I'm saying whoever is ransoming the data already has the data, the data is out of Newsblur's control, therefore the data is already leaked.
The data leak is past tense. It has already happened, not will happen. No amount of money will undo that. If that means they've lost you as a customer, that's how it is.
What we now need to know is what data was leaked?
[1]: which to be fair Newsblur, they are, but if a script kiddie hacks you using something so basic as a missing firewall rule.. Arguably not knowing Docker's quirks but using it anyway is the same damn thing as what script kiddies do. Sys kiddie if you will.
[2]: Why is that cause for celebration? Do you not have backups?
The attacker has offered to not publish if they are paid. Their word probably isn't worth much, but $1,000 seems like an affordable sum for a business to gamble on them being honest about it. And if Newsblur doesn't fix their security problems they'll be targeted again either way.
As someone who has a decade of data in Newsblur, if there's any chance that an affordable ransom will keep my data from spreading further I want Samuel to take it.
I paid Samuel and entrusted him with my data. Not too much, but enough for it to matter. When faced with a massive leak like this, he downplays everything, calls the hacker a "script kiddie" and calls this "good practice for what will be the first of many sleepless nights", looking at it only from a "service disruption" perspective.
So far we've gotten no indication of what's been leaked, if it contains deleted feeds, or what he's doing to prevent the data from being leaked by the hacker, if anything. He's been solely focused on restoring the service and ignoring the leak. Compared to not having access to an RSS reader for any random period of time, the leak is orders of magnitude more serious to me and I'd wager to most of Newsblur customers.
I honestly don't care if paying a ransom or interacting with the hacker makes him more likely to be targeted in the future, his duty towards his customers was to keep their private data private and not only he failed at that, but he doesn't even seem to register that as his main priority. As far as I'm aware, if he allows the data to leak publicly, then there's no "recovering from there", he's not getting any more of my money.