Yes what goes around comes around for these people. They should know better. But today I spent a bit of time thinking about free, and this is the dark side of free.

It's sort of like why Marxism didn't work in society. Marx would have understood whuffie. But he was an idealist that didn't understand that altruism can easily be over powered by greed.

Whuffie is very much a from each according to his/her ability and to each according to her/his need kind of philosophy. And like Marxism it works on a volunteer basis. A co-op is communism that works, the Soviet Union was coerced communism. Doomed to fail.

Social media interaction is the same. You went to them and asked for something (they likely felt mildly coerced by your request & resented it), if they had come to you, they would have distributed freely as you expected. You asked for free, they did not volunteer it. Tactical error I suspect.

Like free infrastructure someone has to pay the bills. So to with your request to help sales. You expected free, which is why you were disappointed.

Reality bites.