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by vineyardmike 1694 days ago
> something like three quarters of all Internet traffic is in walled gardens now. Privately owned communication spaces are some of the biggest businesses in the world today.

100% of traffic goes to a space owned by someone. The fact that big companies can dominate profits, and still companies like TikTok can rise from no where is crazy.

Just because the internet is not decentralized IRC channels hosted in university dark corner offices doesn't mean that its a true walled garden in the typical sense.

I slack my coworkers, and imessaage my family, and facetime my partner, and discord my gamer friends, and use tiktok for entertainment, and use whatapp for my international friends.

Last week, i used teams for my coworkers and zoom for my family, and signal for my friends and ... and ... and ...

Apps come and go. TikTok is replacing youtube and Disney+ is replacing netflix and signal is (hopefully!) replacing something... While i wish that we actually owned our own servers, knowing that i can quickly change accounts and apps and "gardens" makes it better.

2 comments

> knowing that i can quickly change accounts and apps and "gardens" makes it better

That's what the app store diversity push / legislation is about to me.

We're in a dangerous place where Apple is hardware locked to a single distribution channel (and its rules) & Android is heavy pushed towards a single distribution channel (and its rules).

It only takes a single round of bad legislation to get from there to "Your phone only runs what we say it can run."

Ironically, China has more diversity in app stores than everywhere else.

> Ironically, China has more diversity in app stores than everywhere else.

Are they all the same 3 apps the government approves of?

> That's what the app store diversity push / legislation is about to me.

I completely agree and hope apple gets pushed around until it opens up the hardware. I don't care (from a practical, non philosophical level) about APIs or federation or interoperable clients as long as i can just try something new. I have yet to find a single person who can talk with me over Matrix but a dozen who prefer signal.

https://www.appinchina.co/market/app-stores/

Or any of the other user count indices.

>TikTok can rise from no where is crazy

Whew! $10 billion in funding and you call that "from no where".

I think GP's point was that $10 billion is not nearly as much as some of the larger competitor of TikTok.