There's a dust-up over an AI ad from Bookshop.org. But they didn't use AI; Meta's ad platform automatically created an AI "variation" of the original, non-AI content.
I went to disable this crap in our Shiraki Press ad account, and got served a popup *demanding a reason why*.
Fuck Meta for this. Consent matters. We've just pulled all paid advertising from their platforms.
I'll have more this Friday on The Hellscape: https://buttondown.com/thehellscape
Oct 17, 2026, 7:44 PM@joshsutphin Damn, that is absolutely disgusting. I'm second-hand angry now, fuck.
@xgranade It feels hard to justify yeeting Meta into the sun when running an online business, but I'm building an increasingly solid case that their supposed reach and monopoly on attention simply don't inure to the benefit of most businesses or creators any more, thus nullifying all claimed advantages. I look forward to the day when I can confidently pull the plug on their entire rotten ecosystem and know the business will remain healthy.
@joshsutphin
> I look forward to the day when I can confidently pull the plug on their entire rotten ecosystem and know the business will remain healthy.
I'm torn between “why did businesses ever hand over such control to Meta (or Google, or any other #AdTech parasite), this extractive monopoly was the obvious direction from the start?!”, versus the fact that trying to advertise a small organisation or product is always fraught and compromised.
But we really must kill off the advertising monopolies, and make illegal the sociopathic practices; the #enshittification is long entrenched.
@bignose @joshsutphin I know of 2 orgs who pulled all ads from their online presence and only use patreon or similar. They try to go away from youtube and use patreon, but YT is still a big solid presence. No ads on youtube, no ads on their website. And the website got blazing fast after removing all ads.
And when you go to https://www.universetoday.com/ you will notice there is no cookie popup.
@bignose @joshsutphin As someone who ran a small business in the 80's-90s, I can tell you at least one reason - advertising is awful. It's almost impossible to tell who is watching and how they're responding without adtech of some sort.
Google and the gang offered a way to help with that. Then they enshittified - but not quite as badly as the pre-Internet days.
Advertising is a dumpster fire fuelled by money. Always has been - probably always will be.
@joshsutphin TikTok advertisers have been fighting something similar for a while as well.
@joshsutphin Thank you for publishing somewhere with an RSS feed. It’s really great because I don’t use email to subscribe to newsletters.. only RSS feeds so thank you for picking something with fantastic RSS support
@WeirdWriter I really really want RSS to survive 🙏
@joshsutphin Oh, I think I found an error in your landing page. The subscribed via RSS link appears to be broken because when I tap it, my RSS reader says an RSS fee cannot be located, but if I share the ButtonDown page itself my RSS reader has no issues locating the feed
@WeirdWriter Hmm, I wonder if @buttondown is doing some server side URL translation or something that's getting lost in the click handler for your particular reader.
(It worked for me with NewsBlur, but that could also be silently falling back to RSS discovery.)
@joshsutphin @buttondown Ah probably! I thought that RSS link was manually linked, so I can send an email to support when I get to a computer, but it would be helpful if you could write to support also
Hi there!
Thanks for mentioning us with this issue. Would you mind sharing what RSS app you were using when the error occurred?
Lire on iOS but it's connected through Miniflux https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lire-rss-reader/id1531976425 @buttondown @joshsutphin
Thanks! We'll look into why this happened. 💙
@joshsutphin tell us more of this Shiraki Press of which you speak... 😉
@mjr I'm a co-founder. We publish queer-normative hopepunk fiction for adults, and we just started this year. Five books so far! https://shirakipress.com
Oct 17, 2026, 9:09 PMSide note: this is also the case for all content uploaded to YouTube.
@joshsutphin AI is translation not invention, this should frame the legal framework that we need yesterday
@joshsutphin
It's very good you do this, as apparently meta's new tos for anyone who advertises on their sites gives them the right to scrape everything you have on the web, under the same corporation, for training.
