Nine years after hackers targeted Ashley Madison, the dating site for wannabe adulterers, many people still don't grasp what was truly chilling about the scandal, says Annalee Newitz

Found via the author’s Mastodon Post

Generally, the media has focused on the (mainly) men whose names and desires were taken from the company’s subscriber database and shared with the world. […] Ashley Madison was never really about that. Avid Life Media, its parent company, wasn’t in the business of sex, it was in the business of bots. Its site became a prototype for what social media platforms such as Facebook are becoming: places so packed with AI-generated nonsense that they feel like spam cages, or information prisons where the only messages that get through are auto-generated ads.

    • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioEnglish
      3·
      5 days ago

      I re-read it and loved the: “Always fasten your seatbelt on the Information Highway”, but I’m fairly certain that Malinda McColl wrote it (as part of the mini FAQ on which I expanded with her blessing).