I agree, because it was the easiest way to solve the problem of providing value to users. Redundancy and coupling of unrelated implementations is expensive. In the extreme, its O(N^2) expensive if you're going to bridge every separate system. Far easier to just build it once.
> Having to do more work wouldn’t be a thing if the protocols were designed to aid communication outside of corporate channels.
Sure, but rephrasing that would be "if companies did more work at no direct benefit to themselves, it would be easier for people to not use their software." Where is the benefit to them? And if this were easy to do, why hasn't the open source community done it? The only thing stopping them is when they build it, nobody (modulo the rounding error of dyed-in-the-wool computer fans) actually wants to use it.
> It’s not that people don’t want to. They don’t know any better and are addicted... People are afraid, not unwilling. Big brother says it’s not safe, so they go to the cozy sphere they know and regrettably trust with too much of their lives.
I used to believe this. I have come around to the thinking that after spending decades telling people what they should want, maybe I'm wrong and people know what they want better than me.
Mastodon is free and (relatively) easy to install and maintain. Why do people stay on Twitter? It's not because Elon Musk is tricking them.
I think you make a point regarding Big Brother, but it underestimates the benefits of staying in the maintained channels. If someone steals my money out of my bank account, the FDIC makes me whole. Who makes me whole when someone steals my Bitcoin? If Facebook did something illegal to me, they're a big enough target for the FBI to intervene. Who intervenes if my Mastodon admin uses my PII against me? They're judgment-proof, and criminal investigation doesn't enforce on small potataoes like that.
Larger, consolidated firms are bigger targets and easier to keep in line. A lot of crime happens in the ecosystem of small communities not in the spotlight.
> People lived under monarchies for a long time before a streak of luck, war, and land changed it.
People have all the tools to change out of corporate systems right now; they don't because it would make their lives worse, materially. They're not waiting for a savior to walk them off the plantation; they had the option to wander off in the wildnerness and they chose to live (virtually) where people are.