Amazon just bought messaging service Wickr. Meanwhile, Facebook makes podcasts, Apple makes TV shows, and Twitter bought a newsletter company. What’s going on? Data, lock-in, and FOMO.

The internet has consolidated everything. We used to have ads in local newspapers, and then it was all Craigslist. There are still plenty of online stores, but the first place we go is Amazon. We have YouTube for video, Instagram for photo sharing, and Facebook for everything else. But now Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter seem to want to control everything. It’s not enough for Amazon to be the biggest store on the planet. It wants to be the biggest platform on the planet. Why?

“This combination of forces is called ‘platform power.’ The model has been around for a while, but the rapid rise of the internet in recent years has expanded the global reach of consumers and suppliers, creating extreme network effects,” Jeroen van Gils, managing director at technology company Lifi.co, told Lifewire via email.

For a service like Facebook, the Fear of Missing Out makes sense. Its business depends on engagement. That is, Facebook needs people to use Facebook as much as possible so it can collect data about their habits, connections, and so on. If a rival social network like WhatsApp starts to grab people’s attention, Facebook can either buy it (as it did with WhatsApp) or copy it (as Facebook and every other social network did with Clubhouse).