Technically true, but in practice, it’s very vulnerable to conglomeration of power by a few. Social media, for one: it’s not exactly a matter of quality to get users to use your platform. Beyond a certain threshold of minimum quality, people use and stay on a certain platform because the people they know are on it, such that it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Other than that, Google have such a ludicrous market share of web advertising (which unfortunately remains the primary method of monetising the web) that it’s very difficult to not use Google’s advertising, giving them immense power to surveil and monitor people. Google Chrome, which remains the most popular browser for reasons that elude me, has so much sway over the internet that it had the courage to even propose the idea of WEI. The infrastructure on which the entite internet runs are controlled by just a handful of massive ISPs, yet another centralisation of power.
Technically true, but in practice, it’s very vulnerable to conglomeration of power by a few. Social media, for one: it’s not exactly a matter of quality to get users to use your platform. Beyond a certain threshold of minimum quality, people use and stay on a certain platform because the people they know are on it, such that it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Other than that, Google have such a ludicrous market share of web advertising (which unfortunately remains the primary method of monetising the web) that it’s very difficult to not use Google’s advertising, giving them immense power to surveil and monitor people. Google Chrome, which remains the most popular browser for reasons that elude me, has so much sway over the internet that it had the courage to even propose the idea of WEI. The infrastructure on which the entite internet runs are controlled by just a handful of massive ISPs, yet another centralisation of power.