Comment by sensanaty

> 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.