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

@baldur Worse, at some point the “trusted people” might want to retire, and will sell.

And then the vulture capitalists will be waiting.

@baldur Practical example: 2 decades ago, we were customers of an excellent, but relative small local ISP. Side benefit, the CTO knew me from my uni days. We could get real technical difficulties solved in record time.

Then their ISP was swallowed by a bigger one. No issue, although our different contracts with the smaller one confused them, but we solved the issue, albeit with the help of their legal department.

Rinse and repeat, and today I'm so happy to be a Magenta Austria customer.