@atomicpoet

I think we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions, we have some 'brands' on here if we say count @nextcloud as a brand,but they are open source and not trying to target people with adverts to directly sell (we can download and use freely).

I assume we want to encourage people who are artists or sold traders, that is still a contentious issue and people are probably, quite rightly, concerned. So we need the right balance.

We have some really talented people here, esp in the science community, links to papers, journal articles are really good, and I follow those who post them. However I can also boost what I find interesting, but what my followers may find interesting, esp if I am aware people are looking for jobs or opportunities. If I can't help boosting that post means others see it.

Algotithms, would get totally messed up with that as I would then get bombarded with stuff I am not actually interested in as those algotithms don't take in to account the above thinking.

We have lots of small and medium size businesses who are struggling against the huge entity called amazon and others, so they may not be 'brands' as such but each business is a brand if they have their own made products.

I would like to think they are welcome here to promote and sell products or at least link to their websites so people can buy.

I am more concerned about the huge companies who have the ability to pay an army of people just to boost or artifically inflate how things are seen on here. However without trending you could boost this post a million times, there is no trending anyway.