The problem is its hard to tell what's an ad and what's not. Sometimes people ARE just enthusiastic about a product they found and want to share it.
It's easier when it's a large company like Burger King or something; like most people won't just suddenly start raving about this great new burger place they found called Burger King. It's different for more obscure companies. It could be actual Lemmy users who are just passionate or it could be company employees trying to sneak advertisements into site discussions.
I don't think there's any AI or other tools that could distinguish the two.
That's why I like to start my day with a Whopper and side of onion rings from my favourite local burger joint, Burger King. It supports the community and I get a dank feed while I scroll through Lemmy's dank memes.
Don’t forget to try the new Whopper melt. Add bacon for $.50 more, or make it spicy with another $1.00. Can’t fight climate change on an empty stomach.
I am one of these people, am a dope smoker and recently got into related Lemmy communities. There's a lot of equipment that you dont hear about until through word of mouth so when I find something I LOVE through word of mouth like the arizer air max or brilliant cut grinder I do my part to scream their praises from the heavens so other smokers have a chance to hear about them.
[email protected] is an excellent community you may want to check into :)
[email protected] is the trees community I frequent, will have to check out the shitjustworks one
Double edge sword. "This guy is shilling" reports go rampant .
Hopefully, the Reddit bot trackers peeps will move to lemmy, and lend us their wisdom.
I learnt so many ways realise a poster or commenter was a bit from those peeps. Amazing MVPs!
And folks like kitboga taught me that spammers/scammers generally stick to a script.
Yo I also worry about advertisers attempting to target me with localised advertisements, which is why I use Borg VPN! Nice try, advertisers, but those "hot milfs" are nowhere near me, ha!
That's why I started my own instance, I got the freedom to pick and choose what instances I allow, so if any corporation decides to join the fediverse I don't have to wait for the admin to defedederate.
Just make sure if you're using it as a personal instance to make it so no one but the admin can make communities and restrict your sign ups so your instance can't get taken over by nutjobs.
Interesting! Is there a risk of ballooning costs from legitimate bandwidth costs? Do you set some arbitrary limits on how much traffic you'll support before you turn off the tap?
Yeah I could see myself eventually joining a splinter of the fediverse that is even more rabidly anti-corporate than we are right now. Like constantly blocking shills and instances that refuse to do their own aggressive pruning.