Against closed digital gardens

If the Passbook standard exists for show tickets and transport tickets, why do I so often have to install the concert promoter's app or the airline's app on my mobile to have the QR code that will allow me to enter a show or a flight? Why can't I load it directly into the wallet app (wallet) from my phone? And if any audio file uploaded on a website is accessible with a podcast player, why would someone force me to listen to them on Spotify? In the first case, the answer is that by making me install the app, it will be able to capture personal data from my phone and, moreover, try to sell me tickets for other shows. In the second, it's because the platform provides the creator with listening statistics that they wouldn't have if I downloaded the audio and listened to it in local mode. What both cases share is that they serve as examples of the hijacking of open internet technology by companies with commercial objectives, a hijacking that some of us have been denouncing for decades and which even has a name: "modification.

Tolls and cages

The warning came from the inventor of the web himself. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee gifted the World Wide Web to humanity, without patents or licenses. Twenty years later, he warned: "Every site is a silo, separate from the rest. Your site's pages are on the web, but your data is no longer. The more you enter, the more trapped you become." This diagnosis describes what we now call walled gardens: Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), YouTube, X, and TikTok decide what billions of people see through opaque algorithms. They exercise editorial (what content exists and who sees it), economic (commissions and advertising), and technical control (they shut down when they feel like it).

Canadian writer Cory Doctorow, who coined the term merdification, describes the mechanism as follows: first, platforms treat users well to capture them, then they mistreat them in favor of advertisers, and finally, they squeeze everything until the service becomes "a pile of shit". Apple's App Store and Google Play are the most visible example: exclusive stores linked to operating systems that charge 30% on digital sales – a toll of 150 billion dollars in 2024 – even though Android allows direct app installation and European pressure has forced Apple to admit alternative stores. Cracks in the wall that most users never take advantage of.

When the garden closes

The cost of depending on private platforms is seen when the rules change or, simply, they disappear. MySpace lost over 50 million songs from 14 million artists in 2019 due to a server migration. When Vine closed in 2017, thousands of creators who had built their careers there suddenly found themselves without an audience. X (Twitter) suppressed free access to its API in February 2023, causing independent applications like Tweetbot and Twitterrific to disappear.

Furthermore, there is a more subtle but constant damage: dependence on the algorithm. Instagram users have seen the reach of their posts plummet after the 2024-2025 changes, which prioritize "original" content over the relationship with followers. No creator knows for what reason their content is visible or invisible, nor when the rules will change again. Building your audience on an external platform is a huge gamble.

The current craze for generative AI chatbots adds a new, perhaps most unsettling, form of a walled garden. When a user gets a response from an AI, they often don't get to see the original sources, which would appear in conventional search results: the AI acts as a filter and intermediary, and the user gets used to settling for what it gives them. Added to this is that generative AI is already becoming contaminated with commercial and advertising interests, exactly as happened with social networks: the same mechanism of shittification, but with a new technological layer on top.

The law's response

Faced with this, regulation has advanced, especially in Europe. The Digital Markets Act (DMA), in force since March 2024, obliges digital giants to allow interoperability and not to favor their own services, with fines of up to 10% of global turnover. In April 2025, the Commission imposed the first sanctions: 500 million euros to Apple and 200 million to Meta. But globally, more than 80% of European digital technologies and infrastructures are imported (Draghi report, 2024). This is why the EuroStack report by the Bertelsmann Foundation (February 2025), coordinated by Francesca Bria, proposes mobilizing 300 billion euros in ten years to stop being a "digital colony". Regulation, however, is not enough: fines are amortized as a business cost.

Separate content and interface

The fundamental solution is technical and cultural: return to the origins. If your data lives in open formats and under your own domain, no company will be able to hijack it. The open web already works this way: HTML, CSS, and above all, the feeds syndication (RSS) allow you to follow any site without an intermediary. The problem is that the use of RSS is increasingly residual, forcing the reader to delegate their choice to social networks and their algorithms, which is exactly what walled gardens aim for. There are alternatives: the fediverse (Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube), which connects independent servers without any company at the center; Bluesky, which allows you to choose the algorithm and take your account to another provider, and the IndieWeb movement, which promotes publishing first on your own site and using social networks as simple loudspeakers.

The most common mistake for businesses and individuals is confusing digital presence with having an Instagram profile. A private platform can reduce your content's visibility, suspend your account without notice, or make it cease to exist, with nothing you can do about it. The alternative doesn't require extensive technical knowledge: it's enough to register your own domain and link it to a minimal page – which many registrars offer for free, or services like Jo.cat – where you can list the networks where clients find you. Email follows the same logic: any server can talk to any other thanks to standards that no single company controls, unlike WhatsApp and Telegram, where users of one service cannot message users of another, and data remains locked on the company's servers.

A deceptive convenience

Walled gardens are comfortable, as AOL, CompuServe, and Spanish Servicom were in the nineties. But, as Berners-Lee warned, "these walled gardens, however pleasant they may be, can never compete in diversity, richness, and innovation with the open web." The separation between content and interface is the condition for the internet to become a common space again and not a private shopping mall.

And let's not forget that escaping the shittification and the control of digital giants is within our reach. Nobody forces us to post our photos on Instagram or use WhatsApp. There are open alternatives, and choosing them has consequences. It is a legal and technical battle, but the important decision is ours.