Sorry, I don’t get this argument. Is not being able to avoid corporations justified because people are forced to use email? Social media is also becoming a lot less optional these days. I know a lot of small businesses that only share location and contact information on Facebook or Instagram, because they don’t want to invest in building their own website.
I also hate this concept that there is a hierarchy of users in the Fediverse, the “core users” and I suppose, the “idiots who migrated over from a bigger social media site”. Look how well Lemmy performed from 2019 to mid-2023 with only “core users”, it was a graveyard. As long as a real person has an account on the Fediverse that they actively use, they are a Fediverse user, and they must be considered when discussing the Fediverse in general.
There will always be instances that do not federate with corporate instances, just like how you can set up an email server that blocks Gmail and Outlook. But I don’t want to see a Fediverse where these instances are dead and marginalized because corporate instances consumed most of the Fediverse.
Many of the online stores I shop at have offers like “leave a review and you’ll get a coupon for your next purchase”, so they get a lot of pointless reviews like “It arrived. Didn’t try the product yet. 5 stars”
I find that there’s a very strong correlation between the average age of the customer base and the uselessness of the reviews.