I have a universal theory about this which is &quot;spam and abuse make everything suck&quot;.<p>This is why we can&#x27;t have an open libertarian Internet, and instead have walled gardens and moderated forums - ordinary users don&#x27;t want to deal with the crap.<p>It&#x27;s also why we don&#x27;t have open API&#x27;s, and why the API&#x27;s that the big providers do give us tend to be nerfed and then discontinued - they&#x27;re constantly abused, which imposes a maintenance cost that businesses have to justify.<p>It&#x27;s why an email server is so difficult to run and email delivery is so unreliable. It&#x27;s why you can&#x27;t (or shouldn&#x27;t) rely too much on Paypal. It&#x27;s why governments effectively outsource Internet policing to big providers.<p>And so on.