but wait there’s these spaces
Image description:
Young woman helping an old woman as she reminisces about the old web, “The web used to be open and distributed! Not closed and concentrated in the hands of a few companies!” The young woman, “Sure grandma, now let’s get you to bed.”
While not entirely correct when reading the meme literally my feeling or interpretation is that the “distribution” applies to what you’re saying. The web used to be a lot “flatter” and egalitarian. Anyone could make a crappy html site for their family web page and everyone ran the same bbs software for hobby or other interest group forums.
But just like you said, the concentration of power in these megasites is huge. It really crushed what the web used to be - but they aren’t the only problem. The search engines that led us to these smaller sites no longer work the same or have vanished alongside the proliferation of SEO and preferred sites thanks to ad revenue. So the chance of a smaller site getting seen are next to zero. No ad revenue, no traffic to drive ad revenue, and too niche or low-budget to compete with SEO sites.