Yes, but getting angry at a guy who doesn’t shower and lets cockroaches crawl all over themself over a dispute about video games when you are a multi-billionaire is arguably more pathetic.

If you are willing to pay that much you can also just employ someone to clean and dust for you.

Teledildonics is a thing so I wouldn’t be to sure if they don’t fell anything.

I am sure they don’t want this information published, my fear is that your blog article about that company might spark further articles about them. This engagement might outweigh the negative effects of your investigation.

I simply consider what these AI fraudsters do trolling. They want to make people angry so they complain about them. Hopefully your investigation gave them more than what they bargained for.

I thought about that a bit but I am unsure if the kind of response, whether emotional or factual, matters much. How much can you control the conversation if the entity you are discussing only wants their name published? Sure there will be a few GDPR letters and maybe an inquiry by some regulatory body. Satisfyingly annoying to them, but compared to the cost of an advertising campaign; would this not be just a drop in the bucket? I don’t think it would have been entirely out of the question for your blog post to be at the top of hackernews for the day, and this is exactly the crowd that company wants to reach. In fact, I would wager that the HN crowd approves of these methods.

It’s good that you don’t link to their website but in my opinion not engaging with that spam at all is the more effective strategy. Just don’t feed the trolls, report their spam and move on.

I fear you played right into their hands by writing about them. Any engagement is of benefit to these AI grifters.

Until I read a proper interpretation of the law by a lawyer, I will consider these just knee-jerk reactions by forum owners who can’t fathom being held responsible for the things their forum members post if they don’t moderate. There was similar hand-wringing when GDPR and Article 13 passed. Things are probably going to be fine.

edit: After a bit of more research, shit like this is why small forums aren’t excluded.

What a ridiculous overreaction.

Cassandra.