Fighting a monopoly as a startup | What would you do?

Hey, Indie hackers! Today, I want you to imagine building a startup, developing strategies, doing marketing, etc. And then... you hit GOLD! You start scaling your strategies and the product, happy that it's all finally working out. But then it all gets cut short by a monopoly abusing its dominant position in the industry that seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
Well, this isn't some fairytale. It's what happened to my startup, Ratepunk.

Put on your boxing gloves cause this post is about RatePunk V Booking .com. 🥊🥊

First, let's give you an overview of the combatants for this evening.

What is Ratepunk?

With the Ratepunk extension, we aim to be the Robinhood of the travel industry - comparing various booking prices across many platforms and providing you with the best one (the prices vary greatly), bringing fairness to the game. And the biggest offender in showing the worst and most inflated prices, actively shifting the playing field to their advantage, is booking .com.

Bookin.com's monopoly

Super dominant position in the market - 75% of bookings made in the U.S. are through Booking .com.
As of July 2023, Booking Holdings (Booking .com) has a market cap of $108.94 Billion.
And their runner-up, as of July 2023, is Expedia Group has a market cap of (only) $17.94 Billion.

Good for them, right?

Well…Instead of improving the industry as a whole or developing good business practices, they are doing the opposite. This is how they're abusing their dominant position.

Selective banning and cherry-picking of extension partners. This creates an uneven playing field for startups, limiting their ability to reach potential customers and grow their businesses.
Basically, if you direct people in any way to other platforms - you're getting the ban hammer.
Yeah, this happened to us.

P.S. Not all extensions are banned, only a few, and we're in contact with around 20 other extensions right now.

Highest commission rates for hotels in the industry (20%-ish, which is huge)
Lowering the prices on various bookings without notifying or compensating the hotels or hosts for their loss... yeah.
And a ton of other shady business practices against the customer. You can see them and the screenshots here.
Complete list of shady tactics used by booking .com in 2023

This is how we're trying to fight all of it.

Well, there's obviously a limit on what we can do while banned on their platform...
Everyone seemingly knows about the ridiculous position that booking .com is in the market, but nobody speaks up because they're afraid of losing the business of the booking giant.

BUT we have one thing that most of the people in the industry don't - nothing to lose.

That's why we're airing out all of the dirty laundry I provided you here through all of our communication channels (IndieHackers included, haha)

Cold email campaign with 4K+ recipients started
Personally reaching out to big publications and journalists that write articles on related issues. Sharing all the info, we have (and we have A LOT).
Reaching out to already established media contacts through LinkedIn
Blasting Booking .com on Tiktok
Harassing booking .com higher-ups by asking them uncomfortable questions through LinkedIn and other platforms
Contacting other extensions in a similar position (notable mention: honey)
Writing blog posts.

So far, we've seen SOME success, but it's only the very start of our campaign against Booking .com.

Evidently, we lost a lot of business when getting the ban hammer from booking .com, but this is how we're coping with it.

So I'm coming to you, Indie Hackers, with an open question and a request for guidance: How would you fight/react if a monopoly suddenly appeared in YOUR industry and started messing everything up for you?