The Importance of Decentralization

Internet services were developed on open protocols under community control throughout the first internet period, which spanned the 1980s to the early 2000s. This meant that individuals or groups could expand their online presence with the assurance that the game's rules would not alter in the future. During this time, massive websites like Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube were launched. The significance of centralized platforms such as AOL significantly decreased during this process.

For-profit tech firms, most notably Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (GAFA), developed software and services that quickly surpassed the capabilities of open protocols during the second internet era, which ran from the middle of the 2000s to the present. This trend was driven by smartphones' exponential rise.

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