Bonum Certa Men Certa

A Pandemic of Webspam and Fake News About GNU/Linux



Video download link | md5sum 1b82e1e02b2b39ae07c3025e1b0513cf When News About Ubuntu is Intentionally Fake Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: Combating disinformation or misinformation is very important; sadly, even in the GNU/Linux 'blogosphere' there's no lack of false information, sometimes intentionally put there for 'SEO' purposes

THERE'S this site or blog called "It's Ubuntu" which spreads false news about an impending release (links here, intentionally indirect; this one predates another three). It's one of many candidates for removal from our RSS feeds (we already removed many "Linux" sites that turned into spam or part-time spam).



"Combating false information is a tough task because a lot of money is invested in deception (also known as marketing)."The video above shows a particular kind of problem that goes many years if not decades back. Opportunists with blogs love to prematurely announce releases of things, causing more confusion if not technical problems than actually helping anybody. They curtail preparation and coordination.

The Web has become an awful source of information because when you enter false things into a search engine you're likely to find some "supportive" results; it's even worse in social control media which is an echo chamber and noise amplifier. Disinformation thrives there because it can reach unsuspecting passers.

Combating false information is a tough task because a lot of money is invested in deception (also known as marketing). The Linux Foundation is one famous example of it.

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