I think too many newer "developers" are relying on AI tools trained on popular frameworks like Next.js to create things, and Vercel's loving this because they're the "go-to" in the end when you need to deploy something based on this stack.

There's no real alternative for these developers because they weren't brought up to understand server/networking fundamentals, how to operate a VPS, etc. Vercel manages to make this even more confusing for them by blurring the line between server and client, "edge" functions, etc, while all behind variable pricing.