Comment on Rule 2 Clarifications and New Rule proposal I’ve gotten through (I believe) a

• curbstickle@anarchist.nexus ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Why is it better that I shill for a company I’m getting kickbacks from (some VPN providers excel at this game) rather than one I’m responsible for?

  I’m sorry, I don’t understand the issue here.

  They would be held to the same rule, and both examples you give are the same. If you work for a company or own the company you are still making a self- promotional post for a company, and the rule applies.

  Judge the message and topic, not the messenger (as long as they are human acting in good faith and not “written with help by AI”, obv).

  Same statement here - if the message is a self-promo post, that is the type of post the rule applies to. This is quite literally what’s being described.

  And I would actually be much more interested in seeing a post from a founder talking about things their company is doing relevant to self-hosters, vs yet another post of “which provider is best right now and what do you use?” or “Company X currently has a sale/launched product Y”.

  You seem to be vastly in the minority.

  I’ll point out that this:

  things their company is doing relevant to self-hosters

  Does not happen in the first place. They make a post about their software, and generally get downvoted hard, the comments become very harsh, and within a fee days we had a meta thread about it.

  While it might filter out some good stuff, I would be all for a ban of any promotion of commercial or proprietary products and services alltogether but allow for self-hostable and in particular FLOSS stuff (where I guess some carve-out or clever formulation could be made to allow for commercial but self-hostable software - either stance on that one seems fine to me).

  So a more restrictive rule?

  This is practically a jump to the complete opposite of what you just said.

  I’m sorry, I’m trying to understand where the disconnect is here, and I’m really struggling to see it.

  original

  • ken@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    If you work for a company or own the company you are still making a self- promotional post for a company, and the rule applies. So if the exact same post is posted by a friend instead it’s suddenly accepted? Why is self-promo meaningfully less desired than third-party-promo if they have similar results?

    You seem to be vastly in the minority. Might be! That one’s framed as just personal preference and not policy suggestion :)

    So a more restrictive rule? More restrictive in one sense (what content and what’s ok to “promote” for) but more allowing in another (you can talk about something even if you work there).

    original

    • curbstickle@anarchist.nexus ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      So if the exact same post is posted by a friend instead it’s suddenly accepted?

      If that friend is actively participating in the fediverse and not coming in just to post constantly about a product… Then yes, which the employee/owner/whatever could also just do.

      Seems like pretty far into edge case territory though.

      Why is self-promo meaningfully less desired than third-party-promo if they have similar results?

      Because that post ties to that person on the fediverse, not someone just coming in to blast marketing materials then disappear. Its less about the promo part and more about a way to manage / prevent a constant influx of spammy self promotion hit and runs.

      Might be! That one’s framed as just personal preference and not policy suggestion because I don’t think “allow all things I like and ban everything I don’t” makes for good governance ;)

      If its what the community is interested in, its exactly the governance model that fits IMO.

      And just like this rule, if the community preference changes, then so would the rule.

      More restrictive in one sense (what content and what’s ok to “promote” for) but more allowing in another (you can talk about something even if you are involved or associated).

      Except that would already be allowed under the current rule, the only change is that non-free wouldn’t be eligible for posting at all.

      original