They are creating outputs under the dust limit so in practice yes.
Also "burning" a lot in unneeded fees, though that just gets to miners.
Discussion
I understand they are paying very high fees to miners. In my mind I view the ordinals as someone who has the equivalent of a hundred dollar bill, goes to the bank and pays to get the $100 in pennies. Then draws mustaches and dicks on the pennies, creating "art". Is this accurate? Are the "pennies" still spendable?
What if all this is the miners themselves? Minting in tiptop a ready for an upcoming wash trade in a bull run
Minting inscriptions *
Possible but unlikely. Miners cannot coordinate on this level. Pools don't control miners and still need to issue competitive payouts which can easily be audited from the produced blocks.
There are tons of independent miners, getting them onboard with something like this in secrecy does not sound realistic.