⚠ Interoperability MandatesModerate threat

Messaging lock-in depends on the walls between apps: you must be on WhatsApp because everyone you know is on WhatsApp. Regulators have set out to knock those walls down. Europe's Digital Markets Act requires the largest messaging platforms to open up to interoperability — to let a user on one service message a user on another — which, taken to its conclusion, would dissolve the very thing that makes the group chat inescapable.

The danger is direct. If a person could reach their WhatsApp contacts from a rival app, the reason to stay on WhatsApp — that everyone is there — would weaken, because 'everyone' would become reachable from anywhere. Interoperability attacks the network effect at its root, converting a closed network that must be joined into an open protocol that need not be¹.

The saving fact is that interoperability is fiendishly hard to implement without breaking the encryption, features, and spam controls users depend on, and Meta has every incentive to comply narrowly and slowly. In practice, habit is stubborn: even where users could switch, the familiar app, the existing chats, and the network's inertia keep most of them exactly where they are.

Rate this one moderate and slow-building. Mandated interoperability is a real regulatory effort aimed precisely at the messaging moat, and over years it could genuinely loosen the lock-in — but the technical friction, Meta's incentive to drag its feet, and sheer user habit blunt it well short of dissolving the network overnight.