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Ok, so if the question is "can you regulate around network effects"....I think the answer is clearly no. Remember, we're already at the system you suggest in a way, with loads of relatively strong, fragmented communities and then a few massive ones that have loads of federal regulation and focus...

You should have read you example there a bit more. The problem in Ford vs US (which happened 50 years ago, not eight, BTW) was not that Ford decided to enter the spark plug market, as the decision noted GM had done that to the tune of 30% market share and there was no issue with it. The problem...

Google isn't a trust, legally speaking. Trusts are a specific, technical term, it's not just "any large company" or "any large company involved in a large number of fields". More generally, the government doesn't have the authority to say "no, your company is already involved in this field...

That's not really an applicable comparison, though. On the consumer end, the only thing that changed was the name on the sign of their local gas station, and the price tag. The comparable situation with tech is when another Roosevelt drew up a plan to break up Germany into several smaller...

I'm not sure how you can legislate your way past "well, most of the people I want to talk with are on platform X, I'll just spend most of my time there instead of on platform Y, and I'll let my platform Y friends know I prefer X".

The problem with trying to break up tech companies is the network effect will just push everyone to use just one of the new services, which will just grow into a replacement for the old system. The more likely route will be legislation that forces neutral treatment.