[ehnto]

So much of the web is commercial now, including social media which, whilst full of personal writing, would disappear the moment it no longer promises returns.

To that end, so much of the web has a limited product-lifecycle, and the purpose of the websites are not at all the same as the purpose of a book. I think the way people build websites reflects this commercial reality more than anything else. Could you self host an HTML file on your PC? Totally, and you'll likely always have a PC around so long as you care about websites, so the analogy of the bookshelf I feel is similar to this. But most websites are not books, they're more like storefronts of knowledge, and when the stores shut down we lose access to the knowledge they held.

I can say this with some anecdotal confidence, as my personal website is some HTML that I haven't maintained in years but still works perfectly, yet almost every piece of software I've written in my professional life is gone, in many cases so too has the company that asked me to make it.