It is my (largely uninformed) opinion that the greatest barrier to an open web is the difficulty in securing a static address for a device that remains consistent regardless of the currently connected gateway address. So much of what third party web services actually do is simply offering a static address for routing traffic.
... huh. I had not thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right.
Not even a DNS thing. The entire concept of third party messaging platforms is because we can't just send data directly at another internet user unless they've done all the requisite setup to reliably receive it.
Yes exactly! My yardstick for the "spiritual" health of the internet is how easily I can have two devices across the internet communicate without a service in the middle. It shouldn't be difficult in theory.
I _can_ send a file from my phone to another friend's phone via ftp for example, but only if both are on WiFi, have port forwarding turned on on the router, and either just have the most up-to-date dynamic IP stored, or are using dynamic DNS, or have a static IP allocated from their ISP, which is less common at least here in the UK.
