I think there's an assumption that a community based around a corporation is automatically going to be used for something nefarious and underhanded. Is that definitely the case? There are corporations that have "community managers" whose job is specifically to keep the community running smoothly from the corporate side - examples being the developer community that surrounds the likes of Apple and Microsoft. That doesn't make the community any less of a real community though.
You are not wrong, there can be (and I think it gels with his post) communities that have no management, communities that are successfully managed by someone who is paid by a private corporation, etc.
The word community isnt just a gathering of people.
I think the deeper point though is that this type of role can in fact have great power over the community, and that it is clear where the hand that feeds them is coming from.
For example:
In the SQL Server (MS) community, there are professionals that earn an "MVP" status, which is Microsoft's acknowledgement of the work and evangelism they have done in regards to the product.
Recently, a guy named Brent Ozar (an MVP) called Microsoft out on some bull they were pulling, moving features to enterprise edition and limiting RAM until you went to enterprise licensing (SQL 2014).
Plenty of people in the community of the same stature came out to warn him to be quiet, or to finally say something after someone with more weight brought up the issue.
This kind of community management automatically sets people's biases up to not only say what the corporation is doing is right; even if they personally think otherwise they avoid speaking out about it because they would lose this shiny medal.
There are different types of communities, and judging them isn't really a high-value pursuit.
Think about things like the "SHARE" community around IBM mainframe and other products. Obviously it's in IBM's interest to have people getting together talking about doing more stuff with IBM crap... but it's very valuable for those users as well.
but the it isnt a role to manage a community as much as to manage the relation between the community and the corporation. So "community relation manager" would be more appropriate.
