The open web’s values were always expensive. Someone has to run the servers. Someone has to maintain the software. Someone has to define the standards. Someone has to pay for storage, bandwidth, security, spam mitigation, abuse handling, moderation, and UX work. The fantasy was never that these costs did not exist. The fantasy was that advertising would cover them without eventually reshaping the system around the needs of advertisers and intermediaries.
Source: The open web isn’t dying. We’re killing it | Ouvre Boite