I actually always thought there was a possibility that what happened to AOL might happen to Google / Facebook / etc. I.e. people inherently don’t like extreme walled gardens, and will splinter off into more open, more random, more innovative spaces. I think the pendulum had swung back over to an early AOL like very limited set of 5 or so big “platforms”, and the issues with that were seen again, just like in the late 90s when people were ditching AOL for “the real Internet” en masse.
I actually always thought there was a possibility that what happened to AOL might happen to Google / Facebook / etc. I.e. people inherently don’t like extreme walled gardens, and will splinter off into more open, more random, more innovative spaces. I think the pendulum had swung back over to an early AOL like very limited set of 5 or so big “platforms”, and the issues with that were seen again, just like in the late 90s when people were ditching AOL for “the real Internet” en masse.