The leveling power was never about the web - it was inherent to the Internet and open source. What we needed was a true open-source app platform that was a community property the way Linux was. If we had that, it wouldn't matter what Apple did.
Unfortunately Google killed that dream with Android.
I mean the leveling power of open content exchange, not the current technical particulars. If browser wars mess up HTML badly enough the world can invent a better system, or at least it could have. But once everyone gets their internet though walled-garden devices, that ship has sailed.
I am curious why you think that since Android seems a little more open than iOS?
I mostly run Linux (one Mac laptop, 3 Linux laptops) and I do get that owning your own hardware, using open source software, and prefering to use your own domain and web site for your business and general web presense is the way to go. I think that we are in agreement.
That said if I am wasting some time reading Twitter using the default web browser on my Android phone, that seems like the same experience using a web browser on my laptop.
Not even slightly. If I wanted to, I could post a .txt file on an HTTP server somewhere and anyone could consume it. More broadly, web browser are accessible to all, and anyone can put a web page online. That's not true with apps at all.
Sure, right now. Of course, the browser manufacturers are moving to actively discourage that by flagging HTTP as unsafe, as a first step to blocking it by default. At which point you'll have to use HTTPS for most people to be able to see it, which means you'll have to go through someone with a relationship with a root CA trusted by browser vendors to make content visible to the public, which means, again, back to the web being controlled by those who develop and distribute web browsers.
Also, HTTP is unsafe.
Also also, "those who develop and distribute web browsers" are not a uniform cabal of shadowy conspirators. You are, of course, always welcome to use Firefox, Chromium, or any of the sundry other open-source browsers out there.
Unless you're using iOS, of course. (HHOS)