Conversely, if Sweeney saw users as
participants, for lack of a better word, this might be for ... the good?
For whatever you have in mind, the question was basically whether you see the users as the owners. I thought it is a misleading question because it is riffing on a legal notion of property and possession, without clearly characterising that property, leaving open any illegal aspect to be pointed out if that was your moral basis of the argument. And indeed, one could attempt a hyperbolic retort in which it should be definitely illegal, say, to change a running system. Or how is leninist marxism for a debatable mindset. Understandably you have rejected that debate. Of course the users are an integral part of the platform, and it's a consequential facet of the culture that some are already feeling sold-out.
Eventually it's kind of subjective, when everyone values the entity differently.