You’ve watched the web get locked down by walled gardens—Apple’s App Store, Google’s search results, Meta’s feeds. And you’ve cheered when Automattic, the company behind WordPress, took up the banner of the open internet. It felt like a rebellion. It felt righteous. But what if the rebellion is the most brilliant monopoly strategy ever written?
The most dangerous monopolies are the ones that make you feel virtuous for supporting them.
Let’s be honest: you’ve probably shared that ‘Code for the People’ headline. You’ve nodded along when Matt Mullenweg rails against closed ecosystems. You’ve felt good about using WordPress, about contributing to the open web. And that’s exactly the point.
Automattic didn’t win by building a better wall—they won by convincing everyone walls were evil. By framing proprietary platforms as the enemy, they turned developer loyalty into an unpaid salesforce. Every time a developer chooses WordPress over a paid CMS, every time a blogger defends the ‘open web,’ they’re not fighting for freedom. They’re digging a moat for a billion-dollar company.
I saw this firsthand at a tech meetup last year. A founder stood up and said, ‘We’re open source, for the people.’ The room applauded. Then I checked their GitHub—99% of contributions came from underpaid interns and unpaid volunteers. The company itself? Funded by a VC that owns a portfolio of patents they’d never open source. Openness is the new black. And it’s the perfect camouflage for consolidation.
Here’s the twist: Automattic’s strategy is genius precisely because it weaponizes a populist ideology. They don’t need to buy competitors—they just need to make competitors look like the enemy. The open internet narrative isn’t a mission; it’s a moat. It’s the same playbook every platform monopoly has used, except this one wraps itself in a flag of liberation.
The emotional hook is your own fear. You’re terrified of the web being locked down by Big Tech. That fear is real. But Automattic is using it to lock you into their ecosystem. WordPress powers 43% of the web. That’s not a community—that’s a market share. When one company controls the infrastructure of the decentralized web, the decentralization is an illusion.
So what’s the practical takeaway? Don’t stop using WordPress. But stop pretending it’s a charity. Recognize the narrative for what it is: a calculated moat strategy. Ask yourself: who profits when I defend the ‘open internet’? Who benefits when I feel virtuous about using a tool? If the answer is a single, heavily funded corporation, then you’re not a rebel. You’re a resource.
The open internet isn’t dead. But it’s being hollowed out from the inside. And the most dangerous part is, you’ll keep cheering as it happens.
FAQ
Q: Isn't Automattic actually open source and trustworthy?
A: Yes, WordPress is open source. But open source doesn't mean power is distributed. Automattic controls the core, the ecosystem, and the narrative. Trusting them is fine—just don't confuse their business model with altruism.
Q: What should developers do if they care about a truly open web?
A: Diversify. Use multiple platforms. Contribute to genuinely decentralized projects (like ActivityPub-based tools). Don't let one entity own the 'open' label. Support tools that can fork and thrive without a parent company.
Q: Isn't this just another business strategy? Why is it dangerous?
A: Because it's invisible. Traditional monopolies are attacked, regulated, broken up. An 'open internet' monopoly gets embraced. That makes it harder to challenge, and when the narrative runs the show, the market's natural defenses—competition, skepticism—are switched off.