The open web isn't dying naturally—it's being actively dismantled by our choices. While AI acceleration gets attention, the enclosure began years earlier as we traded openness for convenience. Large platforms didn't just overpower alternatives; we rebuilt our social graphs inside their private databases, embedding their tools and directing audiences toward centralized services that promised reach but extracted control.

Convenience proved not neutral but compounding. When platforms made identity, payments, and discovery easier, they didn't merely offer better products—they changed what we tolerated architecturally. The open web's values always required maintenance, yet we preferred the short-term consumer surplus of "free" services that eventually reshaped systems around surveillance and optimization.

Our neglect wasn't innocence. We refused to economically support alternatives while paying for streaming and cloud services. The solution requires accepting that better alternatives may be less convenient and rebuilding digital primitives—identity, payments, discovery—on portable rather than merely profitable systems. The open web needs maintainers, not just consumers to survive.