Sure, you could say it’s a set of conventions on top of what you’re describing — that imo is sufficient to shift the incentive picture. It’s a firehose of typed JSON that’s canonically stored at URLs that survive hosting changes and can link to other JSON. It’s signed and verifiable and links to other JSON.

So the new thing here is that if everyone’s data exists in this format, the competition between apps is guaranteed. Because a competitor doesn’t start with nothing: they start with the same userbase and the same content. They can immediately start competing on features, moderation, product experience, etc, without first “luring” everyone to register again and start their entire graphs from scratch.

I think that makes a big difference. Don’t you think?