US lawmakers debut a bipartisan bill that would force tech giants to make user data portable and interoperable via an API-like interface for secure transfers
Mark Zuckerberg wants his own apps to be interoperable, but not like this — Over the past few months, lawmakers have taken aim at Big Tech …
The irony the article flags is real: Zuckerberg was then arguing for interoperability among Facebook's own apps — but as an internal design choice, not a legal mandate that lets competitors plug in. The bill's template didn't die here; it resurfaced in the [[a:967338|House's five bipartisan antitrust bills targeting Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook in 2021]].
First-order effects
Facebook, Google, and the other covered giants would have to build and maintain secure transfer interfaces for user data — turning portability from a PR commitment into a compliance engineering project.
Zuckerberg's own interoperability agenda gets reframed: the same API plumbing he champions for his messaging apps would, under this bill, be legally open to rivals and third parties.
Second-order effects
Lower switching costs shift the competitive fight to product quality — startups and rivals gain a lawful path to import a user's social graph and history instead of rebuilding it, eroding the data lock-in that underpins Big Tech ad and network moats.
The bill gives the app-store fight a second front: alongside efforts to rein in Google and Apple's app store gatekeeping, platforms face pressure at both the data layer and the distribution layer.
Third-order effects
If portability mandates become the standard US remedy, platform competition law moves from conduct rules (don't self-prefer) to structural rules (must interconnect) — a shift Europe's regulators were already pushing and US bills kept converging toward.
The durable battleground becomes the interface itself: whoever defines the API — lawmakers, standards bodies, or the platforms under mandate — sets the terms on which data, and therefore users, can move.
The trend: US tech regulation is escalating from transparency requirements toward structural interoperability mandates, with bipartisan bills treating data lock-in as the core antitrust problem.
On a first read this law would be a substantial improvement over the status quo. Data portability is important, and even more, “delegability” as a way of squaring the need for strong privacy options with the inevitable confusion of trying to set and exercise them. https://twitter…
This is something I've been working on with @HawleyMO and @SenBlumenthal for a while. Today I'm excited to introduce legislation that will put consumers back in the driver's seat when it comes to digital markets that are dominated by big tech platforms. https://twitter.com/...
The ACCESS Act has three main components that would apply to the largest tech platforms: 1. Portability 2. Interoperability 3. Delegatability Here's what that means in plain English:
Back in 2001, the FCC recognized that interoperability was key to competition and required then-dominant AOL to make its instant messaging service compatible with its competitors. https://www.vice.com/...
Third, we need to preserve delegatability — the idea that consumers should be able to allow a third-party service to manage their privacy settings across multiple platforms.
Second, for data portability to really make a difference, we need to break down the anti-competitive barriers that companies put up to limit their competitors from interacting with their platforms. This is the idea behind interoperability, the open exchange of information.
First, consumers ought to have the ability to switch social media platforms and other online services without having to start from scratch. This idea of data portability would allow you to take all your data ~ including your cat videos ~ and move it to a different service.
Data portability is appealing but how would this work? Do you really want to transfer your social graph from Facebook or search history from Google to some startup? Article cites precedent of phone number portability but social media data is different https://www.axios.com/...
“@MarkWarner's announcement of the new bill included a statement from @MChrisRiley, director of public policy at @mozilla, who said the legislation could help prevent a future where users only have a choice between ‘silos of technology’ on the internet.” https://www.wsj.com/...
The ACCESS Act is vital because Facebook&other tech giants profit from your data&use it to block competition. Your data belongs to you. This measure from @MarkWarner, @HawleyMO&I would empower people to stand up to Big Tech&move their data to platforms that respect their rights. …
A lot to digest here, but my quick reaction is that requiring NIST to develop a safe harbor of baseline interoperability standards for social networking is a bad idea. This presumes that the social networks we have now have zeroed in on the right ideas to standardize. https://twi…
feeling it mildly ironic that @MarkWarner uploaded a PDF of the ACCESS Act to Scribd and it can't be downloaded without logging in https://twitter.com/...
Congress could require Facebook to build more open APIs under new bill: Photo by Erin Schaff for The Verge Over the past few months, lawmakers have taken aim at Big Tech, calling out companies like Facebook for anti-competitive behavior and sometimes... https://www.theverge.com/.…
This is going to break on the rocks of what “your data” is. What makes social network sites so prone to monopoly is that they store information about relationships between people. The idea that you can carve this up and give each person ‘their’ piece is easy until you attempt it.…
This bill is a big deal. Blumenthal is on the left, Warner is in the center, and Hawley is on the right. Mark Zuckerberg brings people together. https://twitter.com/...
Three prominent tech critics in the Senate will introduce new legislation Tuesday requiring social media giants to give consumers ways to move their personal data to another platform at any time. https://www.axios.com/...