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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

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?

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"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.

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.

Yeah, I often see claims online that Facebook is dead, Facebook is just Boomers posting pictures of their grandkids, etc. Maybe it's a regional thing, because where I live, everyone's on Facebook. Most small businesses, organizations, and communities here use it as their primary (or only) online presence for promoting themselves and staying in contact with their customers/members. Marketplace has completely replaced the old newspaper classified ads. That's unfortunate since the search in Marketplace sucks, but it's happened.

My family uses its messenger for organizing things because everyone has it, even if some of us rarely use it except for that. If I wanted to draw attention to something locally, whether it was promoting a service or running for office, I'd be a fool not to use Facebook.

Part of the disconnect is that these days, a lot of the Facebook use is concentrated in places you don't necessarily see from the outside.

Like, fifteen years ago, if you happened upon the Facebook page of a random person, you'd usually see a handful of vacation pictures, a meme or three, some updates from their latest Clash of Cookie Farm Kitchen Dash session, and whatnot.

These days, all that stuff - if it's even still being posted - is likely siloed away to Friends-only posts. That random person might still be there, might still be logging in every day, but you don't see the Messenger group chats and the Marketplace offers/haggles.

Likewise for small businesses - a lot of the "look at this thing we're selling now, come check it out" posts now go to Instagram. They might still be auto-logging in, still responding to PMs on Facebook, still clicking a few news posts here and there, but that's just not visible on the outside, and creates the perception of Facebook the Ghost Town.

> What surprises me is how much people on this site underestimate facebook.

It’s the classic disconnect between engineering and product management: When engineers don’t want a product and therefore conclude that nobody wants the product.

When I’ve brought up Facebook active user stats here in the past I got flooded with responses suggested Facebook was lying or manipulating their user counts to pump up the stock.

*US city. I think people in my country would be able to name Craigslist (not in use) over fb marketplace.

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.

Yeah fair. I guess I forget that Ireland is now the largest English speaking country in the EU, so I guess I'm in a bubble. I am still really surprised that Marketplace is no longer big enough to count as a gatekeeper.

> 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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