It’s a bit of both, tbh. I use both it and Apple News for news curation. Flipboard is by far more ad-centric (and AN has more content) but Flipboard is pretty customizable for identifying topics so I keep it around. Flipping through it, every second or third page is an ad, but most of what they link to is available (at least for me) and they’re not overly swamped with clickbait (again, at least in my feed).

I probably use it about 1/3 as much as AN.

I worked in tobacco control in the US for a while.

The approach you’re seeing is literally referred to as the tobacco playbook. That’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s a bit older now, but I highly recommend d checking out a book called Merchants of Doubt.

Not only are they making the same moves and the same arguments, in many cases it’s the exact same PR firms and even some of the same consultants and lawyers as the tobacco industry used.

I really hope you folks do a better job than we’ve managed to do.

It’s a dead man’s party

Who could ask for more?

I don’t know. I’ve seen things far worse than a vaguely Pride-aligned Treebeard.

Seven(?) fingers, very weird abs, ribs, and I am not sure if that’s supposed to be a mutant pelvis or what.

I’m sure they’ll continue to improve these things, but in general AI art gets worse the closer you look. Zoom in, take about five or ten minutes to pan around and study the images, and things just start to leap out. After that, you can’t not see them.

Now I have a machine gun

Ho ho ho