The peculiar viewpoint you’re demonstrating in this comment is similar to Reddit’s. It’s not objectively wrong, but the calculus involved definitely looks weird

The peculiar viewpoint you’re demonstrating in this comment is similar to Reddit’s. It’s not objectively wrong, but the calculus involved definitely looks weird from the outside. How would you quantify the value of Hacker News to Y Combinator? You’re talking about it like it’s a cost centre, a charitable contribution to society; what proportion of Y Combinator’s revenue can be attributed to the brand and content marketing benefits which flow from the (almost) entirely unpaid contributions of HN users? The Firebase API now costs “quite a bit”; is that amount comparable to the income of a YC partner? How much should a third-party developer be compensated for the work of building a native client which brings HN to a wider audience or increases the engagement of its existing audience? How much should an HN user be compensated for their submissions and comments? Which people deserve to make money here and why? Who is “indirectly funding” whom?