Scribd having a lot of unique content isn't a feature; it's an observed state. There is no reason why Scribd would exclusively be able to offer that, and any other PDF host wouldn't. It's simply a consequence of a lot of people using a service.
Scribd having amassed so much data due to their sheer size is not a point in favour of Scribd; if anything, it makes the walled-garden approach of Scribd even more frustrating.
Are you sure? If an academic paper were to become lost from the internet because Internet Archive hadn't archived it and no other site mirrored it, then the world wouldn't be worse off as a result? That seems dubious.
And if it's true that the world is better off for Scribd having the paper, then it must be true that Scribd is beneficial to the world. The fact that people don't like it is irrelevant.
(I created a new account not to dodge downvotes, but because HN wouldn't let me continue submitting replies to this thread with my other one.)
But the alternative to "Scribd having the paper" is not necessarily "no other site having it". If someone uploaded it to Scribd, why wouldn't they upload it to some other site instead?
Your argument is equivalent to saying: the registrar of google.com is MarkMonitor, therefore if MarkMonitor didn't exist, we wouldn't have Google.
> The fact that people don't like it is irrelevant.
It's really not, though. Scribd is terrible in terms of its user experience, and frankly it's interface is horrid in my opinion, but it has content that isn't found anywhere else (which is a plus). Those two are not mutually exclusive, you're drawing a false dichotomy. *shrugs
Scribd having a lot of unique content isn't a feature; it's an observed state. There is no reason why Scribd would exclusively be able to offer that, and any other PDF host wouldn't. It's simply a consequence of a lot of people using a service.
Scribd having amassed so much data due to their sheer size is not a point in favour of Scribd; if anything, it makes the walled-garden approach of Scribd even more frustrating.