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tancoptoday at 2:00 PM0 repliesview on HN

its the same wrong answer again and again. how long will it take for lawmakers to realize that the best way to fight big tech is give people choice. infinite scroll, recommender systems, targeted ads, all the other "toxic" features should be optional with massive fines for anyone who tries to force people into using them (that includes making them inconvenient to turn off or charging for it).

the most enforceable way to do this is making open apis mandatory. any user should be able to get api keys that let them do all the basic operations like view posts for a user, consume the firehose, read their own likes and follows, you get the idea. your api is incomplete? you get fined. needs a paid subscription or signing a contract? all views go through the recommender system? straight to jail.

we need to play hard with platforms but let users do what they want, at least if its not disruptive to other users.