The switch to "platforms for everyone" was basically the triumph of platforms over protocols. And that mostly happened because, as software got more capable/po

The switch to "platforms for everyone" was basically the triumph of platforms over protocols. And that mostly happened because, as software got more capable/powerful, and the median user less-so, there was a shift in the relative importance of user experience vs underlying power/capability. Having users essentially cobble together their own custom experience out of interoperable parts is certainly more powerful, but it can't keep up UX-wise. Standard protocols are, by their nature, slow to evolve; they can't quickly bolt on a new feature if one is needed to make things easier for users. Before forums there were Usenet and NNTP clients; before Discord, Slack and WhatsApp there was the IRC protocol and its various clients. Around the turn of the millennium there was a brief trend of trying to make protocols feature-rich and faster moving, basically semi-public and operating outside of standards bodies. Stuff like ICQ and filesharing protocols. And they're mostly a buggy, insecure mess. Interoperability is hard if you're trying to be feature-rich, secure and user-friendly.. see the struggles the fediverse is having on the third one. 95% of what Facebook is used for could be cobbled together out of NNTP, RSS and SMTP, but it does it in a way that's idiot-proof for users and, perhaps equally importantly, controllable and ownable for investors. Oh, and as to " algorithms that figured it's better NOT to give you what you actually came there for so you keep scrolling"... think about the financial interest for dating sites, where they're trying to maximise subscriber retention.