thekernel

seems like a lot of revisionist bullshit in this rant, eg:

WhatsApp rose by trapping previously-free beings in their corral and changing their habits to create dependence on masters

WhatsApp rose because:

a) If was free

b) it used data vs sms/mms which was becoming cheaper

c) it was cross platform at the time (blackberry, android, nokia, etc)

d) It used your existing phone number as your identifier, so onboarding and finding existing contacts was swift

Until there is a shortage of sweaters due to no wool being produced any more (akin to content creators and moderators who use reddit API)

except their cloud which is cheap, but who wants to get into bed with oracle