The difficulty is that communication networks form natural monopolies due to Metcalfe's law, unless we legislate APIs for open connection and federation. Which is probably above regulators' capabilities, and definitely above our political capabilities.
The most straightforward way would be to mandate that web services had to allow API access for everything the web interface does, so users could use client software to aggregate multiple services. But this would undermine websites ability to make money off adspam, which while great, means it's politically a non-starter.
The most straightforward way would be to mandate that web services had to allow API access for everything the web interface does, so users could use client software to aggregate multiple services. But this would undermine websites ability to make money off adspam, which while great, means it's politically a non-starter.