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Congress is considering legislation, the American Innovation and Choice Act, to establish new rules for the biggest online platforms. This shows how the bill would apply to some of the most

valuable public and private companies in the world.

The legislation only applies if a company has a certain size or global reach: a market cap of at least $550 billion in the last 12 months or at least 1 billion global users.

That second condition was added to ensure the bill applies to private companies that don’t have to disclose their financial information—like TikTok owner ByteDance. It also catches Meta and

Tencent, whose market caps have dropped in recent months.

The bill focuses only on companies that operate online platforms—websites, online or mobile apps, operating systems, digital assistants or online services. To qualify, the platforms must

also involve user-generated content (social networks), sales of goods, services or advertising (e-commerce) or information queries (search).

The platform needs to have a substantial connection to the US for the legislation to apply: at least 50 million monthly active US users or 100,000 US business users.

That knocks Tencent out of the running. While WeChat, Tencent’s popular messaging app, has about 1.3 billion users worldwide, its US usage is only an estimated 1 to 2 million. Epic Games—the

Fortnite-maker that is partly owned by Tencent—also doesn’t have enough users.

The bill seeks to prevent companies from abusing the power that comes from operating a platform. But not every large online platform interacts with rivals. The bill has a “critical trading

partner” test: the platform must have the ability to act as a gateway for other businesses to reach customers.

This is the trickiest of the criteria and most likely to lead to litigation. Here are the platforms that experts believe may meet the critical trading partner test for each company.

Add your Twitter account to Facebook so that you can easily edit your account detail, create Twitter ads and more.

Add your Snap account to Facebook so that you can easily edit your account detail, create Snapchat ads and more.

Add your Tiktok account to Facebook so that you can easily edit your account detail, create Tiktok ads and more.

Add your Twitter account to Facebook so that you can easily edit your account detail, create Twitter ads and more.

Add your Snap account to Facebook so that you can easily edit your account detail, create Snapchat ads and more.

Add your Tiktok account to Facebook so that you can easily edit your account detail, create Tiktok ads and more.

Companies couldn’t design algorithms to favor their own products: The bill would end a platform’s ability to “self-preference,” or favor its own products over those of competitors in

rankings, search, review systems or overall design. A Google search, for example, could no longer favor its own vertical like Google Flights.

Amazon could no longer feature its own brand, Amazon Basics, at the top of a product search above other similar products.

Companies couldn’t prevent businesses from communicating with customers: The bill seeks to ensure online businesses can access data and contact users with whom they transact on platforms. It

also would prevent platforms from using that data to unfairly compete against them—as Amazon has been alleged to do with Amazon Basics.

The self-preferencing ban would mean Microsoft couldn’t prioritize its own video games in the Xbox Marketplace.

Companies couldn’t limit rivals’ access to the platform: The bill seeks to ensure that rivals have the same access to the platform, its software, hardware and operating system, as the

platform's own services have, unless this would lead to a significant cybersecurity risk.

Meta currently allows one-click cross-posting between Facebook and Instagram. They would likely need to make it easier to cross-post to other social media sites like Twitter, Snap and

TikTok.

Likewise, Apple and Google may no longer be able to pre-install their own apps on smartphones and other devices if those apps have competitors.

This could mean users have more work when setting up a device and need to manually install app stores, maps or browsers. Or Google and Apple may start using a “choice screen” on set-up like

they do in the EU for certain apps.

Companies also couldn’t impose “pay to play” restrictions: The bill would prevent big companies from requiring that businesses buy additional goods and services or use specific payment

processors in order to access a platform.