[williamcotton]

In the future you should invest your energies in building and supporting open and public platforms instead of hoping that some private company isn't going to part ways with your interests at some point.

The OP was not being thoughtless, arrogant or tone deaf, he was just being honest. If you feel disappointed it is because you made a poor decision. You should learn from your mistakes instead of shouting at the person who points out the tragic results of your actions.

There are plenty of open source and open platform projects out there. BitTorrent, Bitcoin, HTTP, OpenPGP... pick one and start building!

You should feel entitled to your individual rights in whatever republic you live in. You should not feel entitled to tell a private company how to run their business. Doing otherwise will always lead to disappointment.

[tangled_zans]

Way to blame the victim, man.

[williamcotton]

Giving advice about life that cuts right to point is not "blaming the victim". No one was hurt here. We're just pointing out the obvious fact that people spent their time unwisely when they built on top of private platforms.

The right thing to do is consider this a lesson well learned, shut up, eat crow, and get on with your life like an adult, safe in the knowledge that you won't make the same mistake again.

Generally speaking the vast majority of people in this forum have a shockingly bad understanding of how our government, legal, accounting and financial systems work. That infrastructure isn't going anywhere and companies like Twitter exist only because of these formal systems. Learning the details of the relationships between these systems is your responsibility. You can easily be taken advantage of without a knowledgable understanding of the rules of the game. This is no one's fault but your own.