Standards development is an esoteric, hugely important activities that almost no one knows anything about. Good standards are key to an open, free internet, and as governments around the world grapple with Big Tech monopolies, their plans often include a block that basically reads "insert good standard here."
As exciting as the EU's #DigitalMarketsAct and US proposals like the #ACCESSAct are, the "insert good standard here" stuff is wildly underspecified and undertheorized.
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He endorses #interoperability mandates which would required dominant platforms to connect to the fediverse (facilitating their users' departure), like the ones in the EU's #DSA and #DMA, and proposed in US legislation like the #ACCESSAct:
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The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) allows new messaging services to demand interoperability (the ability to exchange messages) from the internet's largest messaging services (like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage). Interoperability is an important tool to promote competition...
The interoperability mandates in the Digital Markets Act (and in the US #ACCESSAct, which seems unlikely to get a vote in this session of Congress) only force the largest platforms to open up, but Mastodon shows us the utility of interop for smaller services, too.
There are lots of domains in which "dominance" shouldn't be the sole criteria for whether you are expected to treat your customers fairly.
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Cory Doctorow