I don't really find this argument convincing because it was plenty easy to publish your own webpage. I did it at 9/10 years old and I don't want to believe that your average adult has less capability than a child.
I think we're doing a disservice by infantilizing people.
People around the world are more educated than ever in humankind history [0][1] , including ability to code
Possibilities are still out there, it's not like people are forbidden from building their own web stack from scratch - you can still buy vps, bare metal, R-Pi and static IP or dyndns - and just code whatever you want.
Of course, Internet is not what is was in 1996, doing trivial things like publishing cat/dog videos and photos is easy - as it should be. Amount of the content is enormous and one can find amazing, incredible, briliant things - maybe not necessarily on the top of FB/IG feed, but it is still out there.
I am no more infantilizing people than pointing out that most people can’t change the oil in their car. It’s a speciality where most pay a service fee to get it done for them. And they go about their lives just fine.
Publishing a webpage with 1990s tooling is roughly in the same category of complexity.
It is far easier to pay Wix, or even better, to use one of the myriad photo sharing sites like Instagram, Flickr, Or Facebook. Which is why they’re so successful, and why the internet is a far more widely used and useful platform today than it was 20 years ago. It’s a disservice and carries no virtue to insist on unnecessary complexity for those that really could care less about computers or how networks work.
I think we're doing a disservice by infantilizing people.