the article ends on a pitch for an ai bot making your paid posts. it's trash. the article itself is the kind of lazy trash you get when you start leaning into monitization. you're right, the fediverse isnt a monolith, not even inside distinct cultural regions.
for me at least. the answer to more media like this article appearing. so we grow an have more content and grow more. will be finding somewhere else to be. thats just the social media cycle. something cool gets made. a community starts forming. someone says "look at those idiots. dont they know how money works? a few of them could be making so much of it. i'll show them how and make some myself too". the rough edges of the space get smoothed out because if you want to make the site sucessful it should look more like how the sucessful spaces look. and a bunch of people move on to make something new again while bots have arguments with bots.
people think we didn't try talking first. telling them to fuck off, refuting their trash ideology or even trying to persuade them out of it. they loved that shit. they were there to talk but they were not there for any great debate. fuckers were there to recruit, it was preditory. they did not fuck off until it was clear we would make them, AND that we'd do it before they opened their mouths. they fucked off when the recruitment pool was closed to them.
guess i can see how on paper a bunch of kids living off pabst and shoving eachother around to loud music, was a good hunting ground. they read that particular room wrong though. and "punch them until they left" was they only way they were gonna go.