Your State Government Has a Friend Request Pending
A bevy of states are racing to mandate “digital choice” in social media. The new bills promise easy data portability and forced interoperability among platforms—letting users carry their accounts, contacts, and content across services through open protocols. Utah enacted the first such law in 2025, and legislatures in Virginia, South Dakota, New York, California, and New Hampshire are now considering similar measures in their 2026 sessions.
The pitch sounds simple: give users control over their information. A closer look tells a different story. The bills never identify a clear market failure. Their interoperability mandates expose nonconsenting users to significant privacy risks. Their artificial-intelligence (AI) provisions do not cohere into a workable regulatory scheme. And lawmakers are moving ahead despite little evidence that consumers actually want social-media interoperability.