I think there's a good bit of truth to that. Even the platforms where self promotion is a rule violation such as Wikipedia and Reddit tend to be dominated by cl

I think there's a good bit of truth to that. Even the platforms where self promotion is a rule violation such as Wikipedia and Reddit tend to be dominated by cliques of unpaid mods with an agenda either ideological or related to the interests of a government's national security apparatus. The main reason why I'm pessimistic about the prospects for Threads to be a success is because it seems to be leaning very strongly towards LinkedIn on the scale of authenticity vs inauthenticity and that is death for a social media platform unless people literally use it to find jobs. I don't think most actual human beings want to use a platform dominated by corporations and people trying to turn themselves into a "brand". They're basically attracting all of the spam accounts from Twitter and amplifying them which might be a good way to attract advertisers but it isn't a good way to attract users.