WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Three U.S. lawmakers activein tech issues will introduce a bill requiring social networkslike Facebook FB.O to allow users to pack up their data and goelsewhere, Warner's office said in a statement on Tuesday.

The senators, Republican Josh Hawley and Democrats MarkWarner and Richard Blumenthal, are introducing the bill at atime when there is growing concern that Facebook, along withAlphabet's GOOGL.O Google, have become so powerful thatsmaller rivals are unable to lure away their users.

The bill would require communications platforms with morethan 100 million monthly active members - Facebook has more thantwo billion - to allow its users to easily move, or port, theirdata to another network.

The idea, which is already part of European law, has thesupport of Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat who leadsthe House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL2N1WS19O

Data portability has been promoted in the past as givingconsumers the power to move their data, which could spur thegrowth of social media alternatives that offer features such asgreater privacy or less advertising.

The companies would be required to maintain an interface tofacilitate this interoperability. Or users would be allowed tochoose another company to manage a user's account settings,content, and online interactions.

Facebook has been hit by a number of privacy-related issuesrecently, including a glitch that exposed to its employees thepasswords of millions of users which had been stored in readableformat within its internal systems. The social media giant isalso under strict data protections imposed by the companys $5billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which wasannounced in July.

"By enabling portability, interoperability, anddelegatability, this bill will help put consumers in thedrivers seat when it comes to how and where they use socialmedia," said Sen. Warner, a former technology entrepreneur andventure capitalist.

But the Electronic Frontier Foundation has pointed out thaton its own "data portability cannot magically improvecompetition; the ability to take your data to another service isnot helpful if there are no viable competitors."

Facebook said in September it "supports the principle ofdata portability" but did not outline specific future actions,and tech industry lobbyists at the Internet Association supportthe concept.

(Reporting by Diane BartzEditing by Shri Navaratnam) ((Diane.Bartz@thomsonreuters.com; 1 202 898 8313;))