The feudal lord metaphor is entirely accurate, but for the wrong reasons. While FAANG companies do talk a good game about "stickiness" and "switching costs", th

The feudal lord metaphor is entirely accurate, but for the wrong reasons. While FAANG companies do talk a good game about "stickiness" and "switching costs", the reality is that most of the time, they aren't the ones holding users in. It's actually fairly difficult to do that. Users piled into FAANG because they had things the users wanted and were able to keep out the deluge of spam and malware that is the heat death of any global communications network. i.e. anti-spam is difficult, but if we move our business over to Google Workspace, we get that for very cheap. Gmail now has a moat around it because the bar for proving you aren't a spammer gets worse every year - but everyone trusts Google's MX. Likewise, Apple's App Store lockout was so they could brag to users that "iPhones don't get viruses", because users would rather wear a straitjacket if it keeps them from getting stabbed. The underlying problem is that governments rarely actually fight cybercrime, so tech companies protected users by appointing themselves as judge, jury, and executioner. Ending the era of digital warlords is more than just repealing DMCA 1201[0] or incorporating EU DMA into local law. We need an actual government to take their place - because nobody actually wants to live in the wild west. [0] Including the equivalent laws that the US forced into a large number of other countries