Not sure. Without commercialization and ads, there might not be the free high-quality web apps from Google. Things have two sides. But the complexity of the internet should have far surpassed the level that even large corps could influence, and therefore, the key might be culture instead of tech.
I mean he's right, the old internet and the technology that underlies it still exists, and there's nothing stopping you from building and using sites that work independently of the big social media platforms/centralised services.
That said, I do wish this essay was a bit better contrast wise. Had to highlight some of the tables to read them at all, which isn't exactly ideal.
The components heavily give Claude Code vibes. I use CC to build internal tools and, given free reign over the design, this exactly what it will produce.
Won't comment on the writing other than that the punchlines do feel a bit pretentious in an AI kinda way. I've seen the author's blog posts and I much prefer their natural writing to this essay-style output, but to each their own.
Somewhat. If you open port 22 up on an ip, you're going to get hit by bots scanning the Internet, trying to find an open server to ssh into. If you open port 80 or 443, you're going to get bots looking for /wp-admin.php just as soon as the domain name for it hits certificate transparency logs. The Internet's not a friendly place to be. It once was, but the default now is that someone is going to try and abuse anything you put up. Makes it hard to want to set up a new platform outside of the big centralized ones.
https://dbushell.com/2026/01/09/death-to-scroll-fade/
Interesting
That said, I do wish this essay was a bit better contrast wise. Had to highlight some of the tables to read them at all, which isn't exactly ideal.
Won't comment on the writing other than that the punchlines do feel a bit pretentious in an AI kinda way. I've seen the author's blog posts and I much prefer their natural writing to this essay-style output, but to each their own.