Not sure about the impact of the so-called public campaign(which - to my perspective - just seemed to be a few comments) - I just stopped using EE when the SEO

Not sure about the impact of the so-called public campaign(which - to my perspective - just seemed to be a few comments) - I just stopped using EE when the SEO crap started. I didn't start seeing SO links until some time later - until then I trawled through forums and other less centralized resources for answers. The problem I had with SE wasn't really the paywall (or fake-out paywall in case of below-the-fold). Well: okay, that was a problem in that once it started, I stopped using them. But I didn't blame them for that by itself - they have to make money. I just felt that the value EE gave me in terms of the quality of its answers didn't justify the money they wanted, so I moved on. The problem was really the spamming. This is when I took an active dislike to EE - paywall content completely consumed the first page or two of search results to any technical question I searched for on Google. Or link farms that fed into paywalled EE content. That was when I started getting actively annoyed about it - but this was several months after I stopped using it. I think "mistreating" is perfectly appropriate in this context - because during this window, it actually cost me valuable time to not use EE. Time spent paging through results, clicking on link farms before I realized they were link farms -- time that could have been spent actually working on the solution of my problem of the moment. I'm not disputing that the CEO did what he thought was necessary. But there's no questoin that he picked wrong, and it's a little disingenuous to claim that the fact the company needed to earn money somehow made his choice more acceptable.