Why the DMA Interoperability Investigations Poison Innovation

Last week, the European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into Meta as to whether the company illegally restricted competition by preventing third-party artificial intelligence (AI) providers from using WhatsApp’s business tools. The investigation targets a policy Meta announced in October 2025, which prohibits external vendors—such as OpenAI and Microsoft—from using the WhatsApp Business Solution, an API that allows businesses to communicate with customers via WhatsApp, if AI is their primary service. While European Commission Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera claims this policy “crowd[s] out innovative competitors,” the reality is the EU is attempting to force successful platforms to degrade their own infrastructure to accommodate rivals.

The central fallacy of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is that the law treats “openness” as the only valid platform structure. By investigating Meta for not opening its infrastructure to third-party AI providers, regulators are effectively outlawing the “managed ecosystem” model that prioritises—via its own structures and systems—reliability over fragmentation.

This is not just a Meta problem; it is a direct attack on the mechanism of differentiation itself. Competition can be wholly over distinct philosophies. Google’s Android, for example, competes by offering an open, highly customisable system. Apple competes by doing the opposite: curating a “walled garden” where tight integration between hardware and software guarantees a consistent and seamless experience. The DMA’s interoperability mandate erases this distinction. By forcing Apple’s integrated systems and WhatsApp’s managed networks to function like open pipes, the EU’s regulation creates a technological monoculture. It leaves consumers with the illusion of choice—two “open” platforms—rather than the meaningful choice between a curated experience and a customisable one.

Think of digital platforms like dining establishments. Apple and Meta operate like a franchise restaurant chain: they curate the menu, vet the ingredients, and control the environment to guarantee a specific, predictable experience every time. Android operates like a food hall: open to all vendors, offering immense variety, but the quality and experience may vary. Meta has introduced a new dish, its AI, and the firm frankly (having spent several billion dollars making it) isn’t keen on sharing either the recipe or the dining space when they know customers have ample alternatives. By forcing Apple or Meta to adopt the food hall model, the DMA destroys the differentiation that makes the franchise chain model valuable in the first place.

If regulators mandate that Meta introduce this type of technical interoperability, they will inevitably degrade the product. Meta could reasonably argue that the company restricted third-party AI chatbots because a massive increase in automated traffic would threaten the reliability of a network designed for human communication. Under the threat of investigation, Meta now faces a choice: allow unchecked access that potentially degrades service quality and exposes its users to spam and security vulnerabilities, or face massive fines of up to 10 percent of global turnover.

This mirrors the security risks created by the DMA’s messaging interoperability rules. Forcing end-to-end encrypted apps like WhatsApp and iMessage to interoperate with third-party providers requires them to build “bridges” that may introduce new security risks they are not prepared to address. In both instances, the EU forces companies to sacrifice the security and performance of their products to prop up the theoretical welfare of competitors.

The consequences of the EU’s regulatory interventions are already visible to European consumers. Apple withheld its “Apple Intelligence” features from the EU market in June 2024 for just under a year precisely because the DMA’s interoperability requirements would have forced it to compromise user privacy. The result was a two-tier digital world: a non-European tier optimised for security and performance, and a European one optimised for regulatory compliance.

The EU’s decision to investigate Meta for managing its own network proves that European regulators view platform integrity as a barrier to competition rather than a feature of the product. Policymakers should recognise that actual competition allows companies to pursue distinct visions—integrated versus open—without facing antitrust retribution. Unless the Commission reverses course and removes the interoperability mandate under the DMA during the law’s ongoing review period, European consumers will continue to receive second-rate versions of global technology, stripped of the security and integration that make them valuable in the first place.

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