never heard of Amnezia

You said that before though

GPTurfing?

That annoys me as well. They call it “astroturfing” because it’s fake grassroots. I wonder if we should call this “cyberturfing.”

I’ve only skimmed but:

provide an accessible interface at account setup

They don’t even define “account.” They have a definition of “account holder” that makes no sense.

Are all devices required to have user accounts? There was a time when home computers did not have such things.

The steady exodus from Elon Musk’s X has benefited smaller, independent alternatives such as … German-developed Mastodon

So somebody took a look at the modern web and thought “Hey, this is pretty good, but you know what would make it even better? Even more shit you didn’t ask for popping up in your face with every click!”

There was a time when Amazon was not full of scummy rip-off products, when it was not playing games with prices, when it was not a cloud-computing powerhouse, and you know what happened?

That’s right, they crushed their adversaries (retail shopping) and earned billions in profits. They won.

But somehow that’s not enough winning, there isn’t enough winning until all the value has been vacuumed up from the world.

2026: Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters

2025: Substack’s “Nazi problem” won’t go away after push notification apology

2024: Substack founders make statement that Nazis will be tolerated on the platform

2023: Substack Has a Nazi Problem

My first Fediverse account was on Pixelfed. I am nobody, but I immediately attracted a couple dozen followers. All blank profiles, all followed exactly five accounts, all suspiciously algorithmic names. They’ve all gone quiet.

Disingenuous social media participation is everywhere. I think we might call it “cyberturfing.”