If one factor explains the competition problem in social media, it’s network effects. The more members a social network onboards, the more valuable the platform becomes. After all, when all your friends and family are already on Facebook, you may feel the need to become a member in order to stay in the loop. And you might also end up spending far less time on other networks. This makes a tough road for all those Facebook alternatives out there.
If past judgements such as U.S. v. Microsoft are a guide, U.S. courts don’t smile on big companies that get a competitive advantage simply by being big. One way to mitigate Facebook’s network effects would be to make it less (socially) costly for people to stay on smaller, competitive networks. That’s why the concepts of portability and interoperability are so important.
Good precedents are given around phone number portability, and the fact that large social networks have had to quickly adapt their protocols before for changes such as Stories, Clubhouse, etc. What is not mentioned though is that open standards such as XMPP and ActivityPub already exist, and which successfully interconnect profiles, messages, posts, likes, media sharing between completely different social networks, and each of these social networks exists still on their own, but you can be on any one, and follow or be followed from any other network.
For those worrying about Facebook then being able to access their profiles or posts on these other networks... that possibility was always there anyway.
See
How interoperability could end Facebook’s death grip on social media#
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The U.S. government forced wireless companies to let you take your phone number with you when you switched carriers. A similar move may be called for again.
