Baldur BjarnasonMay 12, 2024
One of the things that the Stack Overflow brouhaha demonstrates is that it doesn’t matter if a service was founded by people trusted by the community (Atwood and Spolsky) and was broadly community-led. If it’s a VC-funded startup, they will sell out their users at some point.
Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 12, 2024

People keep forgetting that "by developers, for developers" was a big part of Stackoverflow's initial pitch. It was founded by people who most of the community implicitly trusted. They said all the right things. But as soon as they took VC-funding it was just a matter of time.

I think we know better now than to trust something like a VC-funded community site, but remember that SO was founded in 2008 at the tail-end of the Web 2.0 funding bubble

Show threadTheCityDweller May 12, 2024
@baldur Never ever give any self produced information to any VC or non VC starter Start-up. Would you work for free for millionaires and billionaires? No, people would call you stupid. But on the Internet, people applaud and do exactly this.
Show threadMagnus Ahltorp
@toor @baldur Every tech startup is part of Big Tech. There are only two ways to exit: be acquired or go bust. That’s what it means to be a startup. It’s fundamentally different from a small company.
May 12, 2024 at 3:06pmWeb