The Priceonomics post didn't really say much more than the Atlantic article, I don't think it discussed synthetic diamonds or the internet or anything. Cubic z

The Priceonomics post didn't really say much more than the Atlantic article, I don't think it discussed synthetic diamonds or the internet or anything. Cubic zirconia looks identical to diamonds but it's not chemically the same so people always considered it fake. Synthetic diamonds are chemically identical so De Beers need to invest millions in figuring out ways to distinguish them. Natural diamonds don't add anything more, but the whole purpose of them is that they're expensive.