There is value tied to free users, but also, not sure I want my work and data in a product that’s OK with DoD mass surveillance and I’m not sure my customers would want their data pumping through it either.
One of my neighbors has a fleet of solar-powered, zero-emission, self-fertilizing, biodiversity-boosting autonomous lawn-care bots. He calls them tortoises.
The interface also allow to comment, post and interact with the original HN platform. Credentials are stored locally and are never sent to any server, you can check the source code here: https://github.com/GabrielePicco/hacker-news-rich.