> I really hope that gambling on GME is not a "major part" of a significant number of people's lives.

It's a major part of the mega wealthy's lives. They've profited in this pandemic and it's not because of the fundamentals. Shorts squeeze the market too much but they ( hedge funds) should be responsible adults and take their losses. Not force Robinhood to unethically force sell it's massive user base to liquidate b/c their system bit their biggest customer.

We're about to see whether the people actually have rights or if this is actually a class warfare situation. I suspect it's the latter.

> I suspect it's the latter.

It's absolutely the latter. GME is a meme stock that people will forget about in 3 months. If 2008 didn't cause anyone to go to jail (where millions lost their houses and retirements), manipulating a short squeeze on a failing company certainly won't.

I was thinking more about being able to trade online, not GME specifically.

TBH 'protocols not platforms' has become kind of a slogan lately, but history doesn't make it look too promising. Email is a protocol, but it has largely been dominated by Google.

A really compelling product can capture a protocol.

Could it be that people are just so used to platforms, that even in the case of the email protocol, they prefer to jump onto the Gmail platform that abstracts away from the protocol and provides a nice, easy to use platform? If so, "protocols, not platforms" remains justified, and proponents might hope that as people get more comfortable with protocols, they will drift away not only from the Facebooks and Twitters of the world, but also the Gmails.

For me personally, even if we end up with large players offering the largest (presumably most product-focused) instances of various protocols (Gmail with email, imagine Tiwtter hosting the largest Mastodon instance, Discord providing Matrix hosting), the fact I have the freedom to federate and set up my own instance or pay a smaller provider that will respect my privacy, is still a much better situation than the current "platforms, no protocols".

For me at least, it's the anti-spam features, and automatic sorting of mail.

Realistically though nothing at this moment can supplant gmail without people willing to move away from gmail. They make it hard for people to do their own thing because they spam filter out legitimate email coming from domains that they don't like.

>but it has largely been dominated by Google.

Maybe anecdotal every company in my experience is on Office 365. Most private people here have hotmail/outlook as they where first before gmail.

True but I just migrated my email away from gmail due to "general google worries" and most colleagues dont realise Ive changed and continue to email me

Set up a redirect for a year or so.

In future use a domain you own as the email address and redirect to your email provider.