Comment by brookst
7 months ago
So my small app that had maybe 50k users at peak never allowed third party integrations. How is that not a monopoly by this definition? Would it have been more or less of a monopoly if I had allowed third party integrations?
The DMA has language defining thresholds below which it doesn’t apply. At 50k users, I would not expect or call for the DMA to apply. Discord has slightly more than that and I would expect the DMA to apply to them, assuming the EU found them to be an in-scope platform. Given their recent introduction of gaming and such inside their ‘we’re not just a chat server anymore’ feature expansion, one could argue that they’re now voluntarily opting in to platform regulations that wouldn’t have applied if they’d just stayed focused on messaging.
For consumer products the DMA focuses on companies with at least 45m monthly active users in the EU. They also exempted some categories that might otherwise qualify e.g. the DMA doesn't appear to cover video gaming consoles because they are "special purpose hardware".
You can see the list of covered companies at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act#Identified...
It's basically Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Bytedance and Microsoft.
https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12477677109143...
Isn't that moving the goalpost from "monopoly" to "gatekeeper as a technical term under DMA"?