this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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It was planned. The Internet wasn't always this corporate, with very few Big Tech corporations having control over the websites that the vast majority of people use to communicate. Before YouTube cropped up in 2005 and Google bought them in 2006 (also with Facebook appearing at around the same time), the Internet was mostly comprised of individual, independently operated websites that were actually fun to visit.
We all know what happens when corporations (especially publicly traded ones, but also privately owned ones) take over anything, and that is what we now call enshittification.
A decentralized Internet is still possible, but overcoming the Network Effect is extremely difficult, and there are many people who think that a concept like federation is difficult to understand, without having ever tried a federated service, not including email. There's also the so-called "comfort" of switching to another corporate-owned platform that receives a lot of marketing (including astroturfing campaigns on the websites they are trying to replace) rather than a smaller, non-corporate owned platform that people don't think they can "trust".