Promoting Platform Interoperability

Interoperability is a promising lever for regulators to use in their efforts to oversee and correct monopolistic abuses amongst the dominant online platforms. It has a unique ability to promote and incentivize competition—especially competition between platforms—and can also offer users greater privacy and better control over their personal data generally. This report examines interoperability—the ability for disperate computer systems and services to interact and exchange data—as a principle that underlies the operation of the internet in all its parts, discusses why online competition problems present unique challenges to regulation, addresses the privacy and security risks raised by interoperability and appropriate mitigations for those risks, and explains how interoperability can directly increase platform competition on the internet.