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Permissionless innovation
The early web had one architectural property that gets less and less attention as we keep adding things on top of it: anyone could build anything on top of anyone else's content. View source. Write a new browser. Run a new server. Publish whatever you wanted. The protocols didn't ask for your business model or your investor approval — they just routed packets.
We traded that for convenience. Most of what's interesting about modern computing now lives behind a platform owner's API gate, and when the platform decides the API is no longer in its interest, the apps built on it die.
What we lost
- Third-party Twitter clients were a vibrant ecosystem until Twitter cut off the API. Tweetbot, Twitterrific, the apps that invented a lot of what people now consider standard — all gone, by decision.
- Facebook's developer platform was open enough to bootstrap Zynga and a generation of casual social games. Then it wasn't.
- Microsoft is shutting down apps built on Skype's old APIs. Google has retired more developer products than most companies have shipped. Apple decides which app categories are allowed on iOS, and the rules change.
- Banks, healthcare, government — every API in these spaces requires a business agreement, a KYC process, and the platform's continued goodwill. Hobbyists can't build there.
We've normalised this. We treat "the platform changed its API again" as weather we have to live with.
What changes when data lives on the user's device
The user becomes the only gatekeeper. They install an app, they grant it access to whatever data it asks for, and the app does its thing. There is no platform between the developer and the user whose interests can shift, whose API can be deprecated, whose terms-of-service can change overnight. The developer builds; the user decides whether to install and grant.
This is a small protocol property with a large consequence: the right to build is restored to the developer, and the right to choose is restored to the user.
What this unlocks
- Competing clients over the same data. Multiple Reasons, multiple Hailers, multiple journal apps — all reading and contributing to the same documents on the user's device. The user picks the UI they prefer this week and keeps the data.
- Niche apps the platforms wouldn't allow. Communities that get demonetised, deprioritised, or removed from app stores — political tooling, harm reduction networks, anything where the platform's interests diverge from the users'. They get to exist.
- Mashups across app boundaries. Your calendar, your messages, your photos — all available to whatever tool can use them, with your permission. The way email + RSS used to mash up across the open web, but for application data.
- Research with real data. Academic and journalism work that today requires negotiated API access agreements becomes "ask users to participate and grant access." Faster, more honest, and more in scope of what users can actually consent to.
- No "API deprecated" letters. An app built on Wish today still works tomorrow, regardless of who's holding which job at which company.
The original web let anyone build anything on top of anyone else's content. Wish hands that back, for application data.