[JohnFen]

> 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.