine US tech.

The EU's budget is massive, no shortfall is covered by these fines since to collect them it takes another massive legal battle, that's just bullshit being regurgitated on the internet (especially on this forum). If that was the case the EU would be issuing GDPR fines all over the place to cover shortfalls, it doesn't happen in reality.

> Spotify conveniently falls outside of the scope of this law when any artist would tell you it should absolutely be covered.

Spotify does not behave like the most similar category covered by the DMA: video sharing like YouTube. Spotify does not hold exclusive access to the content and the audience, YouTube Music, Apple Music, and other players have almost the same catalogue as Spotify has so users are free to move between those services without penalty. Now try moving from YouTube to a competitor, a completely different beast.

The DMA exists to counter an imbalance in the power these massive tech companies have in detriment to competition, it's quite a simple prerogative, Spotify doesn't hold at all the same power as YouTube has, or Google Search, or any other platform under the DMA.

> Whenever the EU faces budget shortfalls, they know they can just make up some bullshit law and fine US tech.

If that would be the case, the EU could be drowning in money by being more aggressive with GDPR enforcement and follow-through.