Comment by Cory Doctorow

Interoperability lowers switching costs. Interoperability allows us, the users of technology, to set the terms on which we use that technology. It allows us to use the parts of products and services that benefit us, and block the parts that don’t. There are a lot of things we should do to fix Big Tech: change the rules for mergers, pass comprehensive privacy legislation, ban deceptive “dark patterns” and break up big companies into smaller, competing firms These will take a long time. How long? It took sixty-­ nine years for the US government to break up AT&T. By contrast, interop is immediate. Make it legal for new tech- nologies to plug into existing ones—that is, make it legal to blast holes in every walled garden—and users (that’s us) get imme- diate, profound relief: relief from manipulation, high-­ handed moderation, surveillance, price-­ gouging, disgusting or misleading algorithmic suggestions … the whole panoply of technology’s sins.