The problem is that, for that decade, Sync has been benefiting from reddit, and now Lemmy. And reddit/Lemmy were the ones footing the majority of the operating costs so that Sync could be useful.

While obviously not a perfect example, think of it as letting your friend stay in your spare room. And then they decide to run a business out of that room and you have customers coming at all hours of the day.

This is increasingly a concern with the modern internet. All of those super popular streamers and youtubers? They are profiting off the content of game devs and other youtubers (ironically, it is the hot tub streamers who are stealing the least content). And plenty of content creators have come out and talked about how they increasingly hate “Reaction” content (Hasan getting special mention for just playing full videos to his chat while he has a piss break).

I am glad Sync is a product people feel is worth paying for. Not my thang, but it doesn’t need to be. But… let’s just say that if the only thing to come out of the reddit debacles over the past few months were “Third party apps need to serve ads or pay for expensive API keys” I would probably actively not care.

Just to be clear. I very much feel that creators deserve to get paid, even if they build on top of the work of others. Maybe less so people who just stream content with no comment while they take a shit but, generally speaking, even just interacting with chat while you play a round of Valorant is “transformative” in my book.

But it DOES suck how many developers, services, and creators are more or less getting screwed over in the interest of “exposure”.