> A politically impossible outcome that isn't worth hanging our hopes on.
> A more realistic approach is legislation that either forbids providers from suspending or otherwise limiting access to any government integrated system or simply forbidding these types of integrations altogether.
There's more history in the US of successful legislation aimed at breaking up big companies than at that sort of specific narrow technically-aware well-executed regulation.
The former is blunt force. It's relatively easy to target and make effective. It just needs enough ground-level support to get enough people from both parties on board - and we're seeing some shifts that way in the current Republican mishmash of groups.
The latter needs excellent technical knowledge and resistance to super-sophisticated lobbying and loophole-creation. It's very hard to get right.
> There's more history in the US of successful legislation aimed at breaking up big companies than at that sort of specific narrow technically-aware well-executed regulation
We live in a much different world today than during the trust busting era. Extreme concentration is the status quo of today's economy and it's happening across basically every sector and industry.
Lina Khan as the head of the FTC under the most legislatively prolific Democratic president of the last 30 years was completely powerless to break up anything. Even Trump and an army of partisan DAs that were frothing at the mouth to dismantle Trump's enemies have failed to do so.
Just yesterday Google prevailed against the threat of a breakup of their ad businesses which is perhaps the single most compelling example of anticompetitive abuse by big tech besides maybe the Apple ecosystem.
This trend is only going to accelerate as skilled workers age out of the economy and white collar economic activity aggregates into a handful of massive tech companies.
That's all without factoring in that government quid pro quo is now defacto legal and these companies have very deep pockets for donations.
There are many other factors I could mention but the point is that nobody with any power wants to break up these companies.
> Lina Khan as the head of the FTC under the most legislatively prolific Democratic president of the last 30 years was completely powerless to break up anything.
Only because she was blocked by both Republicans and Democrats who are sold out to the same plutocrats. I agree with the parent that the problem remains very simple and is a matter of balance of powers. Any fine-grained regulation will be simply ignored by those people who are above all laws.
EDIT: Maybe i was a little too lenient to her. I mean, if a politician really wanted to change the status quo, they'd appeal to the public to help change the balance of power, which Lina Khan never did.