I have not seen unbridled moral outrage. Certainly not from me or the original article. I did not see anybody say that they were ruining this guy's life. Including the guy. After long and deep experience he feels that Tumblr has contempt for their users, and he is now returning the favor.

I think the easy way to resolve the apparent distance between our opinions ("they are acting like dicks" vs "I would expect this") is that current corporate culture often sees it as ok to be dickish towards customers.

I also think the, "Who cares? If Tumblr is being stupid they're being stupid and will pay for it by losing users and brand equity," bit is self-contradictory. I think whole let-the-marketplace-decide thing is morally vacuous; it implies that anything profitable is good. But if you use that as a moral standard, you have to approve of discussions like this because discussing products and companies is how the market decides.

Also, I feel you on Facebook. I practically fell to my knees at a conference begging one of their platform honchos to start some sort of "trusted app" program so we could distinguish an actually useful product from all the viral horseshit. Ah well; now I have another kind of business that is on the "never do that again" list: big bets on other people's platforms.