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by godelski 505 days ago
My understanding is that the requirement is for __platforms__ with 10m+ monthly users. That is, like Twitter but (probably) not Hacker News. And that really it is more that these platforms need to provide an interface in which bots can identify themselves and do a good faith effort in identifying bots

  > Online platforms with over 10 million monthly U.S. visitors would need to ensure bot operators on their services comply with these expanded disclosure rules.
So even if the bot is from a small business, they still must identify themselves as long as they are on a platform like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. This feels reasonable, even if we disagree on a threshold. It doesn't make sense to enforce this for small niche forums. This would put undue burden on small players and similarly be a waste of government resources, especially because any potential damage is, by definition, smaller.

Big players love regulation because it's gatekeeping and they can always step over the gate. But the gate keeps out competition. More specifically, it squashes competition before they can even become good competitors. So I think it definitely is a good idea to regulate in this fashion. Remember that the playing field is always unbalanced, big players can win with worse products because they can leverage their weight.