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Comment by jjulius | Hacker News Reader

>Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp...

Okay, this is where I think we need to make clear who this requirement applies to. If we click through the first link, found in the first sentence in the article, to the actual source text[0] and run it through Google Translate, we can find that this requirement only applies to companies...

>... whose market capitalization reaches at least 75 billion euros or whose annual turnover exceeds 7.5 billion euros. To qualify as gatekeepers, these companies must also provide certain services such as browsers, messaging or social media which have at least 45 million end users per month in the EU and 10,000 business users per year.

[0]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/fr/press-room/20220315IP...

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Aren't there only, say, two or three companies that fit that criteria? The legislators may as well have called them out by name.

well this is the way legislation works, it's considered bad form to call them out by name so you choose some few characteristics that apply to them which has the side benefit that if in the future some other company comes along with those characteristics the same laws apply to them.

Also I am quite sure that such a law would be unconstitutional in a lot of places.

yup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder

It would only be a bill of attainder if it used arbitrary characteristics not relevant to the stated purpose of the bill to target specific companies. The definition cited is not arbitrary in that sense - it targets large companies in specific markets, and there's an obvious rational connection with the stated purpose.

I believe that both comment are trying to say that:

- Google and Apple must do X => unconstitutional

- All Companies bigger than X with chat-like apps and an app store and a near-oligopoly OS must do X => probably constitutional

- All Companies such that (proceed to list dozen of random characteristics meant to only ever apply to Google and Apple ) must do X => probably unconstitutional

yes, although I didn't want to specifically say this was the case in EU as I'm not sure. But probably is.

The point for the legislation is to force market leaders to open up and enable competitors, today and tomorrow. Calling them out by name works fine for today, but won't apply to the next TikTok/Instagram/WhatsApp/etc.

Calling those companies by name would be extra stupid. Let's say out of nowhere there's a new company that fits to all the criteria but it's not called by name? The law would have to be changed to add their name to the law. It's wasting a lot of time. Instead of that there's a list of criteria and company is automatically on this "list".

I can't wait to forever jump from app to app because as soon as one company exceeds 7.5 billion euros, it'll get struck by this new set of laws that makes its entire business model impossible. Of course, that's assuming that the EU doesn't expand this when they notice that happening...

And won’t it be nice when that happens that you will then be able to jump from app to app because they are required by law to interoperate?

I don't think you understand how servers work.

According to this wouldn't Microsoft have to open up Teams and LinkedIn Messages?

Sounds like a win to me.

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