The EU’s response The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has begun to mandate interoperability, identifying the largest platforms as “gatekeepers” and requiring them to open up to competitors in certain ways. Introduced in 2022 and mandatory since 2024, the DMA is the EU’s flagship attempt to break this kind of lock-in across digital markets. […]
The EU’s response
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has begun to mandate interoperability, identifying the largest platforms as “gatekeepers” and requiring them to open up to competitors in certain ways.
Introduced in 2022 and mandatory since 2024, the DMA is the EU’s flagship attempt to break this kind of lock-in across digital markets. In practice, this means gatekeepers must let rivals plug into some features they currently keep to themselves – from media casting, NFC and AI integration to, in the case of WhatsApp and Messenger, messaging itself.
“Interoperability” under the DMA is covered by several obligations: Article 6(7) requires gatekeepers to give third parties access to the same operating system, hardware, and software features that the gatekeeper makes available to its own services, though this provision does not prevent designated gatekeepers from taking necessary measures to ensure that interoperability does not compromise the integrity of the operating system, virtual assistant, hardware or software features. Article 6(4) covers installation of non-gatekeeper apps and app stores. Again, gatekeepers can take proportionate and justified measures to protect security and integrity.
Article 7 is a separate, narrower obligation specific to messaging (formally, “number-independent interpersonal communications services”), requiring designated gatekeepers to open up to smaller messaging platforms on request. The obligation is limited to a defined set of “basic functionalities”, including one-to-one text messaging, and sharing of images, voice messages, videos and files.
The Article also requires that the gatekeeper’s existing level of security, including end-to-end encryption, be preserved across the interoperable service, and gatekeepers must publish a “reference offer” setting out the technical terms on which they will interoperate.
The DMA itself hasn’t escaped criticism, including from the companies it targets. Apple, for example, has argued that forced interoperability could be weaponised by data-hungry rivals, pointing to more than a dozen requests from Meta for access deep enough – in Apple’s telling – to let it read a user’s messages and emails, see their calls, track their app use, and log their passwords.
Interoperability in action
We’ve already seen movement towards interoperability with regards to app stores and social networks.
Historically, Apple’s App Store has been the only way to install software on the iPhone, with paid software having to give 30% of in-app purchases to Apple. Only recently has Apple allowed external payment links.
Moreover, iOS has recently allowed third-party app stores on the platform — though this remains an EU-only change, enacted under DMA compliance, and does not apply to users outside that area. This is a step toward increased competition, but that could be taken further through other means such as Progressive Web Apps.
This could allow privacy-focused apps, which cannot monetise the data from their users as easily, to have a greater advantage. Since more private apps are structurally less able to rely on advertising or data-sale revenue — a “pay for privacy” model of the app ecosystem — they are disproportionately dependent on the commission-bearing side of the App Store such as subscriptions and one-time purchases.
Lower- or zero-commission alternatives remove or reduce that structural cost, narrowing the gap between what a privacy-respecting app and its ad-funded equivalent may keep from the same revenue.
Google, meanwhile, has long-allowed “sideloading” – the process of installing software or apps onto a device from sources outside the manufacturer’s official app store – and a range of third-party app stores on Android.
On the one hand, a controlled app environment allows the provider to vet for dangerous apps, including but not limited to those that trick users into installing it, or affect the user’s system in unexpected ways – such as collecting or transmiting private information without the user’s knowledge.
On the other, it also gives the providers the ability to remove applications from its stores at the behest of governments, which could limit the freedom and privacy-protecting intentions of both developers and users.
Recently, Google is now asking all developers to register identification details such as their legal name, physical address, phone number, and government ID which, as other organisations have argued, raises questions about how developers working on privacy-preserving or politically sensitive applications will be affected.
With regards to social media, the “network effect” can be a powerful lock-in effect. Many users do not stay on Facebook because they prefer Facebook, but because a lot of their social circle, and their data, is tied up in the platform.
Interoperability could open that lock, allowing users to migrate to platforms without disappearing from their communities. We’ve already seen this with tools like ActivityPub, allowing comments from one platform to be visible on another.
