Which is perfect for creating "spying platform".

Doesn't matter. All that matters is if someone can be made to think it matters, enough to pay for access to whatever information it is.

I feel like HN folks often look for underlying meaning, a structure or purpose through which transactions like this can contribute to greater progress in line with the promise of capitalism. But that's only true when channeled by the constraints of rule systems, which aren't a given.

In the absence of other meaning, it doesn't matter what the 10k user information is. That userbase can still be cannibalized if there's somebody who can be fooled into thinking that act is useful/profitable. Rules saying 'this sort of destructive community-pillaging will cost you more than you gain' aren't necessarily there.

In the absence of them, you don't need to prove harming the 10k community will be profitable over the long or even short term: you only have to find somebody with money who can be persuaded they'll benefit, even if that's not true. If they think that, then you definitely can benefit from selling out the community. You can know it's a doomed exploit, but if you get paid, you're out of it by the time the truth comes out.

I remember reading blog posts from browser extension maintainers, at least 3 or 4 times, who spoke out about regularly being approached by shady buyers for exactly that reason. Unless they were all making things up, I'd say it may indeed be something that is happening. I don't remember the sources, but I guess you're capable of using a search engine too.

The Great Suspender:

https://github.com/greatsuspender/thegreatsuspender/issues/1...

Business profit doesn't have to be a global value. If Audacity is purchased at value X and pillaged in such a way that you can get a third party to pay you value Y for what you did to/with it, and Y > X, that's profitable depending on how much effort/expense you had to go to during that process.

Doesn't have anything to do with even Audacity's users, much less the sustainability of the Audacity ecosystem. If there exists somebody somewhere who would pay more to see Audacity scuttled than it'd cost to buy, that becomes a potential profit motive to a facilitating third party if they know of that dynamic out there to be exploited.

This is of course subject to whether it's allowed to just wreck stuff for your benefit, and how. In cases of simple property, it's generally not: you can't just burn down a rival store to benefit yourself because that's against the rules.

I don't think such limitations currently apply to businesses past a certain level of abstraction, and what's happening to Audacity is not in the least meant as 'just burn it down', even if that's what happens: it's meant as 'get more control over this property', for whatever reason. That may or may not be a wise business decision, but in terms of being able to extract profit, it's a good business decision if in any way, for any reason, it works to get them more money than they paid for the property.

I think it's a very bad decision in the larger sense of things in the world, ability to trust in the things we know about, ability to function within larger systems of known properties and build order out of chaos for the sake of real progress. But that wasn't the question.