But most of them are easily replaced if they go bad. Even domains are of course technically rented, but your own domain is among the most stable identifiers we have on the internet - people owning domains over decades is commonplace.

If my domain registrar, my DNS provider, my hosting company, ... go "bad" I can just move and my readers won't notice. Even if you are on hosted wordpress etc, you can archive your site as is and move, preserving the URLs. That's not the case with Medium etc where your content lives under their domain.

Reclaiming a domain from a registrar that has "gone bad" actually sounds pretty difficult. If they were so inclined, they could refuse to give you the transfer code, and they could renew it so it doesn't expire.

It always comes back to capital, sure. Technically your ISP could disappear tomorrow, or your region's power could go out. _Then what?_ There's always some bit of internet infrastructure you don't own or that necessitates money. But infrastructure is different. As long as you pay (and aren't doing anything particularly illegal), your server will probably continue to exist. And if not, you just buy or rent a computer in a different data center, or even set up a server on a spare computer at home. But you're much less likely to have your hosting provider pull sketchy Medium-style nonsense than, well, Medium.