Asklemmy

Not sure if that would be the end of the world. Something needs to pay for hosting and companies will want to use social media or may want public forums.

Could be an ad supported instance or a nonprofit with membership fees to pay for hosting. There could also be an instance for hosting company based topics and mod accounts. On Reddit a lot of games or companies had an official sub and accounts. Running the magazine/community could be a service. Especially if there were some extra tools or settings for companies or company accounts. Another possibility is having a closed and private instance for internal users like a slack or internal wiki.

Corporate instances would be a sign that this thing is gaining traction. Obviously there are downsides, but it would give a lot more credibility to the fediverse and get more people to give it a try. And someone has to pay the hosting costs anyway. Financing will increasingly become an issue as user numbers grow. The point where you can't just do this as a hobby project any more is going to come sooner rather than later.

There are already corporate instances, like Trump’s Truth Social.

I was actually just thinking this when thinking about switching to @pixelfed i was thinking what if Instagram just converted to federated instance. How that would look

Let em do it.. with how this whole thing works, it's not like they'll hold any type of power or sway with in the feddiverse. We will just have more options as far as content, and the ability to come together to defederate, or just block on your end.

Wow that would really be a wonderful development honestly.

This wouldn't be a problem at all, or possibly even a good thing. If one instance is supported by shitty ads then people won't go there and they'll sign up elsewhere. That's the whole value of the fediverse - choice and no lock-in.