The platforms screwed up by never generalizing. If they wanted to be neutral parties, they needed to aggressively API-ify each part of the social media stack an

The platforms screwed up by never generalizing. If they wanted to be neutral parties, they needed to aggressively API-ify each part of the social media stack and effectively become the AWS for social applications. This would have meant delegating UI, algorithms, moderation, fact-checking, authority, etc to the market and simply providing the primitives for executing on those elements. As it stands, they live in a half-way point between general platforms and media companies, as they have retained control over key parts of the media-distribution pipeline.