The solution to all of Big Tech's monopolies is actually pretty simple: Interoperability must become a law - this includes using custom algorithms or allowing other platforms (like your own app) to access YOUR data on whatever platform 'hosts' it.

Cory Doctorow wrote a great article on it:

"Interoperability Can Save the Open Web" https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability

> While the dominance of Internet platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Amazon is often taken for granted, Doctorow argues that these walled gardens are fenced in by legal structures, not feats of engineering. Doctorow proposes forcing interoperability—any given platform’s ability to interact with another—as a way to break down those walls and to make the Internet freer and more democratic.

Most notably, he retells how early Facebook used to siphon data from its competitor MySpace and act on user's behalf on it (e.g. reply to MySpace messages via Facebook) - and then when the Zuck(er) was top dog, moved to made these basic interoperability actions illegal by law to prevent anyone doing to him what he did to others.

We can’t depend on these platforms to offer interoperability or even laws to force them to do so. The DMA forced Apple to allow 3rd party app stores in Europe and they still hampered it so rarely anyone uses it.

We need platforms to offer that interoperability and simply connect to these “marketplaces.” Take Shopify for example, sellers use that platform to list on Amazon, Google Shopping, TikTok shop, etc. We need open source alternatives to those where the sellers own the platform and these marketplaces are forced to be interoperable or left behind by those that are.

For Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, each person having their own website where they post and that post being pushed to these platforms is also another way to force interoperability on them or be left behind.

It’s a tall task, but achievable and it will happen given enough time.

Breaking up these monopolies would be a good start. We aren't supposed to have those. There used to be something we called "regulations" but they got rid of that part I think. Elections have consequences.

That just leads to embrace/extend/extinguish

The foundational problem with interoperability is that it can and will immediately be abused by bad actors as long as there is no price tag attached to every piece of communication.

Among social media, Mastodon (and anything Fediverse) has it the worst, obviously, but Telegram and Whatsapp are rife with spams and scams, Twitter back when it still had third-party apps was rife with credential and token compromises (mostly used to shill cryptocurrencies).

As for the price tag reference - we've seen that with SMS. It used to be the case that sending SMS cost real money, something like 20 ct/message. It was prohibitively expensive to run SMS campaigns. But nowadays? It's effectively free at scale if you go the legit route and practically free if you manage to get someone's account at one of the tons of bulk SMS providers compromised. Apple's iMessage similarly makes bad actors pay a lot, because access to it is tied to a legitimate or stolen Apple product serial.