This was a good read, thank you for sharing!

I found the example of a pub really interesting. One could see sites like Reddit as something like this. On the other hand, pubs don't use unpaid "volunteers" (at least outside the US) to wait the tables.

In the end the proposition of an online community, made and maintained by the community, seems at odds with making profit. Maybe concepts like Lemmy can fill the gap and each user only has to provide their share to keep their instance running.

TL;DR for others

Corporations are not your friends, and are not to be trusted.

Huh. I didn't realise until the end that this is from 2014, interesting.

Really interesting how what we post and garners attention, only concentrates money in a select few.