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Policy brief 08 · Kids + Social Media

Antitrust for Social Platforms

Americans should be able to leave a platform without leaving their friends.

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The FTC spent five years arguing that Meta kept a monopoly by buying Instagram and WhatsApp, lost in November 2025, and has appealed. Meanwhile, current law generally lets a dominant platform refuse to connect with rivals, so switching platforms means leaving friends behind. Congress should put access on the record, ban gatekeeping tactics, open the exits so users can switch, and police acquisitions of up-and-coming rivals.

The Problem

About 240 million Americans use Facebook each month and about 225 million use Instagram, according to trial testimony.1 Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and the FTC cleared both deals at the time.1

Social apps compete fiercely for attention, but a person's network does not move. Friends, customers, and community groups stay where they are, so leaving a platform means leaving them. A safer feed, a better product, or a tool that helps people spend less time online needs a way to reach those people, and the incumbent controls the door.

Current law rarely opens it. A monopolist, a federal court wrote in 2021, "has no duty to deal with its competitors."2 Three problems follow:

  1. Rivals get cut off. In 2013, the FTC alleged, Facebook blocked Vine, a new video app, from its interfaces hours after launch; in 2021 the court called that decision "plainly lawful."2
  2. Terms change overnight. In 2023, Reddit's new interface pricing would have cost Apollo, a popular independent Reddit app, $20 million a year, its developer estimated; Apollo shut down in June 2023.3
  3. Cases arrive late. The FTC sued Meta in December 2020. In November 2025, in the case's fifth year, the court found that TikTok and YouTube now compete with Meta and that Meta "holds no monopoly."4 The FTC's appeal is pending.5

Why legislation: The Sherman Act already bans monopolization, and enforcers use it: in 2025 a federal court ordered Google to share search data with qualified rivals for six years, overseen by a technical committee.6 That remedy came five years after the government sued, and it binds one company.6 No federal law requires a dominant social platform to let users or rivals connect. Senators from both parties introduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act in June 2026,7 and the ACCESS Act also has bipartisan sponsors.8 Free and competitive markets are an American strength, and they depend on the freedom to leave.

The Solution

A four-step staircase: each step stands alone, and each step up asks more of the largest platforms. Scope: social and video platforms designated as gatekeepers, after notice and judicial review, for durable control over users' access and switching. Users' control over their own feeds, chatbot markets, and AI infrastructure are addressed separately.

Step 1 — Put access on the record. Require designated platforms to publish, for every interface that rivals and user-authorized tools depend on, records of uptime, speed, denied requests, fees, and advance notice of changes, checked by independent technical audits. Courts already demand this after a violation: the Google judgment created a technical committee to help enforce its data-sharing remedy.6 Records let enforcers see a rival's access degrade before the rival disappears.

Step 2 — Ban the gatekeeping tactics. Prohibit self-preferencing, tying, discriminatory access, and agreements that block competing distribution, with narrow, proven defenses for security and privacy. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act bans most of these practices, with penalties of 1% to 10% of U.S. revenue.7

Step 3 — Open the exits. Give users usable exports, including their contacts and followers, and require interoperability so a user who moves can still reach friends who stay. Require secure interfaces for user-authorized agents, from independent feeds to parental filters, and bar fees or redesigns that defeat access. The ACCESS Act drafts the federal version,8 and Utah enacted a state version in 2025 with a July 1, 2026 effective date.9 A market is only as free as its exits.

Step 4 — Stop buying the competition. Require notice of acquisitions of nascent rivals, including those that compete for attention, and make the gatekeeper prove a deal will not harm competition. A 2021 House bill drafted exactly that burden shift.10 Where a court finds a violation and lesser remedies fail, allow structural separation.

Where to start: Step 1 is the floor: it asks only for records and audits. Step 3 is the heart.

Administration and enforcement: The FTC and DOJ designate gatekeepers and set access standards within 18 months; state attorneys general share enforcement. Civil penalties scale with U.S. revenue, courts supervise access orders with technical monitors, and Congress funds the technical staff to run them.

Risks and Mitigations

  • Privacy and security: Open interfaces can leak data. Require user authorization, data minimization, security testing, and revocation; exporting one's own contacts must never expose their private posts. Breaches remain possible.
  • Sheltering weak rivals: Access rules can prop up products that users would otherwise leave. Require proof of durable gatekeeper power, allow proven security and efficiency defenses, and review designations as markets shift, as the Meta ruling shows they do. Some misjudgments will remain.
  • Breakups can misfire: In 2025 the Google court refused to order the sale of Chrome, calling the request an overreach.6 Separation should follow only a proven violation and failed conduct remedies, with court-supervised transitions; even then it may not yield a better product.

Similar Bills

Fit measures similarity to this proposal's mechanisms: High = direct precedent; Partial = useful component with material differences; Related = adjacent approach.

