Ask Lemmy

Profit-seeking is a cancer that rots humanity and there's nothing else a business truly strives to do other than seek profit, every other action is a means to that end.

Can't give em an inch!! Even the ones you like!

We gotta actively be mean to companies or else we lose what we have as humans and this becomes another soulless marketplace like so many other spaces in the digital and physical world.

you can simply mute or block the accounts and move on.

Reddit has proved that no, you can't just do that. Welcome to the age where a thousand bots are being banned every hour, and a thousand more accounts created to take their places. Welcome to the age where grassroots word-of-mouth recommendations are mass produced, tailored to appear natural while preying upon known psychological vulnerabilities of humanity. Welcome to the age where every joe schmoe who's trying to bust into the business wants to leverage the advertising power of trillion-dollar conglomerates to manipulate you into buying their alibaba dropshipped trash.

While some people like yourself don't want the Fediverse to grow

Wanting businesses to stay out of social media is not a case of "don't want the fediverse to grow", it's a case of "would rather the fediverse grew naturally as it has so far rather than grow like a cancer with no care for the host body". This is a bad faith argument and a logical fallacy. Don't do this again.

Honestly you should delete this whole post and rethink your life - that is, if you're not actually a shill being paid to do this.

Politely, shove it.

Don't tall about growth or luxury. Those are masks for what business really does, monetize and enshittify.

It's clear what happens when you allow that kind of behavior from businesses. The Fediverse won't be any different, businesses of any size will ruin it.

If this was someplace more commercial like reddit, I'd probably feel ok with occasionally spamming the charity I volunteer at, as it ties in with the content I share, and of course we would enjoy donations. There's 2 reasons I don't do it here.

This space I feel is meant to be for users, by users. I don't want anyone to feel they owe me something for posting, sharing, or interacting with them. I'm here because I like most of you all. I think it's great we still have an online space like this.

I also think while we need assistance, we are from all over the world, and I think people here should support their local direct action groups before they toss anything my way. Your local groups need you more than you need me. I tell everyone to kick in to them before even thinking of me. The sole exception was the LemmySilver contest, but that was by the World admin team, so that was an organization offering specifically charity money. Even then, I'm pretty sure I asked the community if they were cool with it going to my group.

I just like that money really doesn't come into play in Lemmy. Shit is expensive these days and it feels like everyone is looking to get a slice from everyone else. Keeping this place non-commercial and with nobody looking for a transactional relationship seems like a huge plus.

Unfortunately I don't have a solid answer for that because everything I have seen interacts with the community in different ways. Something like that would require some market research... In a respectful way that doesn't go against community rules or annoy the mods/admins.