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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.



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".


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.



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.




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