(Who knows if this is enforceable or what have you, but they just pushed this new tos stuff through: https://cryptobriefing.com/meta-terms-scraping-news-sites-ai-training/ )
@joshsutphin Better late than never.
Oct 17, 2026, 10:44 PM@joshsutphin Mind blowing.
You're a user of the system, you have a FB account? Yep ok, you're the product, you'll get what they give you because you're choosing to participate.
You're an advertiser? Totally friggin different story here. The answer is always "because I'm paying you money and it's what I want" and man it really speaks to the sociopathy of the industry and of Zuck's approach that you'd have to justify why you do or don't want to spend money on a facet of their services.
@josh I think the part that gets me the absolute worst—and this is true of so much modern software—is where they just change the thing out from under us after we've paid for it. It's like buying a car wash but then instead of washing the car they just rotate your tires. Nobody would be okay with that! But software does this all the gd time! 😬
Anyway your username/avi combo speaks to me at a cellular level
And this all seems to be a part of the larger, "We have demand for our AI products" grift. Google did this to my stupid Drive account, turning it into a Drive + AI account, with AI features I neither need nor want, but they can now claim I'm paying for because I still pay for using Drive. It's a house of cards.
Oct 17, 2026, 11:32 PM@joshsutphin google also does this. It'll hallucinate an ad for a product/service you don't sell, show it to people in a country you don't ship to, and charge you for the top spot. On by default, of course.
And if you manage to turn all that shit off you get monthly calls from "your new account manager" offering to "help" with your "ad performance".
@virtulis It's okay though because at least we have billionaires 🫠
Oct 17, 2026, 11:50 PM@joshsutphin part of me kind of believes they're earnest about "trying to help". They sincerely cannot fathom any kind of "performance" other than "number go up".
Feeling sympathetic anger now!
@joshsutphin meta stealing your content? Heck no!
@joshsutphin
#MetaPlatformsIrelandLimited is at it with their usual #AI scumbaggery once again.
Nobody should trust them, or use any of their products.
@joshsutphin oh wow.
@joshsutphin I wish everyone would dump them.
Oct 18, 2026, 7:22 AMI just wish there was a way to get more people here, and off big tech (or at least use it less). The STEAM Cafe and Discovery centre in Paignton puts everything on facebook, because they have the narrative everyone uses facebook, i think it is also easier for them. Just means the rest of us (like me) miss out on information, but one person telling them that won't do very much.
If anyone is in #SouthDevon, #UK please drop in and ask them to get in 2026 and set up and use a #Fediverse account.
Either that we need something here to act as a magnet to draw people in.
@zleap Do they have an actual website and/or contact details? I can certainly email them and let them know of my disappointment, and Hunt that they have already lost opportunities because of being only on FFB.
CC: @joshsutphin
Oct 18, 2026, 3:57 PMSadly no, there was or is an e-mail address on their facebook page which does not work. I tried to raise a similar issue with the people behind the local children and young peoples partnership as a few of the groups only use facebook.
https://imaginethis-torbay.co.uk/
If you look at the list of parners, most don't seem to have websites or e-mail and just use mainstream social media.
@zleap Yeah ... I've had a dabble at looking at what they do and who is doing it. Given what I know, I suspect you have zero chance of getting them to do anything.
They are volunteers, they will use what they know, and what they think gives them the facilities they need. They will have little to no knowledge or concern about just how appalling FFB is.
You could volunteer to do it for them, but short of that, I'm pretty sure they won't change anything.
Makes me so angry.
CC: @joshsutphin
Oct 18, 2026, 5:00 PMThe problem is I work at lunch times and can't afford to volunteer, It makes me frustrated too, I have tried to contact a charity in North Devon
I even said their latest news is even more reason to get in touch
https://wingscharity.com/news.html
I gave them a link to the free courses on the LF website, won't cost the charity anything ( or the people they work with) and these courses give digital badges, I e-mailed last week, heard nothing.
I think the issue could be that they get funding for specific types of courses, but given these digital skills are in high demand, esp around cyber security etc, then even the few courses I have done would be a start.
