Platform betrayals
Platforms change the rules.
Don't get eaten again.
How many times will you let yourself be screwed?
- Amazon KDP — account/book takedown risk, opaque enforcement.
- Apple Podcasts / Spotify — distribution gatekeeping, discovery dependence.
- Bandcamp — ownership changes created trust fear among artists.
- Etsy — sellers squeezed by fees, ads, rules, search control.
- Facebook — page reach rug-pull; audience became pay-to-reach.
- Flickr — ownership changes, storage limits, community decline.
- GeoCities — mass deletion of personal web history.
- Google+ — entire network shut down.
- Instagram — reach collapse, algorithm dependence, link-hostility.
- Indeed — AI overload, hyper-monetization, and over-complexified hiring funnels.
- LiveJournal — ownership/policy shifts, user/community flight.
- Medium — changing paywalls, curation, business model, publication control.
- Myspace — culture/archive loss, broken music/pages.
- Patreon — policy/payment dependence; creators can be demonetized or removed.
- Periscope — killed.
- Photobucket — broke huge parts of the old web by charging for hotlinked images.
- Posterous — acquired then shut down.
- Reddit — API rug-pull, community/mod revolt, centralized control.
- SoundCloud — monetization/control uncertainty for musicians.
- Substack — platform dependency, moderation/newsletter ecosystem risk, audience custody concerns.
- TikTok — opaque reach, geopolitical/regulatory fragility, creator dependence.
- Tumblr — policy whiplash, adult-content purge, community collapse.
- Twitch — monetization splits/policy changes.
- Twitter/X — API destruction, identity/checkmark chaos, policy instability.
- Vine — creator platform killed.
- YouTube — demonetization, algorithmic invisibility, strikes, policy shifts.