The app ecosystem promotes closed content only because it requires native code to run for the UX people expect on mobile, at least until recently with responsive UIs dominating the web framework space.

What open content? Wikipedia? That's <1% of the Web.

If we're judging whether the Web promotes open content by the actual results after three decades, the exact opposite is the case: the Web promotes closed content.

Netflix, ESPN, Google/Gmail/Maps/News/etc, Microsoft/Bing/Office/mail/etc, NYTimes, Washington Post, USA Today, MSNBC, CNBC, Reuters, AP, CNN, Bloomberg, FoxNews, ABC, CBS, NBC, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Imgur, eBay, Amazon/Twitch/Prime/etc, Target, Walmart, ETSY, Disney, Viacom, Verizon/Yahoo, Match.com, Quora, PayPal. Along with pretty much all corporate sites and porn sites. Most blogs are privately owned, copyrighted; same with substacks; same with most mailing lists. Most photography on the Web is owned by someone, and captive on a platform. Travel sites/services (Booking, Expedia, etc), review sites/services (Yelp, Trip Advisor, most cooking sites, etc), weather sites, real-estate sites (Realtor.com, Zillow, Apartments.com, etc); ticket sites (Vivid, Stubhub, Ticketmaster, Live Nation) - they're largely in the same box, they're all privately owned, copyrighted content, closed corporate platforms.

Now keep going with that list for most of the next 5,000+ largest sites (with few exceptions like Wikipedia or Stack Exchange).

Nearly everything on the Web is centralized, closed, privately owned, copyrighted content and or platforms. They're all little walled gardens.

It's <1% of the viewed web maybe (I don't know that for sure, but let's stipulate).

But open content is not 1% of the existing web; there are more than a billion[1] websites, and anybody can make one.

You might not easily be able to find those websites (currently, there's still a good chance you might, via the major search engines, but that is subject to corporate hegemony, state actor malfeasance, shit-flooding the zone, etc).

But I think the ability to "put it out there" counts for most of the definition of "open".

Being able to consume content on your terms is also cool, but not as fundamental as being able to produce it.

[1]: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+many+websites+are+there+in+the...

The protocol. Websites are accessible over a known , open protocol to every visitor, (Geofencing etc is there, but...), but apps use proprietary protocols which only the particular app can decode. You can see the ESPN website on any old browser, but the ESPN app content needs the ESPN app, and nothing else will work.

Open protocols don't make open sites or apps.

Cases in point: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (increasingly closed), Reddit (increasingly closed). All of them have sites built on open protocols.

Open as in no spyware required.

Uhhhhhhhh do you think websites have no ““spyware””?

Have you heard of biscuits?

In their defense they did say required.

You've been able to turn off cookies since the beginning in any sort of competent browser.

And you’ve been able to allow or deny apps individual permissions on any sort of competent OS.

I think, since we're talking mobile here, the implication is that the OS is part of the spyware here.

Or I completely screwed up my understanding of this thread. That's also very possible.

Firefox ships with Enhanced Tracking Protection enabled by default, disabling those tracking cookies and other trackers from the first time you launch the browser[1].

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...

uhm... everything? "open" as in anyone can make a website and if it's has one good article, it will show up in some google query's result.

> "open" as in anyone can make a website

Anyone can make an app too.

> if it's has one good article, it will show up in some google query's result.

Maybe buried deep in the 100th page, but not the front.

> Anyone can make an app too.

On iOS, this is only true if they're in good standing with Apple and have their approval, while also paying the yearly $100 Apple tax.

All hosting providers or app platforms also have a ""tAX""

Wait till you find out about paying for bandwidth.

This is hacker news, none of us has heard of nor care about the highly technical details you speak of

> Anyone can make an app too.

After they install some bloated IDE, learn some "tech", and pay the gatekeepers

> Maybe buried deep in the 100th page

But they can be found and share, as opposed to apps of a non existent category where average people publish what they are working on, their thoughts, or whatever. App Store and Google Play search would crumble at the scale of the number of websites in existence right now (~2 billions). Remember that search engines index what's inside those websites too not just their name and description.

> After they install some bloated IDE, learn some "tech", and pay the gatekeepers

Tell me how making and hosting a website is absolutely free.

You could not make this argument even 10 years ago, when you could absolutely make a sites on any of wordpress, tumblr, yahoo or blogspot completely free. These days there are even more choices ranging from WYCIWYG (Squarespace & the like) to absolutely free full CI/CD-ed platforms (heroku, Zeit, GitHub pages...). It's not like there is a duopoly on web hosting.

But I guess the more important aspect of the word "free" is that no one could gatekeep you from making a website, unlike app stores where there is a review process.

Open in this context means open to access without platform preference. If you can access it with Firefox on Linux then in this context it's open.