There are people with millions of followers who were given those for being friends of the founders. I don't know if they still do it, but in the early days it was very observable. All of a sudden one day a person who had 200 followers had 10000 and then a million the next day. And many of them were nobodies, and a lot of them were journalists who wrote puff pieces about them.#
We even saw a case where a journo was punished for writing a piece based on leaks from their board of directors. #
Last update: Wednesday November 16, 2022; 5:21 PM EST.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)