I find it strange to see this sentiment... how far down the stack do you go before it stops being "configuration" to you?

Let's imagine building a video chat:

Are you going to build an OS from scratch? Network protocols? Encryption? The rendering engine for it? Compression algos?

Just how much of this do you consider "not configuration"? I think this all sounds very much like "old man yells at cloud" pining for a past that never actually existed.