memes

I disagree. It’s not “one leads to the other,” it’s that people change. Far too often people start out, not just in tech, bucking the system in some way. Anti-authority, pro-privacy, anti-centralized control, etc.

But when the server costs start mounting for a service that gets popular and money needs to come in, people change. Now you need to monetize via ads or whatever, now you get attacked, you circle the wagons, get investors, and it’s all downhill from there.

Digg and Reddit are big examples, Google could arguably be a similar case, it happens in music too where a band “sells out”, like Metallica for example. An originally anti-authority metal band starts lawsuits and banning fans to protect profits.

Sure there are plenty of situations where services remain open and free (for now), like wikipedia, linux distros, etc. but we aren’t always that lucky.