> The "fake" aspect is the fact that it's presented as human activity.

Where? I admittedly hadn't heard of PhysicsForum before this, so I don't know what it looked liked before, but at time of writing it seems to be structured a lot like HN or most other online forums where there is no semblance of human activity, just computer avatars. Last time I checked human activity comes with humans. Anthropomorphizing software does not make it human.

> Are you excited to generate an account and communicate with experts such as the ones in the article today?

If it is interesting and enjoyable, why not? I don't care about how the software works. I know HN accounts tend to get caught up in comments expressing things like nobody will use software unless it is written in Rust and stuff like that, but interested parties of a product don't think like that. They evaluate a product for what it is, not how it works beneath the sheets.

If you are asking if PhysicsForum in particular is a good product, I cannot meaningfully answer. It is not something that would have floated my boat at any point. From my point of view it never was, but it is apparent that sentiment hasn't been shared, although apparently there has been a meaningful decline in interest so it seems it hasn't held up as a product over time. Key here is that whatever controversial changes were made were made because interest in the product had declined so much already.

What's curious is that nobody was complaining about how bad it had become amid that long decline. They just walked away when it wasn't good anymore. Yet here we are, where you can still walk away all the same, but somehow that's the end of the world?