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by kapilkaisare 2008 days ago
Isn't 10% too low a number to consider a platform systemic?
4 comments

Nah. I can see why it sounds small, but I'm having trouble thinking of places where 10% isn't of huge significance.

If you drink one cup of coffee a day, that's less than 10% of your waking time, but coffee is systemic to your life.

If 10% of your cells have a defect, that defect is systemic to your body.

If your API is down 10% of the time...

with 28 countries 10% is much larger than most.
What number would you pick?

I would say that any company that has 45 million customers is doing pretty good. 10% definitely makes many companies the largest in their sector, not every company is a Google or Amazon that’s completely consumed it’s market.

Also, 10% overall probably means a much higher share in some countries. Doesn't seem like a crazy threshold.
In the EU context, it would mean 100% of several countries, or 80%+ of one of the big EU nations (France, Germany, Italy, etc).
It is 10% users, not people in general if I understood correctly.
Maybe. I could see sites removing access to less profitable users, probably in lower income countries to stay below the 45 million threshold. Or perhaps boot low-engagement users in order to keep user-counts below the threshold. When regulation exists with a threshold, enterprises will strive to stay below it. Hence why there's such a huge drop-off in businesses with 50 or more employees in France [1] [2].

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/business/international/th...

2. http://economics.mit.edu/files/12321

That could still be an improvement. It would mean that the reach of those sites can't grow beyond 10% in the EU. Other sites would then pick up the users that were left out.
I think this might actually put Spotify on the list. Whether or not you agree if it should be, at least Spotify is no small dog.