[turtle4]

Is that what they are saying though? I'm not reading it as 'small teams can't comply'. I'm reading it as if you comply, you will make less money advertising, and that affects the dynamics in a social app.

If you have to charge money, your chance to overcome the network effect of FB or an established site is difficult, because en masse migration of users to a new service typically goes hand in hand with that new service being offered freely.

Conversely if you don't charge money, your ability to fund the development of a competitor is based on reduced ad income since you can't offer targeted ads, which is going to shorten your runway by a significant amount.

These two things seem to indicate that the likelihood of building something that replaces one of the existing social services goes down. I don't think it makes it impossible, but the law seems to make it less likely that the social app incumbents get replaced (if that was at all possible).

As far as those in other regulated fields having done this for some time, I can't think of many regulated fields where the network effect is so high as social apps, so it is probably a bit apples to oranges. Presumably it is not as large a deal in those markets where social network dynamic is not as strong.