As someone who was annoyed by it at the time, I don't think it's a good example of that.

This was in an era of much more limited upstream bandwidth. The p2p nature was obscured from non-technical users in some implementations. So on and so on. I'm sure there are plenty of writeups from that era detailing why it was a bad idea.

These companies already used capable CDNs to distribute patches. It was a way for them to shift their CDN bill onto their paying customers.

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mitxela 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I think it's like residential proxies. People get upset about "it's using my thing!" even though it has literally no effect on them.

	▲	bayindirh 33 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		When you have barely the upstream bandwidth to send the ACK stream of your downloads, anything sending something becomes a big burden on your system. Not everyone has the luxury of fully symmetric internet connections even in this age. Yes, my uplink speeds are absurd when compared to a decade ago, but when I ratio it to my downlink, it's still slow. I have no comment on residential proxies. Somebody doing something in my name is unacceptable to put it very mildly.
	▲	mh- 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't know how to respond to that, because it has quite a few negative effects on them..