Italy Halts Meta’s WhatsApp Chatbot Block Pending Antitrust Probe

Regulators are replaying a familiar script: when Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows in 1998, U.S. courts compelled it to keep channels open for rival browsers; seven decades earlier, the 1956 Hush-a-Phone decision cracked AT&T’s grip on telephone attachments. Each case turned on a monopoly network using technical rules to exclude nascent competitors. WhatsApp, with near-universal penetration, has become analogous infrastructure for conversational AI, and AGCM’s move signals that European watchdogs will treat messaging APIs as public gateways, not private fiefdoms. The decision sits within a broader, decades-long drift toward treating dominant digital platforms as regulated utilities—accelerated by the EU’s 2024 Digital Markets Act—and may shape how AI services are distributed for the next century: if gatekeepers cannot foreclose rivals at the protocol layer, competition (and perhaps decentralisation) remains viable; if Meta overturns the order on appeal, AI access could consolidate under a handful of vertically-integrated giants, echoing the pre-breakup Bell System.