Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

"The data subject shall have the right to ... transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from the controller to which the personal data have been provided, where ... the processing is carried out by automated means... [, and] shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible."

If the data transfer is automated and direct, then a Facebook user should be able to request that their posts on Facebook be continually synched over to their Mastodon account (for example).

As Facebook is already a member of the Data Transfer Project [1], it would look very bad for them if they only allowed data to be automatically synched one way, especially if most Fediverse implementations supported two way synch.

Of course, once your data is fully synched, you'd never need to actually browse Facebook itself again, and your friends on both Facebook and Mastodon would be able to read your Mastodon posts. (I suppose Facebook would similarly cite "data protection reasons" for why they can't synch your friend's Facebook posts out to you on another site, though).

Anyway, I'm sure an EU anti-trust investigator would enjoy the opportunity to examine claims against a big US social media company like Facebook, especially if it were a small EU social media provider bringing the complaint.

[1] https://datatransferproject.dev/

I'm all for it. But how can we achieve this? I think the main problem here is the mysticism over tech. There are probably two major fronts: complexity and secrecy. We should bring them down. How can we do it? Well, for one thing, we can demand more openness and thorough understanding of everyday tech we use, while educating the public that these things will bite us eventually. I don't know how we can achieve this at a legislative level, but the law is mere reflection of our attitude toward things. First we have to say that these things (both over complexity and secrecy) are not cool because they hinder reasoning. It's an idea that I think worth spreading.

Arbitrary destruction of their business doesn't do anything to protect consumer privacy.

There's also nothing anti-competitive about either business. Using a different website is as simple as typing a URL into your web browser.