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Lee Hepner on Revenue · ViralLoop

Post by Lee Hepner on X

Lee Hepner@LeeHepner

Oh look, the Trump-Vance @FTC suddenly cares about surveillance pricing, a near year after killing Lina Khan’s study of the practice. Cynicism aside, the Instacart expose is exploding for good reason. It’s a morality tale about being scammed, and Instacart is the villain.

215 likes5 repliesPosted Dec 18, 2025

View the original on X Written by Lee Hepner. Captured Sep 4, 2026.

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Viral score

Based on absolute engagement — the platform doesn’t expose follower counts here, so large accounts score higher.

From likes, comments.

Why it worked

Short enough to read in full without expanding, which removes a step before the point lands.
Short sentences keep the pace up, so the reader never has to re-read a line.

The mechanics

Hook: Plain observation
Structure: Hook → Landing
Style: Conversational paragraphs at a steady pace.
Tone: plain, matter-of-fact
Written for: Founders and operators

Analysis by ViralLoop — not written by the original author.

Topics

Revenue Science

Posts built the same way

Netflix is deliberately choosing to pay people to create sexualized content for children. Freedom of speech should be respected, but this is PAID speech. Netflix is going out of their way and reaching into their wallet to push this.

Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.

Marques Brownlee

Memory price hikes have finally started hitting Apple. Today, they raised some base prices: Macbook Neo: $599 -> $699 Macbook Air: $1099 -> $1299 Macbook Pro: $1699 -> $1999 Mac Studio: $1999 -> $2499 iPad Air $599 - $749 iPad Pro: $999 -> $1199

Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth)

Breakdown of the Black Friday data tells us: -Consumer is weakening. -95% of sales volume was financed. -67% of that intends not to pay off within 30 days. -Roughly $1B was spent using BNPL models which are the worst debt. This points to a *really* unhealthy economy.

Melania, the documentary no human wants to see, has a budget of $40 million, $28 million of which is “licensing fees” paid to the Trumps. FYI to all the MAGAs who fart out “hE dOnAtEs HiS saLaRy!!”, that one $28 million Bezos bribe is **70 years** worth of presidential salary.

New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.

More from Lee Hepner

Two things remain true: First, there was never a meaningful way to opt out. The only meaningful consent is requiring opt in. Meta didn’t even provide notice. Second, all of your content is still being used to train Meta AI. And Meta can still do whatever they want with it.

No one - not a single person - created an Instagram account with the expectation that their photos would be used to generate AI advertisements. If users had to proactively opt in to this, no one would. Instead, Meta doesn’t even notify you it’s happening.

This should make your blood boil. Amazon is using its market power to coerce major retailers to hike prices at Walmart and Target. It is pouring kerosene on an affordability crisis. Forcing price hikes to preserve market share is illegal monopoly maintenance, clear as day.

In 2016, the price of a Netflix Standard w/o Ads plan was $9.99. Following its second increase this year, it will be $19.99. That’s a 100% increase against 39% inflation. 47% of users say they pay too much for streaming services. Netflix’s gross *profit* in 2025 was $21.9B.

Enough with the defeatism. Stop saying Paramount won. Stop saying it now owns CNN. It's very weird to see so many people who have been covering this every day relent to inevitability. This deal will be challenged. Here's California AG Bonta throwing a big flag on the play:

What a total farce. This sham settlement violates the first thing we tell every lawmaker: Fixing prices based on public data sets is still price fixing! No ban on auto-accepts. No data disgorgement or monetary penalty. This is lipstick on a pig and terrible for renters.