Been thinking about all this recently, and it's related to starting up something new. Here's a few thoughts I believe resonate with your comment. (I'm just hoping for some discussion to consider)

"the moat" = that thing which a business has that others do not = walled gardens and all sorts of anti-competitive behavior.

Expectations related to returns. Often 10x is a starting point. Nobody wants to invest, unless that 10x or some form of disruption is on the table. Forming that "moat" and making some sort of walled garden and or pool of locked in users almost always appears to be the primary piece able to make 10x plus claims plausible.

Those returns are never associated with cross platform, open type efforts. Frankly, those efforts can be seen as toxic, actually vaporizing "value" that would otherwise be on the table.

Web 1.0 was great!

Regarding "walled gardens", there is a secondary pattern in play. I didn't really notice until we saw Reddit and that "Sanders for President" sub kick into action. Prior to that time, /all was seen by everyone. It was possible to write something and have most of Reddit see that something. And that was, to some degree, true of other platforms too.

Suddenly, very large numbers of people could get behind an idea and act on it!

That happening is completely unacceptable to the established players. I don't care about the politics, or the players here. Just saying that large numbers of people all resonant in some way is a dynamic considered toxic by most, if not all, leaders in the world today.

Last time we saw that kind of thing happen in the USA, we also saw the New Deal happen.

This time, we didn't see any kind of legislative effort. What we did see was changes:

Government being involved with big tech. And top of the list seemed to be changes that insured people all saw different views. No more /all reaching millions at at time.

I'm trying to make a point here related to "lots of people want to create such an audience" and that point is, "yes they are, but they also need that audience fragmented in various ways too."

Some people have suggested public efforts. I'm totally open to those ideas, but am concerned about whether they would be implemented in a way that encourages competition and accountability.

And they will in one respect, that being the little guy having to compete hard to make it through a modest life while being held to account (via real names and ID linked to network activity in a very difficult to shake way), for what they say and do online while the "powers that be" are not experiencing either of those things to a degree of concern.

Right now, there is an authoritarian, puritanical move to "clean" the Internet up. It's everywhere and it looks to me like a move to bring traditional media online as a peer, not disadvantaged as it has always been, until recently. This last decade has been a big push to somehow make sure the likes of FOX and MSNBC have a placement advantage over [ insert indie voices here ].

The thing is pretty much anyone under 50 could care less about big, corporate media. And quite a few over 50 are right there with them, myself included.

I sure miss Web 1.0 in these respects.

But, getting back to tech and the basics of your comment:

Some how we need market rules that require competition. No enterprise wants it that way. They all want to flat out own their niche and keep their costs and risks low while also being free to deliver the least value for the highest dollars possible. If nothing else, that's needed to deliver those huge returns promised at some point in return for investments needed to get started.

Where there is meaningful competition:

Buyers tend to get the best value for the lowest dollars.

Where there isn't meaningful competition:

Buyers tend to get the least value for the highest dollars.

Market advocates often talk up competition as being the powerful justification for running everything as a market.

But that's for the rubes. It's totally obvious the intent is to limit competition to maximize profit and control and we see that play out all the time, almost everywhere!

One fun one I like to get people to think about is big mergers. They always say the same thing and that is some variation on combined resources and blah, blah, blah, mean lower prices and greater value for "consumers." When have you seen that happen?

I haven't.

Sadly, I don't have any solutions either, but did want to expand on your comment and see what others might have to say.