HN&#x27;s famous pedantry shines again.<p>The use of the term in this context is calling out the specific vulnerability of using the walled gardens of Facebook&#x2F;Google&#x2F;Apple and the other behemoths. By your literal correctness of the term, there is no possible way to operate on the internet, since you don&#x27;t own the land and the network cables from your servers to the clients.<p>Pulling one&#x27;s head away from their rear end provides the vision that relying on specific vendor platforms, with their own goals and interests sometimes counter to yours, is different from using a colocation for servers.