this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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We need to democratize the internet again, every generation there's a ma bell pretending they own the internet. Current Gen is Google, AWS, Azure and the like, with ISPs just making sure they get their cut.
I don't have an issue with these services existing, but in such a way that everything depends on a couple companies? Dangerous for everyone.
“There’s a monopoly” — proceeds to list 3 separate providers. Don’t forget there’s also Akami, now we’re up to 4. Oh, and Cloud Flare… so that’s 5.
The issue is more so with companies that choose to use cloud providers. They’re the ones attempting to cheap out because they don’t want to pay infrastructure costs. You also have a lack of knowledge by engineers on how to create redundant/reliable systems.
Not everything on the internet went down. There’s plenty that was just fine. So I don’t really don’t know what “democratizing” it would gain, or how.
Edit: For anyone downvoting, I’d love to hear what “democratizing” the internet means, how it would work, or be functional. Because right now it just strikes me as salty people who’s favorite site went down.
Monopolies exist exactly like this. With them not competing fairly and coordinating with one another so as to not encroach on the others territory.
Ever wonder why despite there being dozens of ISPs in the country, you've only ever got an option for like a main one, and an intentionally shitty one to make the main one look better?
It's all a rigged game.
My main point, which may have been buried in my quickness to type things, is that it is on the individual companies to choose how they design and architect their systems. This was only a problem in us-east-1. They could have used other AWS regions, they could have used Azure or GCP. They could have used a multi-cloud or hybrid solution, and none of this would be an impact.
AWS is offering infrastructure, but it’s still on the companies to decide how they’ll use it. The ire should be placed on them, just as much, if not more, for taking the easy way out.
Even if you were to have a co-op owned style cloud solution (democratized as it were). If companies choose to only host in one Datacenter/region it’s squarely on them.
A lot of these big names that went down have very poor infrastructure practices if a single region of a single provider took them out. It’s definitely not for lack of money on their part.
You're right, though. AWS has far more data centers/regions. Even if a company only uses AWS, they can set up High Availability/Disaster Recovery solutions that replicate across AWS regions.
But they won't because:
Bingo. Which goes to my point the ire should be at the companies more than AWS. And a lot of the big companies have more than enough money to handle it, but they’re greedy. But instead everyone is focusing on AWS, saying it’s a “monopoly” and needs to be “democratized”. It’s completely misplaced outrage IMO.
Thats called a Cartel. and a cartel can fucking monopolize shit, dumbass.
The word you want is oligopoly. It's only a cartel if agreements are made between them (like opec)
With your personal attack your handle suits you.
Yes, yes. Go for the low hanging bait, that certainly makes you look more righter.
Democratizing the internet would mean half the known internet not hosting their infrastructure in us-east-2.
It would work and be functional exactly as the internet was designed to be, and worked and functioned for years, by hosting their own servers.
So that goes to my point that it’s on the companies that use the cloud providers. Not the cloud providers themselves.
It’s not the responsibility of the cloud providers to democratize the internet, I don’t know why you thought anyone was making that argument.
Cloud providers however are responsible for their negligence given their role in the current internet.
Fair enough there. But how do you “democratize” individual business decisions? Or are you suggesting socializing all entities?
Just don't look to hard at the market share or the client composition, sure.
I mean, do you tell people they're cheaping out because they hire a plumber rather than spending eighteen months learning to DIY every pipe in their house? There's nothing fundamentally wrong with outsourcing to cloud services on its face. A couple big warehouses at strategic points in town specifically designed to operate as central hubs for digital traffic makes far more sense than every single office building having a dozen different floors with two IT guys of dubious quality in a badly ventilated closet manning cobbled together rack space.
One of the more successful American models for publicly owned and operated data infrastructure:
EPB of Chattanooga, formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, is an American electric power distribution and telecommunication company owned by the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee
For starters: thank you for a thought out response. It feels like most people are missing the core point and just blaming the provider.
Even if there were a “public” public cloud, the underlying issue I’m getting at is with the companies that are using it. AWS has multiple regions. There are multiple cloud providers such as GCP and Azure too. Yet the companies are the ones defaulting to a single region, single provider configuration, which as we all know is still a SPOF, no matter what redundancy is built in.
To that point nowhere im saying that you can’t democratize things.
Sounds like it comes down to money and man power, something the world is trying to do away with. As in employing actual people with skills and knowledge and investing money without seeing immediate returns. The whole world has become a cash and dash scheme and they are all just seeing how long they can get away with it before we revolt. I know where my vote lies, do you?