I think the bad taste in my mouth is the 300k copies they sold and the need to then do this? Stepping over pounds to save pennies etc.

I thought the article explained that pretty reasonably on a scale of probability and weight. The longer the text, the more reliable the scoring.

Sell access to Turnitin and the likes for a small fortune. They are all but required to pay whatever the price is.

The publisher sold keys to GreenManGaming (and probably other stores ) and then the developers unilaterally revoked all serials without first checking if they were legitimate?

Sounds like the developers are running their company out of a shed and are immature.

My guess would be almost all routinely updated Filterlists will continue to block Facebook ads, and probably even more relentlessly now.