…Nor Piefed.

This particular post encapsulates it perfectly:

https://lemmy.world/post/48552575/24407224

It rose to #1 on the front page.

Yet check the source, and it’s a blue checkmark Tweeter. He pays for Twitter, he appears to be a stereotypical Silicon Valley vulture, all-in on OpenAI and Anthropic. And assuming they aren’t AI generated, he a posts a deluge engagement bait garbage all day:

He doesn’t care. People like him are the reason the internet is broken, yet the vast majority of Lemmy just nodded away.

---

But this is just one of a hundred examples. Every day I scroll here, I see a repost of some ragebait Tweet, and when I go check the source, it’s some bot or content farmer, completely disingenuous.

And they’re paying Elon Musk for extra attention.

And it’s all from a site that, to me, represents everything wrong with the internet. The purely algorithmic discovery, the engagement rat race, the echo chamber effects, the hot takes from pro influencers without even the pretense of selecting for credibility. Not to speak of the influence campaigns, all funding Elon Musk.

---

I downvote every blue checkmark post I see.

It makes me sad to see them on the front page.

With rare exceptions, it doesn’t belong on the Fediverse. It goes against its spirit. And it pollutes the site with X’s engagement bait.