> That's not altruism. Those meaningful relationships help the company/project the community was built around.
Which brings up another aspect of this whole issue -- we're talking about companies figuring out how to exploit the human need for community in order to increase profits. The companies themselves are not encouraging real community, they're farming people. Companies are not people, do not have the best interests of people in mind, but pretend like they are.
That's like saying grocery stores are exploiting the human need for food.
A healthy community benefits the people in it as much or more than the company behind it. As you identified, humans have a need to connect with other humans. And often they want to connect around a product, service or hobby that they share with other humans.
It should also come as no surprise here on Hacker News that humans also really like to tell companies what they think about their product, and how to make it better. They also like the appreciation they receive from helping others use the product better.
A company-backed community serves a need that the members of that community have. Nobody is being forced into it or exploited. We're giving each other a mutual benefit that, as long as it remains mutually beneficial, we are happy to keep investing in.
> That's like saying grocery stores are exploiting the human need for food.
No, because a grocery store's purpose is to sell a product. That product happens to be food. That's very, very different from a company leveraging human emotional need in order to sell something else entirely.
> A healthy community benefits the people in it as much or more than the company behind it.
I would argue that a healthy community doesn't have a company behind it -- even if the community is centered around a particular company's products.
> A company-backed community serves a need that the members of that community have. Nobody is being forced into it or exploited.
I think we have a fundamental disagreement here. And that's OK.
A company-backed community serves the company. The proof of that is what happens when the company-backed community starts becoming too critical of the company -- then the truth of the relationship rapidly becomes very clear.
Which brings up another aspect of this whole issue -- we're talking about companies figuring out how to exploit the human need for community in order to increase profits. The companies themselves are not encouraging real community, they're farming people. Companies are not people, do not have the best interests of people in mind, but pretend like they are.
It's very distasteful at the least.