@n8chz @macberg @MartyFouts @DJGummikuh @GossiTheDog The first post is self promotional but boosts are just advertising. I think the main difference currently is that there’s no money (or other tangible incentive) changing hands.

That’s not guaranteed though. If someone collects a hundred thousand followers on Mastodon, companies are likely to start asking them to boost posts in exchange for enticements. The only differences between that and something like LinkedIn are that the reach is limited to people who follow the big account and the money goes to the person who did the boost (who is, at least, explicitly linking their reputation to it) and not the platform.

Nothing in the Fediverse is intrinsically immune to advertising, though being able to flag accounts as spam and have them blocked (and possibly their instances if they fill up with marketing drones) may help.