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But also ironically, it's almost heartwarming these days to see blogspam that's not machine-generated! A real live human cared enough about an article to write a brief (perhaps only barely substantial, but at least handwritten) take on it!

It's reminiscent, perhaps, of the feel and motivation for Tumblr reblogs - and Tumblr continues to be vibrant by virtue of this culture: https://www.tumblr.com/engineering/189455858864/how-reblogs-... (2019)

Now, is driving attention and reputation to their site (in the broadest senses) part of a blogspammer/reblogger's motivation? Absolutely!

But should we be concerned about rewarding their act of curation, as long as there is at least some level of genuine curation intent? A world where that answer is categorically "no" would be antithetical, I think, to the concept of the participatory web.

"heartwarming ... To see blogspam" the internet was a mistake

The internet was great, everything we did with it in the last 20 years with it was the mistake. Collimating in a comment that blogspam can now be one of the positive notes in the hellscape we are building.

A very useful hellscape though, for all its flaws

The internet IS great. The problem is similar to everything else in the world: the ratio of idiots to smart people using it is widely in favor of the idiots and they get to influence where it goes, how it operates and many other things.

In other words, democracy sucks but we have not found something so much better that it would pay for the benefit of freedom for everyone...

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culminating

Thanks, that's the right word. Now at least you know the comment wasn't written by AI

It won't be long until AI makes spelling, grammar and usage errors, if it's trained on things like message boards where people still don't know the difference between were, we're and where, lose vs. loose, affect vs. effect and wary vs. weary.

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