[filmgirlcw]

(Putting the very funny pun aside)

No, as the person who is responsible for this story becoming “a thing” and one of the people whose identities was misappropriated, I’m mad at both.

I’m mad at AOL/Verizon/Yahoo/Apollo Global/whoever the owner of the original domain was for selling the domain in this way. Especially since the the site and domain had been dead for almost 10 years (and the content on that site was archived, granted the images didn’t survive, on Engadget), which makes me question why they’d wait so long and do it this way.

But I’m genuinely and completely outraged that my name was used, however briefly, on new articles (as well as AI-summarized versions of old articles I didn’t even write the first time — tho my original words were rewritten with AI and had another byline slapped on them) on a website that used to exist, and is for better or worse, something that will always have an association with me.

The most disastrous damage has been resolved, thanks to bad publicity and a strongly-worded email I sent yesterday threatening legal action if my name wasn’t removed (and I would have contacted a lawyer to send a cease and desist if they hadn’t removed my name), but despite seeing zombie sites reappear, it genuinely never occurred to me that anyone would be brazen enough to try to reconstruct archives and new content and attribute it to the original staffers of a publication.