dba_afish said:
we also still have the one thing that other communities gave up and lost their cohesion because of it: websites. our own websites, not third party mass social media bullshit, actual community spaces.

Fair. I feel like the amount of individual/small commercial enterprises helps a lot, but that sort of capitalist entrepreneurship culture is a double edged sword because it means some corpo could come in and shift a large part of fandom culture by either pushing those small scale creators and artisans out of business or apply enough pressure to force them under their banner, and therefore under their control. It would drastically change the way furry media is created, presented, controlled, and consumed.