[lucio]

Maybe just force all social apps to a standard data migration format, and an easy UI to move, so you can move you data freely

[mrep]

FYI, there is a project for that [0] of which Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter are a part of. It's not forced and is still in development but it's something.

[0]: https://datatransferproject.dev/

[blululu]

Consider that Facebook has 3 different messaging apps, and Google has an unknown number of messaging apps. Both companies have strong internal incentives to consolidate their own messaging apps and yet these efforts have never succeeded. I'm not sure if having a single universal protocol is the best idea.

[glenstein]

I was with you until the last sentence which I didn't understand.

[AnimalMuppet]

I believe the idea is that, if those companies can't do it, even though they want to, then it may be hard to do (or at least to do well/cleanly). Requiring it to be done may therefore be a bad idea.