> We don’t need more “alternatives” to the cloud. We need a shift in architecture—from platform-centric to protocol-centric systems.

Nice idea, but that alone is not enough.

The POP3/SMTP protocol is still a server-client based model, and such model naturally gravitates towards centralized systems which leads to the problem we're facing today.

In my opinion, to encourage self-sovereignty, a protocol should decouple the creator and the publisher. The information created by the creator can be published on multiple publisher platforms selected/directed by the creator.

And ideally the creator should be able to directly sharing information with other creators too, like a P2P system. This should also help reduce the risk of information leaking thus more secure.

The protocol also needs to be flexible enough that it can adopt the needs of more modern users too, otherwise you'll found yourself back at the start line few years later.

P.S. If you think this comment is very empty, that's because it is. I've observed quite a few P2P based protocols over these years failing to gain popularity... this is one of the things really hard to get it right. I don't know how to do it, and many way smarter people also failed to do it. So, yeah, that's why this comment is so empty. But hey, if you can get it right, maybe they should give you a Nobel or something.

These protocols exist, e.g. on top of I2P network.

Thing is, nobody has any incentive to back them.

but creating new protocol (standards) also more harder, we can see the example with RCS message google try to push and that require a lot of effort even from big tech