The viral ones will be here soon, if they aren't already. There's just no stopping them in a user-driven content model. If you allow genuine users to discuss specific brands (which IMO is an important part of a healthy free market, maybe the most important part), then you won't be able to stop paid shills from talking about brands in ways they've been paid to do so. And they'll have the advantage of time because while others need to do other things for their living, posting is them making their living.
I don't mind ppl talking about brands. I rarely saw it even on reddit if I didn't look for them or were in a sub about a product. Reviews are great and shouldn't be stopped. I don't see them as ads.
Post and comments about products can be reported/down voted by users and taken down by mods if they are not following the rules in the community. We as users can also block these ppl.
They haven't paid for a space on lemmy so they can only hope ppl will see it and that it will stay up.
Go and look at reddit, half of the feed is just ads. And I saw another post that they have now made the ads so big you can only see one or two posts because the ads take up so much space.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if part of a reason for the site redesign was to make posts less consistently sized so that ads don't look so out of place in the middle of your feed. And the other part is to encourage a quicker return to scrolling so that you'll see the next ad quicker. And I agree, fuck ads.