Oh, I think I must have miscommunicated something. I was comparing Cable/TV companies to ISPs and TV networks to websites. I agree that Reddit is not comparab

Oh, I think I must have miscommunicated something. I was comparing Cable/TV companies to ISPs and TV networks to websites. I agree that Reddit is not comparable to a Cable/TV company. As in, end users are customers/clients of Cable/TV companies and ISPs because they pay them money, but they do not pay TV networks and websites. Further, advertisers are customers/clients of TV networks and websites but they are not clients of Cable/TV companies and ISPs (generally speaking). The only significant claim I'm making is that social media users are not customers/clients unless they are giving money to the websites. Mostly it's advertisers giving the money. Also, I know that the content of social media websites is both created and consumed by users, but nevertheless the social media companies operate those websites, store and process the content, and provide the content created by everyone to everyone. This doesn't make the users into customers however, because they still aren't giving money to website. An analogy would be a TV show where the creators just gave the show to the network for free, and then watched it at home. Or maybe, a news station that films people's real lives and then uses that to sell ads. As for Hacker News, we are also not the customers. Maybe you could argue that investors are customers, since HN is a promotional vehicle for YC. But, that's kind of murky.