BetaNews is Now Officially a Spamfarm With Phantom Authors and Fake Text (SPAM and Linkspam Made With LLM Slop)
That's it, the site is virtually dead now (maybe that was the plan all along - to "cash in" once, on the way out)
Imagine you go to some news site like ABC or BBC or CBC and you see something like this:
Ads disguised as news? What the heck is this? Same thing Sports Illustrated did?
Those aren't even real authors; no image for them either, just a generic avatar (same for all). But wait, those aren't even "real" texts, it's bot-spewed garbage:
Based on what Facebook ("Meta") said, it also envisioned this kind of future for itself. After lots of backlash it says it has changed its mind, but who knows, right? Zuckerberg et al have a long history of lying in order to save face.
BetaNews can be written off as a dead site. Almost everything there is a garbage dump for LLM outputs (copypasta), they don't do any journalism. Even the editor participates in this. Not only is he fully aware, he's an actual part of this.
Once a news site gets tainted with LLM slop the "writers" will get "addicted" or "drunk" or not sufficiently motivated to write anything real anymore (because it feels "slow"). No incentive to correct that exists, so the site is practically dead once it becomes a pool of slop drowning out the real (past) work. That's like trying to keep a cab shiny and clean (as new) when people keep barfing inside it.
Lots of former news sites turn into experimental slopfarms or spamfarm before they die (throwing in the towel). We've given two examples today and yesterday.
WHY NOT EXIT WITH DIGNITY instead? If you're not financially viable, don't hand over the whole site (with past work, past articles made by real authors) to machines that will simply annul the reputation. This is what happened to BetaNews. It's like it's running on a clock now, spewing out spam and slop. Google News (Gulag Noise) hasn't been keeping up, so it still syndicates this spam and slop, but for how much longer? █
Also see: BetaNews Has Become a SPAM/Slop Factory, Brian Fagioli Publishes Fake 'Articles' | It's Morbid to Talk About Living People as If They're Dead | BetaNews, Inc. Became a Spam Operation/Web Site, LLM Spew (Slop) for SEO Disguised as "Articles" | BetaNews is Beta-Testing the Site as LLM Slop With Microsoft Propaganda Thrown In | Even the Managing Editor of BetaNews is Doing Slop and Spam | At BetaNews, "Most Commented Story" Is Not a Story But LLM Slop! (Readers Talking to Bots) | BetaNews is Run and Written by Bots That Make Clickbait | BetaNews, Desperate for Clicks, is Pushing Donald Trump Spam Created by LLMs (Slop) | "Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is Press Release SPAM (or LLM Slop, Marketing, Fake 'Review')