That’s not what I am saying.
In my opinion the forum is a altruistic area. Is the value I provide tailoring the posts by up voting and down voting not valuable? Is the value I provide by summarizing and or giving interpretations of the articles posted here not valuable? Or engaging in thoughtful honest discussion not valuable?
I believe they are.
Do I feel entitled to some profit because of my input on this forum? No I do not.
I give this work because I provide my value to this site voluntarily, honestly, many hours of my day, altruisticly, to build a better community and discussion. I don’t demand money because I receive a community in return.
What I am saying is that this kind of stuff will segment our community, by creating a profitable segment of the community and an unprofitable segment of community, implicitly creating a “correct” and “incorrect” way. Beyond that it will introduce people to our community who care less about furthering this forum, and more about making profit.
Remember YouTube before the partner program and video responses and how much more engaged and equal that community was? And what it is now with most every prominent channel being sponsored on top of ad breaks and product placement?
Obviously, if a person wants to dedicate their full time to some art and wants money for it, they should, and I’m excited for what they produce, but this is not where to do it.
But you don’t have vibrant thoughtful debates about world events in target, you don’t purchase microwaves at the library. You go to stores to buy stuff, you go to forums to discuss stuff.
Content creators can create their own site, their own patreon, or whatever - they can freely submit their work to our forum for feedback and an audience, and they can even link someone the link to their store if they ask - but introducing the profit angle directly to our forum and integrating it in will be the beginning of the end for this community as it is. The first crack of enshitification.
Roughly 12,600 7/11’s in the US, so a 0.01% chance of any individual 7/11 getting a car on a given day, or a 1 in a thousand chance.
According to this https://slate.com/business/2022/06/car-crash-buildings-how-many.html about a 100 cars crash into buildings each day, so 7/11 makes up 1% of building crashes, but that tracks since a lot of people go to there for quick needs with distracted minds.
I don’t have much of a point, but the statistics don’t paint a some scary point that I think the lawyers are trying to make.