Basically, each of these sites used open standards and APIs as a way to grow their service. Eventually once they got to the user base they wanted and beat out the competition, they could tighten the screws, lock things down, since the users didn't have any place to go, they were locked in.
In terms of specifics, it's unclear if they were ever profitable before locking things down, since the main goal at that phase wasn't making money, it was growing active users and killing competitors. I would have to imagine that with the locked down APIs, they are more profitable, and they never really cared about the community and good will, only when it was beneficial to grow their user base.
Ok, thanks, I'm unfamiliar with pre IPO access, so that's helpful. Just to make sure I understand, from Reddit's perspective, they weren't setting the option price lower than the market price when the option offered? There was just a pre ipo market which you got the ability to trade on, no income earned when executing the option?
Was the option to purchase the stock at a reduced rate, or just to purchase it before the IPO? When that happened, it just seemed like a way to inflate their opening stock price by getting the most hard core users to literally buy in.
This feels somewhat different because previously, generally speaking, the problematic subreddits (jailbait, fat people hate, etc) were pretty much isolated to that subreddit, so action could be taken to that subreddit without a big blast radius to the rest of the site. Also, for the most part, the issues were targeting marginalized people. Going after people in the comments of r/popculture for upvoting a comment about Luigi is nothing like previous controversies.
I pushed a friend to format an external hard drive with exFAT and not Apple's filesystem for compability, but something with the M2 MacBook eventually messed up the filesystem and it couldn't read it. Troubleshooting and reading forums, found there's something with the new Macs and exFAT. Ended up having to use an x86 apple device to recover the data.
"I don't tip. I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I'll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it's for the birds."
Your company was reimbursing you for two $7 midtown tunnel tolls every day ($14/day), and providing you free on-site parking, but $9 for congestion pricing is too much?
As got going through Manhattan to get to NJ, it is one of the defacto routes from LI. The Williamsburg bridge to the Holland Tunnel is like 5 of the busiest blocks through Manhattan that was toll free. For anyone on the north shore off the LIE looking to get to the turnpike, Google will always suggest going through Manhattan. Same goes for getting to Newark airport, even though the Goethals bridge is about the same distance away from the tunnel.
Don't be distressed about it, dad. You're here now. You're safe.