Found via the author’s Mastodon Post
Generally, the media has focused on the (mainly) men whose names and desires were taken from the company’s subscriber database and shared with the world. […] Ashley Madison was never really about that. Avid Life Media, its parent company, wasn’t in the business of sex, it was in the business of bots. Its site became a prototype for what social media platforms such as Facebook are becoming: places so packed with AI-generated nonsense that they feel like spam cages, or information prisons where the only messages that get through are auto-generated ads.
The business model to require paid credits in order to interact with bots is in my opinion a thing of sheer bastardry.
Apparently, this is how it works: (*)
Women were on the site for free, men were required to pay for and use credits in order to interact with women.
It appears that there weren’t anywhere near the numbers of women claimed by the company. Instead bots would communicate with men, using their credits in the process.
(*) I say works, because apparently the company still exists today and I’m not aware if they ever admitted to using bots, let alone discontinuing their use. The Netflix series goes into detail, which is where I got this understanding from.
Disclaimer: I’m not a customer, have never been one and my comments are based on a single source as described above.