I'm not personally a software professional, but to me it seems that the problem is economical. Centralization and walled gardens happen because they are a way to couple the internet platforms to the economic system. I think that if done "nicely", much of the software and internet tech exist in market failure corner of the economy. It's not like there aren't many federalized/decentralized/community driven and open source projects in existence, it's just that no-one wants to fund and/or market them so that they often become non-viable in the long run.

> And we (software professionals) are the ones with the power to fix it! It seems obvious but the answer is to just stop working on products/companies that are making the Internet worse!

I'm not convinced. We don't work in defense contracting but that industry seems to be doing fine without us.

The problem is the bulk of the demand is at the places with all the money, and those places mostly make the ads, show the ads, or serve companies that make or serve the ads.