Noncompetes are basically unenforceable in California, you can make people sign them but they’re about as useful as if they were made out of toilet paper

Go to literally any other instance and create an account there

Use a non Lemmy.world account and you’ll have more success

One other thing I don’t see people pointing out is that Lemmy is basically a successor to classic web forums, so companies may run their own so they can have full control over the experience and moderation like for movies, series’s, or games, and in which case they would be more than happy to eat the cost of hosting. For example there could be a Lemmy.Disney.com instance to act as a Disney sanctioned discussion zone for their products where they could put tons of moderation rules in place.