The lights went out on Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram at the same time. The services are closely interlinked. This also leads to user dependencies, criticize consumer advocates.
As a consequence of the hour-long failure of Facebook services, consumer advice centers are calling for more alternatives in online communication.
“Tech giants such as Google, Apple or Amazon control access to trading venues and digital ecosystems from their strong market position,” said the board of directors of the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv), Klaus Müller, of the Funke media group. Consumers and competitors are therefore often dependent on their services.
To reduce this dependency, Müller called for an interface requirement for messenger services so that different systems can work together. This would enable users to communicate via various messenger services, “without necessarily having to switch to WhatsApp,” he said. It would also make it easier to switch to more privacy-friendly services and stimulate competition among messengers.
Müller has great hopes in an initiative of the European Union: the Digital Markets Act. With the proposed law, the preference of their own products by the corporations must be prevented, demanded the consumer advocate. Users would have real freedom of choice between products, “if, for example, platforms are no longer allowed to prevent them from deleting pre-installed apps or using alternative app stores,” said Müller.
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