They probably just need computers and internet.
So the people at the charity become more like facilitators, I even suggested my local user could could provide some help, (as in join the mailing list and ask questions) but it is better than nothing.
For me, I can answer questions as best I can, BUT others can too and if I don't quite get something I will learn too.
I just feel people are missing out on these opportunities.
I know my local college apparently do a word press course. I feel like asking if that covers not just word press but setting up a server so it can be self hosted, I am no expert at that, but with the Linux Upskill challenge that teachers enough to set uop a server so it is just one step above that, probably getting ngnix or apache up, harden the server, configure any firewalls, install a certificate then install word press.
The sort of thing that at one time we would have discussed at a lug meeting if anyone asked.
Oct 18, 2026, 9:36 AM@joshsutphin if only it were just Meta; this seems to be a new favourite toy.
The UK's National Trust reported similar issues with TikTok automatically creating AI ads for them without any sort of notification this week. Given that trust is the most valuable commodity available to Charities, it's just beyond grim
@hannah It's going to take us so long to clean up all the social damage this crap has already done 🫠
@joshsutphin This happened to the National Trust on Tiktok - apologies as I can only find a linkedin post about it https://lnkd.in/p/eDY5EJAJ
@joshsutphin Kudos to you for this.
@joshsutphin leaving meta in 2026 is a little too late to be cool, but still the only correct move. Also you should go further than just stop paying them. As long as you use it, you agree to what they do
@buuginski We've definitely felt the pressure to be on there because it's such a big platform, so many readers are there, etc. and we're still in our first year and everything feels existential and terrifying all of the time... but yeah, I increasingly think all that pressure is fake.
@joshsutphin i wouldnt even say that the pressure is all fake, but as long as users and companies throw time and money at malicious platforms, they will continue to do what they do. In the end everyone needs to decide how far they collaborate with the companies that try to basically end humanity for profit. I am not really religious, but I find it very curious how many monotheistic worshippers suddenly want to create or get to know their new god. You being here is a very positive statement imo
@joshsutphin I looked for, and found, an important little snippet on your Shiraki Press webpage: “Absolutely no generative AI content”. Having seen that, I’ll happily put in a little order to support you in kicking Zuckerberg to the curb 😊
@UweHalfHand Thank you so much! 🙏
@joshsutphin Watch your sales drop by 0% as a result of pulling the ads. Was it Proctor and Gamble who chopped advertising and saw no change in sales?
@joshsutphin
More Meta fuckery:
"Beginning October 30, Meta is merging all of our accounts into one including my musician FB page etc. All links to any content become fair game for them to use to train their stupid stuffed animal graphic Trojan horse Muse. They are also trying to charge artists $49 a month to be able to share eight links a month. I will not be doing any of that. There is no opt out. Indie artists are being told pay and be stolen from, or lose your access to reach on these platforms. Fine.
I have removed all links from all my Meta pages including this one. I may delete my accounts completely in solidarity with intellectual property and artists worldwide. I'm thinking it over."
![From Casey Stratton -
Beginning October 30, Meta is merging all of our accounts into one including my musician FB page etc. All links to any content become fair game for them to use to train their stupid stuffed animal graphic Trojan horse Muse. They are also trying to charge artists $49 a month to be able to share eight links a month. I will not be doing any of that. There is no opt out. Indie artists are being told pay and be stolen from or lose your access to reach on these platforms. Fine.
I have removed all links from all my Meta pages including this one. I may delete my accounts completely in solidarity with intellectual property and artists worldwide. I'm thinking it over.
The social media age for musicians and artists is over. It's a giant shopping mall made by billionaires and corporations. See you in the real world.
If you want to listen to my work, you a find it. Peace out.
[beneath this is a red and white NO graphic with a slash through the words Meta AI]](https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/117/463/635/316/972/967/original/609a03bc9fcb25a4.jpg)
Oct 19, 2026, 4:36 AM@aria *infinite screaming*