https://www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-address/

we noticed that articles […] were being scraped by bots, run through an AI article “spinner” or paraphraser, and republished on random websites.

Bad error handling in the client. Whoever programmed it didn’t think there could be errors in the backend, so when their request doesn’t go through, they default to the ‘no internet’ message.

Or, you know, it’s an asshole company, but Hanlon’s razor.