@petersuber I vividly remember the early days of the web when it was unclear whether it would matter to average people compared to walled-garden services like #AOL (then #AmericaOnline), #Prodigy, or #CompuServe.

IMHO the web’s early rise depended on two other factors:
• Graphical #browsers like #NCSA #Mosaic on mainstream computer operating systems (1993)
• Decommissioning of the US government-funded #NSFNET backbone, effectively ending restrictions on commercial Internet traffic (1995)

@YusufToropov I think it would be interesting for certain #BigTech companies to try federating, whether via #Mastodon or some other solution. Obviously, the radical #FediAdmins would resist. But I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game any more than it was when the walled-garden services started integrating SMTP for #email, or when the #NSFnet backbone was decommissioned in 1995 and commercial traffic could finally be carried widely without running afoul of their anti-commercial Acceptable Use Policy.