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Comment by nicholassmith | Hacker News Reader

Twitter was quite happy to sit and watch as people built fantastic services and tools on the service that without a doubt increased engagement, then sort of went "oh shit we need to make some money" and proceeded to piss on the bonfire 3rd party developers have created. It's even handed for Twitter and heavy handed for people that expect rationality from a company.

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they're acting perfectly rationally: they see third party clients as a threat to their ability to monetise, so they're killing them

why anyone would expect a business to do anything else is beyond my understanding!

When the popularity of your business has been built on the back of third party services and additions (hashtags? Retweets?) there's a certain level of expectation you're not going to turn around and stab them in the back.

The word "tweet" to refer to a post. A bird as the logo! Twitter started as barely more than a faceless service, and most of what is "Twitter" as a brand came from its users and developers.

Not that there isn't precedent for their model. I remember being fascinated to read that the Big Mac and Ronald McDonald both came from local franchise restaurants, not corporate HQ. It's just a frustrating position to take. It feels short sighted.

A really cool fried who suddenly shows up for lunch in a suit, then eventually stops calling you. Your mom reads about them in a magazine and excitedly tells you what they're up to for a few years, then you stop hearing about them.

So would you say the same thing about people that abuse regulations adopted honestly in the spirit of helping the public and now having been captured by special interests abuse it to serve their own interest?

For example, most taxi cab regulations were passed in an era where the public had extremely unsafe and unclear transportation in an unfettered race to the bottom, (were being extorted by drivers, unsafe cars and unlicensed drivers, no insurance, etc etc). So in many municipalities regulations after much debate were passed to address these concerns that the market seemed unable to correct.

Now after enough time has passed, are the usages by taxi companies of those regulations to insure their market dominance in your view acting rationally or in an abusive manner?

You should take a look at the history of regulation of taxi's in New York. It had less to do with safety or clarity than protecting exiting cabbies and from competition during the depression.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/media/totweb/taxioftomorrow_history_...

Abusive, the regulations haven't adopted with the times, but it's apple to oranges in that situation.

I suspect Über would have a different answer to the apparently assumed one in your question.

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