Federal

Proposal or bill Relevant provisions and fit Fit
S. 4746 — American Innovation and Choice Online Act
Grassley (R-IA), Klobuchar (D-MN), Durbin (D-IL), Hawley (R-MO), Whitehouse (D-RI), Booker (D-NJ)
Referred to committee · June 10, 2026		 §3 bars "systemically important platforms" from self-preferencing, discriminatory terms, restricting rivals' access to platform features, tying, misusing business users' data, and locking users into defaults; penalties of 1% to 10% of U.S. revenue; §4 expedites cases. Direct precedent for Step 2; protects business users more than individual users' mobility. High
S. 1634 — ACCESS Act of 2025
Warner (D-VA), Hawley (R-MO), Blumenthal (D-CT)
Referred to committee · May 7, 2025		 §3 portability; §4 interoperability, advance notice of interface changes, and a ban on changes that unreasonably deny access; §5 delegation to registered third-party agents; FTC enforcement. Direct precedent for Step 3 and part of Step 1; covers communications platforms above 100 million U.S. users. High
H.R. 3826 — Platform Competition and Opportunity Act of 2021
Jeffries (D-NY), Buck (R-CO) + 3 original cosponsors
Considered by House Judiciary · June 23, 2021 · Not enacted		 §2 makes acquisitions by covered platforms unlawful unless the platform proves by clear and convincing evidence that the target is not an actual, nascent, or potential competitor; §2(c) counts competition for users' attention. Precedent for Step 4's burden shift; 117th Congress text; no separation authority. High

State

Proposal or bill Relevant provisions and fit Fit
Utah — H.B. 418, Data Sharing Amendments
Signed March 27, 2025 · Effective July 1, 2026		 Requires social media companies to export users' data, including the social graph, and to run open-protocol interoperability interfaces on nondiscriminatory terms, with functionally equivalent access to internal interfaces. Closest enacted precedent for Step 3; enforcement status not reviewed. High
California — AB 1776
Presented to the governor · Sept. 10, 2026; no later action recorded		 Would extend the Cartwright Act to single-firm monopolization and monopsonization, enforceable only by the attorney general and district attorneys. General competition authority; no platform access duties. Partial
New York — S335, Twenty-First Century Anti-Trust Act
Passed Senate May 6, 2026 · In Assembly committee		 Would reach conduct that establishes or maintains a monopoly or monopsony and authorize class actions under state antitrust law. General reform; no platform access duties. Partial
Washington — SB 5122 (2025)
Signed April 4, 2025 (Ch. 7) · Effective July 27, 2025		 Uniform Antitrust Premerger Notification Act: merging parties with Washington ties that file federal premerger forms must file copies with the state attorney general. Visibility for Step 4; no new merger standard. Related

What this adds: AICOA restrains gatekeepers' conduct and the ACCESS Act opens their interfaces; neither requires platforms to show whether access actually works. This proposal ties them together with public access records and audits, and backs them with merger review that counts competition for attention and, as a last resort, separation.

Notes

  1. FTC v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-03590-JEB (D.D.C. Dec. 2, 2025) (revised memorandum opinion), pp. 40, 75 (citing trial testimony and joint stipulations). ↩ ↩2

  2. FTC v. Facebook, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-03590-JEB (D.D.C. June 28, 2021) (memorandum opinion dismissing the original complaint), discussing Facebook's January 2013 cutoff of Vine as alleged in the complaint. ↩ ↩2

  3. Sarah Perez, "Popular Reddit App Apollo May Go Out of Business over Reddit's New, Unaffordable API Pricing," TechCrunch, May 31, 2023 (the developer's estimate); "Popular Third-Party Reddit App Apollo Is Shutting Down," TechCrunch, June 8, 2023 (closing June 30, 2023). ↩

  4. FTC v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-03590-JEB (D.D.C. Nov. 18, 2025; revised Dec. 2, 2025) (memorandum opinion), p. 2; judgment for Meta, Nov. 18, 2025. Complaint filed December 9, 2020. ↩

  5. FTC v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 26-5028 (D.C. Cir., docketed Jan. 26, 2026); notice of appeal filed January 20, 2026. Meta's appellee brief was filed August 20, 2026; pending as of September 2026. ↩

  6. United States v. Google LLC, No. 1:20-cv-03010-APM (D.D.C. Sept. 2, 2025) (remedies memorandum opinion), pp. 3–5, declining Chrome divestiture, requiring sharing of certain search index and user-interaction data with "Qualified Competitors," and establishing a technical committee for a six-year judgment. Complaint filed October 20, 2020; final judgment entered December 5, 2025; appeals pending in the D.C. Circuit (Nos. 26-5023, 26-5047, 26-5049). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  7. S. 4746, American Innovation and Choice Online Act, 119th Cong. §§ 2–4 (introduced text). ↩ ↩2

  8. S. 1634, ACCESS Act of 2025, 119th Cong. §§ 3–6 (introduced text; Warner (D-VA), Hawley (R-MO), Blumenthal (D-CT)). ↩ ↩2

  9. Utah H.B. 418, Data Sharing Amendments (2025), enrolled copy, enacting Utah Code §§ 13-75-201 to -202; signed March 27, 2025. ↩

  10. H.R. 3826, Platform Competition and Opportunity Act of 2021, 117th Cong. § 2 (introduced text). ↩