Data Interoperability: The Next Digital Frontier

Interoperability, or the capacity for two systems to exchange information with each other, has recently been the focus of a number of laws and proposed bills aimed at increasing competition amongst large platforms in the online marketplace. It can give smaller competitors a leg up by letting them advertise access to the larger platforms, and it also makes trying out a new competitor easier for users, as they can be sure that they will still be able to reach their already existing network of friends and family on their old service. It is also fundamentally important to the openness of the internet at large, and a key part of what has made it the transformational technology that it is.