Thoughts on 'Lockdown' by Marco Arment

Thoughts on ‘Lockdown’ by Marco Arment:

RSS represents the antithesis of this new world: it’s completely open, decentralized, and owned by nobody, just like the web itself. It allows anyone, large or small, to build something new and disrupt anyone else they’d like because nobody has to fly six salespeople out first to work out a partnership with anyone else’s salespeople.

To be honest, Fuck Facebook, Twitter and co. for moving away from these elements that made the web work.

I’ve been meaning to write an article similar using the example of hashtags for a while now. Built in an open ‘RSS-style’ way, they could riddle every site, service, OS as a fascinating semantic backbone. Instead, they’re supported to serve sponsorship to the right eyes at the right time.

Yes, companies should try and make money to stay alive. Fair enough. But it makes me sad when they so freely seem to squander the ability to make positive changes to the world in search of £. And even worse, lock things up in proprietary chains to actively take a step back from a more open status quo.