I don't think it fully clicked before now that there's really no reason why I need to have multiple methods of having the same interaction between people. With how entrenched social media companies are, I doubt that we will get a decentralised instant messaging service.

It is ridiculous that we don't though. I can text and call any other phone on a different service provider, if they stopped that then there would be a lot of angry customers. If we could break down social media companies then something like this could happen.

I liked the metaphor about social media companies protecting their fiefdoms from other companies. Medieval social media companies would be a great idea for r/scificoncepts though.