Reader died because Google was switching to social media, not because people did.

> It would have been hard to make that product evil.

You can just treat RSS data as content to bring in new users, while building your lock through other means. Sharing, recommendations, algo feeds, commenting, and, eventually, posting. Then apply demands to RSS feeds, leveraging your audience, and lock out new ones.

This is all very easy and the playbook is well understood at this point.