I totally understand the crabbiness. And you're right. That's why I tagged this post under "workable utopias," because I'm being a bit utopian in imagining what else could be.

That said, a friend of mine is doing some volunteer software development on decentralized special interest communities that she thinks have potential to re-democratized some kinds of internet interactions (including fandom), and preserve privacy better. I can't remember the specifics now, alas, but I'll definitely be asking her how it's going when I next see her.

(As to search engines, I wonder if Ecosia will ever be in a place to do some innovative, not-for-profit search design. My understanding is that right now they basically use Bing, but I don't know if they have plans to move beyond that.)