Anil Dash (original post):

We've increasingly coupled our content and our expression to devices that get obsolete more and more quickly. And when you get to this sense of these new devices, formats get harder and harder to preserve and this is especially true when they're these proprietary or underdocumented formats. Because we've given up on formats. The reality is: those of us that cared about the stuff have lost. Overall we've lost. Very very few the consumer experiences that people use or the default apps that come with their devices work around open formats. There's some slight exceptions around photos, obviously JPEG is doing pretty well, HTML is doing okay, but the core interactions of a small short status update or the ability to tell somebody you like something, those things aren't formats or protocols at all. They're completely undocumented, they can be changed at any time. And just even the expectation that they would be interoperable, that is perhaps the most dramatic shift from the early days of the social web.

the problem with the web we have today isn't that it is worse than the web we had. it's actually better in most regards - except it's harder and more closed up. the opposite is what need, otherwise people will keep on stumbling into seemingly open ad-supported spaces, not realizing what they are doing. until the day they decide they want to leave and can't. kinda like the hotel california:

You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!