Independent Research

Published independent research projects that I have undertaken.

To evaluate the compliance of Digital Markets Act gatekeepers, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft, with Article 6(9) of the legislation, which mandates real-time and continuous data portability of end-users’ data with authorised third parties, this article conducts a qualitative analysis of developer interviews. Interviews were conducted with developers seeking verification with gatekeepers' data portability tools, most of which were either introduced or improved in response to the law, to understand how the verification process works with each gatekeeper. The research found that verification for data portability is prohibitively difficult, with only Alphabet’s Google Data Portability API being accessed by participants. However, Alphabet requires a security assessment which does not ‘add much value’ according to one participant, asks for redundant information, takes an excessive amount of time and costs money to complete. Participants accessed none of the other portability tools due to unclear verification processes and lack of correspondence. The second research question asked if there is a need to develop formal standards or protocols if gatekeepers' individual portability solutions were deemed inaccessible or if there is a need to redistribute power away from gatekeeper control and towards mutually agreed upon standards. Participants generally felt that technical standardisation is undesirable at this stage, but most argued that verification would be massively improved if carried out by an external independent body. Overall, this research highlights a dilemma; there is a need for more developer feedback to understand the enforcement of Article 6(9), but gatekeepers are making API access cumbersome meaning that there is unlikely to be widespread adoption from which feedback can be gleaned. This report recognises the need for a larger interview sample size, and hopes that further research in this area will be conducted in future.

This report, published by Open Rights Group, looks at social media harms and how to fix them through the application of competition regulation in the UK. We argue that many harms associated with social media, such as misinformation, hate speech, suppression of marginalised voices, and loss of user control, are symptoms of this economic and structural concentration. Network effects mean that users, creators, and advertisers are locked into dominant platforms, unable to switch without losing audiences or revenue. This lack of competition entrenches harmful business models and leaves users exposed to unsafe environments. To break this cycle, interoperability, or the technical ability of platforms to connect and communicate, is a key remedy. Mandated interoperability can lower switching costs, allow users to retain their social networks across platforms, and enable competitors to offer alternative moderation systems, recommendation feeds, or advertising models. Existing models show that interoperability works. Telecoms regulation, Internet protocols, and Open Banking demonstrate how mandated access can de-concentrate markets and empower consumers. Mobile network switching exists through regulation. Emerging decentralised social networks such as Mastodon (ActivityPub) and Bluesky (AT Protocol) provide working examples, allowing communities to govern themselves and experiment with safer, user-controlled moderation. Our report highlights how government and society continue to fuel monopolies through advertising expenditure and policy dependence on major platforms. It urges the UK to apply its new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, enabling the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and its Digital Markets Unit (DMU) to impose interoperability and data-portability obligations on firms with Strategic Market Status.

I undertook a small project commissioned by the Economic Democracy Project to develop seven case studies to demonstrate how enforcement of competition law is a necessary condition for alternatives to Big Tech to succeed, i.e. enforcement will create the necessary oxygen for challenger tech to thrive, while challenger tech creates guarantees that enforcement will lead to a different world. The case studies have not been published but will be used by the Economic Democracy Project and its allies to advocate with private philanthropy, established entrepreneurs and challenger tech that a twin build & break/regulate approach is needed in order to successfully reclaim democratic control of our tech infrastructure.