Gradients of technological democracy (in order of least to best):
- one app, one service (WhatsApp).
- open api (multiple apps, some of which open source), one service (some information providers).
- idem, but service is self-hostable (closed source, such as MS Echange)
- idem, but service is open source (Nextcloud Talk, Matrix)
- standardized protocol (e-mail, irc, xmpp, activitypub)