The lesson here is: invest in protocols and open standards, not “apps” and closed platforms.

Yes, 100% agree. The problem always seems to come when there is money involved. Especially when you take someone elses money, and then get corrupted by the pressure of returning the principal with interest. You get slow-cooked into compromising your ideals, even if you personally were never greedy/malicious. I suppose that's easy to say for me, since I was never in that position :)

This is obvious, until you realize that the line between company and customers(shareholders) have been blurred, creating perverse incentives.