Social Media in the Scam Age - Lana Swartz, 2026 This essay examines scams as a central organizing logic of contemporary social media rather than peripheral criminal activity. Drawing on research in cryptocurr...

new piece, Social Media in the Scam Age, for the 10th anniversary of @socialmedia-soc.bsky.social

thank you to @zizip.bsky.social for inviting me

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Israel destroyed all of the town of Al-Khiam in southern Lebanon within a month.

Two data points from a recent drive thru rural Virginia. 1. Many lawn signs saying "No new data centers," "Vote no on data centers," etc. 2. The classic rock channel promoted itself as "Every song chosen by a real human - no AI."

sinbad computing

logging on

RIP to the On The Border Gorbachev ate at 25 years ago yesterday.

Hate to see people living my dream.

Doe had broken up with the user in 2024, and he used ChatGPT to process the split, according to emails and communications cited in the lawsuit. Rather than push back on his one-sided account, it repeatedly cast him as rational and wronged, and her as manipulative and unstable. He then took these AI-generated conclusions off the screen and into the real world, using them to stalk and harass her. This manifested in several AI-generated, clinical-looking psychological reports that he distributed to her family, friends, and employer.

For months, her then-fiancé and partner of several years had been fixating on her and their relationship with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In mid-2024, she explained, they’d hit a rough patch as a couple; in response, he turned to ChatGPT, which he’d previously used for general business-related tasks, for “therapy.” Before she knew it, she recalled, he was spending hours each day talking with the bot, funneling everything she said or did into the model and propounding on pseudo-psychiatric theories about her mental health and behavior. He started to bombard the woman with screenshots of his ChatGPT interactions and copy-pasted AI-generated text, in which the chatbot can be seen armchair-diagnosing her with personality disorders and insisting that she was concealing her real feelings and behavior through coded language. The bot often laced its so-called analyses with flowery spiritual jargon, accusing the woman of engaging in manipulative “rituals.” Trying to communicate with her fiancé was like walking on “ChatGPT eggshells,” the woman recalled. No matter what she tried, ChatGPT would “twist it.” “He would send [screenshots] to me from ChatGPT, and be like, ‘Why does it say this? Why would it say this about you, if this is not true?'” she recounted. “And it was just awful, awful things.”

Shortly after moving out, the former fiancé began to publish multiple videos and images a day on social media accusing the woman of an array of alleged abuses — the same bizarre ideas he’d fixated on so extensively with ChatGPT. In some videos, he stares into the camera, reading from seemingly AI-generated scripts; others feature ChatGPT-generated text overlaid on spiritual or sci-fi-esque graphics. In multiple posts, he describes stabbing the woman. In another, he discusses surveilling her. (The posts, which we’ve reviewed, are intensely disturbing; we’re not quoting directly from them or the man’s ChatGPT transcripts due to concern for the woman’s privacy and safety.) The ex-fiancé also published revenge porn of the woman on social media, shared her full name and other personal information, and doxxed the names and ages of her teenage children from a previous marriage. He created a new TikTok dedicated to harassing content — complete with its own hashtag — and followed the woman’s family, friends, and neighbors, as well as other teens from her kids’ high school. “I’ve lived in this small town my entire life,” said the woman. “I couldn’t leave my house for months… people were messaging me all over my social media, like, ‘Are you safe? Are your kids safe? What is happening right now?'”

A woman sued OpenAI last week alleging that ChatGPT reinforced the obsessive, violent delusions of her stalker (her ex-boyfriend.)

This woman's claims (as detailed by TechCrunch, left) are chillingly similar to those of a completely different woman whose story Futurism reported on in Feb (right):

Still astonishing to me that that's a NYT reporter having a chummy exchange with Epstein.

Those who've spent the most time with Trump know exactly who he is.

sharing to boost the signal

the pope is weak on nuclear weapons

Something has gone wrong here.

The Death of an AI Whistleblower Suchir Balaji sought to expose OpenAI’s data abuses. Did it come at the expense of his own life?

For The Nation, I wrote about the death of OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji.
www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Brilliant guy
www.nycgovparks.org/parks/dr-ron...

If you live in BK and are interested in Artemis II or space stuff, check out Dr. Ronald McNair Park, named after the astronaut who died on Challenger. Nice place to sit in the spring.
www.nycgovparks.org/parks/dr-ron...

I haven't read it but don't think it's Back

I've studied so many concentration camps through history that held vulnerable people in just this kind of crowded squalor. You demonize people, you demand more arrests, this is what you get. It already has its own budget and its own momentum, and is on track to go much further, unless we stop it.

easily one of the funniest guys america has had in decades

If you like the post, you'll love the book-length version, may I recommend, preorder here!

www.harpercollins.com/products/mus...

A critic just took issue with my book's concluding sentiment that we're in Musk's world

Can someone get me into this

Suezmaxxing

Oil industry pleads its Hormuz case with White House Oil executives are citing international treaties, sanction laws and high payments in opposing Iran's plan to charge ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Petrocapitalist poetry in this photo caption: "Liberia-flagged tanker Shenlong Suezmax, carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia, is seen at the Mumbai Port in Mumbai"
www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

A company borrowed $50M of its own stablecoin from its own lending platform, using currency it printed as collateral.

Then sent the proceeds to the bank that already holds its reserves.

While depositors were locked out.

This is not a hack. Not fraud. Not illegal.

This is WLFI. Last Tuesday. 🧵

Link preview

Stephen Rodrick writes, "I got dumped by my ex-wife in a Gap parking lot, but the longest day of my life was the Rescue the Republic rally in Washington, DC, on Sept. 29, 2024."

This long, colorfully written piece is a terrific read. And it explains a lot. .

Free link: archive.is/LkRom

The Patron Saint of Oddballs and Delinquents The New Orleans writer Nancy Lemann conjures scenes of booze-soaked calamity, where everyone and everything is on the verge of rot.

I got to write about Nancy Lemann! For The New Yorker!

You have been Selected.