My lab has been trying to get sharing, searching, and crowdsourcing to scale towards millions for 16 years now.
The fundamental science is making progress to re-decentralise The Internet. Decades of work left obviously. Lots of progress on creating non-profit versions of all of Big Tech services (well in principle that is). Even Amazon can be decentralised, see a recent phd thesis from the lab, https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid%3Aa4f750...
European Commission might come in and allow open source clients of Facebook, instagram, Twitter, Amazon, etc. Our trustchain technology is specifically designed to be the superstructure for this. So EU might break down the defensive moats around 10 T$ of market cap. The legal foundation is already there, the new eIDAS Regulation is designed to _enforce_ login using the upcoming EU digital passport for all of Big Tech. So Open Source EU Metaverse, connecting all Big Tech protocols into a single repo and identity management solution with true privacy protection..
Legally mandating a single user-identity system seems like the worst possible scenario I ever could have imagined for cyberspace. Imagining trusting such a system is enormously difficult. But more so, to let the mold set on cyerspace, to create a single way the internet has to work, & deny new frontiers, new possibilities, new creativities... that seems monstrous. Beyond imagining.
I do like the idea of the possibility of interop.
Tribler has continued to be one of the most leading edge pieces of p2p software on the planet. It went on to pioneer p2p search, streaming partially completed videos, live-streaming, a range of privacy/security enhancements, tagging, moderation.
In 2012 they dubbed their efforts "4th Generation P2P", encompassing a couple of these goals, many of which were already underway. I believe they've succeeded on all these fronts, & have only continued pushing further since. https://www.tribler.org/4thGenerationP2P/
The team has been up to ongoing cutting edge research for a long time. Their ability to create p2p search is, still, basically unparalleled in this world.