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From the text of the American Choice and Innovation Online Act: COVERED PLATFORM.—The term “covered platform” means an online platform— (A) that has been desi

From the text of the American Choice and Innovation Online Act: COVERED PLATFORM.—The term “covered platform” means an online platform— (A) that has been designated as a “covered platform” under section 2(d); or (B) that— (i) at the time of the Commission’s or the Department of Justice’s designation under section 2(d), or any of the twelve months preceding that time, or in any of the 12 months preceding the filing of a complaint for an alleged violation of this Act— (I) has at least 50,000,000 United States-based monthly active users on the online platform; or (II) has at least 100,000 United States-based monthly active business users on the platform; (ii) is owned or controlled by a person with net annual sales, or a market capitalization greater than $600,000,000,000, adjusted for inflation on the basis of the Consumer Price Index, at the time of the Commission’s or the Department of Justice’s designation under section 2(d) or any of the two years preceding that time, or at any time in the 2 years preceding the filing of a complaint for an alleged violation of this Act; and (iii) is a critical trading partner for the sale or provision of any product or service offered on or directly related to the online platform. -------------------- I like almost all of the provisions specified in this bill, but these "covered platform" conditions are totally absurd and in my view make this bill fatally flawed. These laws should apply to everyone, otherwise they simply incentivize the very behavior the bill is penalizing for every other company in the market. This is because exploiting the targeted behaviors will create a massive competitive advantage next to the handful of larger players that cannot engage in them. Further, metrics like MAUs are arbitrarily defined and arbitrarily measured even without getting into the question of bots, shared accounts, and users with multiple accounts. Finally, the idea that the legality of a business strategy should be determined by how much an owner of the company is worth is ridiculous on its face; if a practice is deemed illegal it shouldn't be excepted just because the owner of the businesses loses some net worth. The Open App Markets Act also has a similar provision for 50 million users. Why? Stop trying to carve out special cases for particular businesses, this is a fragile and disingenuous approach to legislation.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> This is because exploiting the targeted behaviors will create a massive competitive advantage next to the handful of larger players that cannot engage in them. But then they'd either get large enough to have the rules apply, or there would be a large number of smaller players competing with each other -- which is also pretty great. > Finally, the idea that the legality of a business strategy should be determined by how much an owner of the company is worth is ridiculous on its face Corporations are "people." That's there to prevent companies from pretending their operations don't meet the total by using subsidiaries. Notice that no current human has that net worth.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> This is because exploiting the targeted behaviors will create a massive competitive advantage next to the handful of larger players that cannot engage in them. But then they'd either get large enough to have the rules apply, or there would be a large number of smaller players competing with each other -- which is also pretty great. > Finally, the idea that the legality of a business strategy should be determined by how much an owner of the company is worth is ridiculous on its face Corporations are "people." That's there to prevent companies from pretending their operations don't meet the total by using subsidiaries. Notice that no current human has that net worth.