Most people don't even know what a world would look like in which power was taken away from large companies and a genuine market of services would exists that gives power back to the users and developers rather than platform owners. The hold that Apple has on its billion users and that Facebook has on its 2 billion is too strong to be solved by some magical third party. None of the large firms which control our digital infrastructure provides an actual protocols.

The government should absolutely force it on Facebook and Apple and Google the same way the American government forced it on railroad barons a hundred years ago, when they were forced to make their networks interoperable.

Imagine if Volkswagen owned the streets and you could only drive your car on 30% of all roads. Sure you can go to Toyota, you just have to drive in circles. We'd laugh anyone out of the room who actually defended this. Yet this is literally how the internet is structured right now. We live in little fiefdoms where Android users can't talk to imessage users because feudal lords have decided to draw a line across the territory.