I'm all for enforcing antitrust law, but I think he's expecting too much out of interoperability.
Facebook's key value is its user graph. That's not a thing that can be exported. It's just a bunch of numbers: "User 9's friends are 10, 77, 94, and 101". An open API would let you download your own content, but the friends graph can't be reproduced elsewhere without every single user connecting to their old Facebook account. Just opening up the data doesn't give you escape from the network effect.
And Facebook monetizes that with advertising. I just don't see any law being written in such a way that allows people to read Facebook without seeing ads, or otherwise paying for it.
You might be able to get companies to open up parts of their API to ensure that their products continue to work when they shut down. But if you try to shut down their business model, the companies will either prevent that law from going through, or give up existing.
I'm all for enforcing antitrust law, but I think he's expecting too much out of interoperability.
Facebook's key value is its user graph. That's not a thing that can be exported. It's just a bunch of numbers: "User 9's friends are 10, 77, 94, and 101". An open API would let you download your own content, but the friends graph can't be reproduced elsewhere without every single user connecting to their old Facebook account. Just opening up the data doesn't give you escape from the network effect.
And Facebook monetizes that with advertising. I just don't see any law being written in such a way that allows people to read Facebook without seeing ads, or otherwise paying for it.
You might be able to get companies to open up parts of their API to ensure that their products continue to work when they shut down. But if you try to shut down their business model, the companies will either prevent that law from going through, or give up existing.
(2023) Discussion at the the time (163 points, 55 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37628869