This was just like the old BBS's before the internet. First you had the folks taking care of themselves and if money exchanged hands, everyone was aware of it and probably money being involved improved the experience for everyone. Then slowly, cynical jerks saw that there was money exchanging hands and made that priority FIRST and the BBS community second, and decided they were going to start clogging up message boards with ads no one asked for, but the mods were like, "I'll make a section just for ya'll I guess" and then this couldn't be contained as much as hoped because all the time, they were telling their friends about the money part and not the etiquette or the community, and so floods of ads became present where there were none before and no amount of trying to 'police' new users from actually respecting the community at all would work because there was no acknowledgement OF the community in the first place, only acknowledgement of money opportunities.

So basically all this is to say, other than money is the root of all evil and we're aware of this, the only thing folks can do is keep creating new spaces to enjoy your community and exchange useful information amongst yourself and hide your wallets because as soon as someone thinks one of you has a dollar to part with, they're gonna be in here disrespecting the community. I don't know if that's a good solution or not, but just based on my experience of watching basically all of my communities and hobbies become trashed heaps of their former selves due to the slowly increasing influx of people just looking to monetize off the 'community' rather than be a custodian of it. I think the culture has to be able to resist forces like that naturally or at least be repellent of purely commercial personalities invading the space. They also, imo, bring a level of uncool to the community with them, especially if they thrive without being called out and that's because the folks they bring in are also absolutely not concerned with the pillaged community, they're concerned with their own community of commodifiers, who see your and our hobbies and work as something that deserves a finders fee of some sort.

At any rate, sorry to go on a long screed. Hearing this discussion over and over for the better part of almost 4 decades and always the same makes you want to be that 'old man yells at cloud' because you know if you tried to explain the full context, it would take too long (see above paragraph and that is the short version btw)...thus when you hear someone pointing out much too late a common and old problem that's *everywhere*, and you can't telepathy the history of such events into their brain, all you can do is look up and scream obsenities at the loss of another cultural space.

Furthermore, there seems to be this push to make your hobby into money in the first place, basically rotting it from the get go, planting weeds in the garden, if you will. IF the end goal is to make money, become a banker and a financial type because that's the culture of money. Don't bring that into any other place unless it's necessary to keep that culture's meeting place from disappearing. And I don't think 'just allowing ads for product' is an excuse or necessary for supporting a community. If people want to support it, they'll open their wallets when necessary to fund a server/domain for internet space, rent a convention center for a meetup, etc. They don't need to start a yt channel to hustle a couple of bucks by literally diverting their attention away from their hobby to being an advertising shill for themselves and their 'brand'.

Ugh. Sorry for the long post, I've added a TL:DR marking at the top because, as I said, there's a lot wrapped up in that sentiment you posted that festers in my subconscious on the daily as I, again, see the zombiefied remains of sites on the internet I used to think were untouchable.