Telephones, radio broadcasting, and the Internet are all examples of once-decentralized, democratizing forces that were eventually centralized from a corporate control perspective.
I don't know if this will change in the future; it'd require either a very active legal agenda or incredibly engaged citizens/consumers.
"The Master Switch"[1] is a great book on the above.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...
I wouldn't be surprised if people were getting more and more fed up with existing social media sites and online services, and looking into alternative technologies at this point.
Crowd is always dumber and more inert than a small team of highly motivated and filtered (by market, luck etc) individuals.
You'll hear little positive about them on hacker news but there are many projects attempting to turn centralized services into market based p2p open services. Not clear if any will seriously work out, bitcoin is probably the only thing that is really working. But not clear others won't work out.
The many examples of functionalities fulfilled by decentralized structures in nature indicate that this is more complicated. The endocrine system and immune system in your body are beyond current human technology capability and are decentralized. But they also exist alongside a centralized nervous system.
I can't predict the future. Asking good questions is a start. How about a free, absolutely no fees, peer to peer exchange for anyone. We already have strong peer to peer alternatives in the long run so far. Other than convenience, there's nothing stopping anyone from leaving the walled gardens, destroying all apps, and even scuttling today's web protocol for something much better. I think that there is an appetite and opportunity.
One of the massive advantages that centralized platforms has is that they are almost always more convenient than a P2P alternative (think PayPal v.s. BTC, for example of a "send someone money" system), and newer P2P systems don't seem to be moving towards being more convenient. Until the convenience catches up, the masses will stick with centralized services.
sadly the internet can't work like a real life bazaar. as in a bazaar the scammer would be held accountable and any destruction of trust by one individual would harm everyone.
if peer to peer services can keep everyone accountable then yeah they will take over centralized corporations.
Take that situation and apply that to literally everything. People would rather be boiled alive and while they are being boiled alive they will proudly complain and yell... But they won't leave they won't jump ship even if something 1000% better exists and the friction to moving to that thing is nil.
People will act as though that thing that they are using and attach to and maybe even in some cases paying for is a public service or somehow inherent to their lives as a right or a lifeline when in all reality it isn't.
Centralized or decentralized has no bearing on this.
We're living in an age of unprecedented control by corporate powers, but we're also living in an age where it's very difficult to stop a signal from leaking from somewhere.
Corporations are currently building walled gardens and closing the doors behind them fast, but the scent of roses always wafts through the gates, and it really doesn't take much for a crafty fox to dig a tunnel.