“Data portability” is one proposal among several for curbing the power of the largest tech companies. This proposal gives individuals the ability to move their social network to different platforms, and it is pitched as a way to increase competition. AAF’s Will Rinehart contends in a new analysis that this approach is wrongheaded on several fronts.

An excerpt:

Most of the proposals for creating data portability…miss what makes data valuable, and thus what gives these companies such power. Data isn’t the key to Facebook, Amazon, and Google. Rather, it is the structure and processing tools around the data that drive these platforms. Further, the United States already tried an open-access regime to foster competition in the telecom sector, with lackluster results. Contrary to the standard bearers of this idea, there are very good reasons to think that regulations to create data portability won’t be effective at all.

Click here to read the analysis.