Look at Brian's comment history: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bthdonohue https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bthdonohue. He's not active on HN,

Look at Brian's comment history: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bthdonohue https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bthdonohue. He's not active on HN, but he jumps in for quick damage control and "clarification" when people have vaguely privacy-related or operational questions about Instapaper. When followup questions are posed, particularly more difficult ones, he never responds. So I find it very unlikely you're going to get an answer here, because this account is clearly designed to do low-touch public reassurance without much commitment or transparency. Now take a look at Instapaper's privacy policy: https://www.instapaper.com/privacy https://www.instapaper.com/privacy. In particular, direct your attention to the following, under "The Way We Use Information": (P1) We use the information you provide to operate Instapaper's features. We do not share this information with outside parties except to the extent necessary to accomplish Instapaper's functionality. (P3) We use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design Instapaper, to suggest popular content to users, and to share with advertisers and publishers. For example: ... (P6) In the future, we may sell, buy, merge, or partner with other companies or businesses. In such transactions, user information may be among the transferred assets. The "License Grant" section of the Terms of Service is also good reading, because it indicates that they can use user data in perpetuity, even after closing your Instapaper account (presumably until you explicitly request your information being deleted). What do you suppose that is used for? Maybe Brian can enlighten us. My hypothesis is that Instapaper, either from the outset or somewhere prior to being acquired by Pinterest, developed a monetization model dependent upon selling user data (or derivative analysis/features of user data) to third parties. Most likely this is provided for market research or advertising optimization. Note that in their Privacy Policy Instapaper also states they use cookies "and other tracking technology" (and they specifically do not enumerate the full number of reasons which they do so, aside from normal login and session maintenance) in their Privacy Policy. Further, I'm going to go ahead and assume this can be explained through basic cynicism. This monetization model was probably never terribly significant for Pinterest, except insofar as it was useful for internal discussions and inspirations for ways Pinterest could improve upon their own user data analysis. When GDPR came along, this probably tipped the scales to make Instapaper a net liability for the company (and not one in line with its financial or brand goals). Thus we have Instapaper being cut lose, yet again.