thumbnail looks extremely weird…
Probably a machineslop “hero” image. Not sure why the author felt obligated aside from that he uses WordPress.
When I want to share something, I copy the URL and paste it into an email or text.
Hard agree; social sharing buttons are dumb. The main reason for why I never use them is because they’re sure to add some referral crap to the end of the link, and I have no desire to share that, or post it to my blog, or whatever.
On another note, I kind of hate the term “Dark social.” Copying and sharing is how the web is supposed to work, and calling it a dark pattern likens it to something bad, which it only is for marketers. I’d prefer to call it something less pejorative, like “Natural sharing.”
I felt mistrust because it’ll either add a bunch of tracking variables/fluff or will open a dialog and signoff confirmation boxes to share to your wall etc and it all felt very extra and unexpected/unpredictable what clicking those will do. Where if I just did what I originally wanted to do ( copy a link ) it’s straightforward. The unknown and fluff kept me from using it
I think another interesting thing I’ve been noticing, is the generic “Share” button, it’s usually a curved arrow pointing somewhere. But it’s not a normalized icon; it seems to have a different shape on each site. Sometimes it looks like another site’s download link or reblog link. Sometimes these behave unexpectedly as they are bundling a tray of actions that can be unique to each platform.
bundled share links, far right ( Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram )
That’s fair, but I think that by “dark social” the author meant dark as in dark matter, matter that isn’t directly observable because it doesn’t interact with EM radiation, including visible light. In the case of “dark social”, people are sharing your work, but you have no direct visibility as to how or with whom.
Which is exactly how it should be.
Maybe it is a holdover from iOS 1 and 2 which lacked copy and paste functionality.
Could be, but I suspect that platforms were just providing these “convenient” sharing buttons to con website operators into providing free advertising. It made a halfway decent growth hack. 
Forgive the OT:
The hero image isn’t the only thing that’s AI, unless I’m very much mistaken. The comparisons, the marketing-speak (“Visual noise, no value. That stuck with me.”), the overuse of full stops for emphasis (“I think most people are the same way. And I think the data backs that up.”)… and then when you get into the other articles, it’s more overt: “No new tab. No context switch. Just a clean layer over the writing surface with desktop, tablet, and mobile views.” - that’s an “it’s not just this, it’s that”, an emphasis period and a list of three things, in a row!
Stands out like a sore thumb for me, makes it tough to get through the piece. Why people choose to use this stuff to make their prose as bland as room temperature milk with a spoonful of flour (especially when you actually have an interesting observation to communicate) I’m sure I’ll never know.