You can export a phone number.
You cannot export the fact that twelve specific people are already in the family group chat and actively use it every day.
That is the portability gap between contacts and relationships.
A contact list is a set of identifiers.
A contact graph includes who follows whom, which groups exist, who belongs to them, who has blocked whom, which conversations are active, which memberships are mutual, and which people actually still use the service.
Those things are much harder to move.
Data portability does not automatically recreate a network
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act now requires designated gatekeepers to provide stronger portability tools for user-generated data. The Commission describes Article 6(9) as requiring free tools and continuous access so users can move data to authorized third parties. See the Commission’s end-user data portability guidance.
That is a significant improvement over a platform merely offering a giant archive download.
But even a perfect export cannot force the people in the file to create accounts somewhere else.
A social graph is partly data and partly coordinated human behavior.
Messaging interoperability shows another approach
The DMA treats messaging differently because strong network effects make migration unusually difficult. Instead of requiring every user to move, Article 7 requires certain gatekeeper messaging services to interoperate with other providers.
The European Commission says the first third-party messaging services interoperable with WhatsApp launched in November 2025. The rules are being phased in across one-to-one messaging, group chats, and eventually calls. See the Commission’s messaging interoperability page.
That is conceptually important.
If two services can communicate, a user can leave one interface without necessarily abandoning everyone still using it.
The solution attacks the network lock-in directly.
Exportable is not the same as portable
A platform can truthfully say:
You can download your data.
That may still leave the user with:
- a CSV of contacts who are not on the new service,
- old messages with no live destination,
- groups that must be rebuilt manually,
- followers who must choose to follow again,
- community roles that do not transfer,
- and years of relationships represented only as static records.
The file moved.
The network did not.
That distinction matters whenever a dominant platform points to an export tool as proof that users are free to leave.
Freedom to leave is not measured only by whether a button produces a ZIP archive.
It is measured by how much useful social structure survives the trip.