It's beyond the scope of the average person to research alternatives, define alternatives, promote said alternatives and push them as hard, or harder, than the big players in any field.
Saying that "users are the ones that have made Facebook and Google powerful and monolithic walled gardens" is ignoring the fact that those "in the know" have been arguing against these practices since their inception, and that competing against these corporations would take a huge marketing campaign in order to even get the word out that alternatives exist.
For example: Many people are happy with Pandora, Spotify, Rdio etc for their music listening. They aren't aware that they don't actually own the tracks in their playlists until they try to play them on something else, or burn them to CD etc. This is an example of a paradigm shifting, with only half of the parties being aware of the shift. This is happening all the time, in all sorts of areas. The average (non IT industry) person has neither the time, nor inclination to keep up with these changes, they just want to listen to their music, look at their photos, read their email etc.
Yes, caveat emptor is still a legitimate rule, but the number of caveats per emptor is getting ridiculous, and no-one in power seems to think this a bad thing. It seems that it's expected to assume that every provider (of goods or services) is megalomaniacally sociopathic, and if you get burnt by such behaviour, it's your own fault.
Yes, they should.
Look, you're right, it is beyond the scope of the average person to research alternatives. However, we live in a democratic society and it is out of our political apathy that the healthcare system has become what it is: an utter disgrace. If we were a truly compassionate society that prioritized ensuing health-care for all, then this is what we would have.
Same goes for online. We love to bitch and moan about the government taking away net neutrality, our friends and parents thinking the internet is just Facebook, and of course the NSA. But it is us - you, I, our communities - that are creating this situation; not the government. Why? Because we are the government.
Am I aware of how idealistic that sounds in 2014? Absolutely. But we are the ones who, ultimately, decide what level of lobbying and influence corporations have. We are the ones who ultimately decide what level of survelience we allow in our lives.
That was my initial point. But of course, HN folks can be super-reacitionary to anything detracting from the open-source caliphate. Believe me, no one wants a more bio-diverse online ecosystem than I. I've written extensively about it. However, this is the issue it comes down to. We get what we deserve. What's more, if these were important issues in society (which I, in the minority, believe theyt are) then it would galvanize into actual policy being created.
We're in the West. We have democratic ideals. Utilize them. Our entire system and culture is based upon these. It's what justifies wars. If you're not happy about the system, lobby your friends and create movements.
Ironically, this is what the Pirate Bay guys have done. they've gone out and come at IP in a major way, and have felt the might of the law against their favour. I'm not going to comment on whether that's right or wrong, because it isn't the issue. The issue is that we, now, through the sum part of a billion tiny actions, have the chance in this moment to influence the future of this space. The future of IP. The future of rewarding creators fairly. So instead of whinging about Big Internet (which is what happens a lot in this forum - where cries go unheard) - actually take some practical steps to lobby.
So that is why. We get the internet we deserve is that we must take collective responsibility for what kind of world we are creating. Unfortunatley, this is a highly unfashionable stance in age of cynicism and entitlement.
You do know that at the moment the US gov't is deciding if 2 or 3 national ISPs is enough competition. Where are all the other upstarts? Effectively locked out. How? If you showed up early enough you were subsidised in deploying infrastructure. If you showed up a little late that is no longer an option to you.
So yes, continue being naive about how those market forces rely exclusively on cash.
Proponents of startups who also believe in the market have to deal with a certain cognitive dissonance. They have to convince themselves that giant corporations can only win through non-market means. But the fact is that the market almost always favors scale. Apple and Samsung win not through suing "upstarts" for patent infringement, but through the kind of vertical integration only possible with scale. If you can spend $2 billion on a factory to make sapphire glass screens at a price point the "upstarts" can't match, then you win, through purely market means. If you're Verizon and can spend billions to have LTE coverage everywhere in the country, that's what leads you to dominance over the upstarts, not the regulatory regime.
Go back to before the modern regulatory state. Did Standard Oil and U.S. Steel lawyer themselves to victory? No, they did the same thing Apple and Samsung are doing: dominate the competition by leveraging scale.
Sort of, don't know, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
Page rank patent, ???, lawsuits on patent/copyright/look-and-feel against clones and competitors, instruction set patents, one-click patent, anti-competitive OEM contracts and more.
Just to give some examples:
I use multiple public, non-profit IRC networks. The chance of those being acquired? Pretty close to zero. And even if, dropping one of them wouldn't really hurt much, and if everything else fails, even setting up my own would not be out of reach, keeping all the same user experience.
Then, I use a usenet news server. If that one got acquired? Well, as long as the service stayed the same, it wouldn't really matter much, and if they started doing funny things in order to increase profits, it would be trivial to switch to a different provider that doesn't (which really should discourage anyone from even trying).
Or how about my own email server? That will be damn difficult to acquire, I'd think. At most someone could acquire my ISP ... which, again, is highly fungible, if they started doing anything funny, I'd just obtain connectivity elsewhere.
Yes, it very much is a "natural market force" that monopolies will form where you don't make the concious choice to use technology that is inherently monopoly unfriendly, and as such one could say that you "deserve" the monopoly if you use a service that can be acquired and where that has any real consequences.
And I'm not even talking about ad-block. Ads are one way to have some profit, but they are not optimal in any way.
Microtransactions should be possible. May be Bitcoin will allow this in the future.
The inconvenience of filtering the services you use by the public statements of their provider companies makes it almost wholly unreasonable to expect market forces to fix moral failings in companies, unless they're egregious enough to get play in the mass media - which has its own problems of mob activism.
Users don't have an effective choice. This isn't something markets can easily fix.
Why isn't everyone using AT&T phones today? Was that change made by users?