Bonum Certa Men Certa

BetaNews Plagiarising Work in the Linux Space

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 23, 2025

Some real technical journalists have begun writing about a new release of LibreELEC, so BetaNews is firing up the plagiarism machines and makes phony LLM slop 'articles'.

Here's an example. This is the latest story from Linuxiac:

Real article: LibreELEC 12.0.2 Brings Big Changes for Raspberry Pi Users

It's hours old:

Real article: LibreELEC 12.0.2, an open-source media center, is here with Kodi 21.2, an ARM to AArch64 switch, and major updates for Raspberry Pi

There's also the original from the same day. What is this, a "training set"?

Shortly after that, the front page of BetaNews:

Fake article: LibreELEC 12.0.2, the Linux distribution for Kodi, gets feature-packed Omega 21.2 update

It's not a real article but a parasite:

LibreELEC, the lightweight Linux distribution designed exclusively to run Kodi, has released version 12.0.2. This latest update brings Kodi (Omega) 21.2 along with several notable changes and improvements.

They probably get bots to rewrite other people's work.

Guess who will appear in "Google News" and who will not? Google will promote the LLM slop, not originals. The originals won't even be listed. That's fair, right?

The LLM abuse by BetaNews lessens the incentive for real writers to write about Linux or cover Free software news. BetaNews is an unethical Webspam domain.

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')

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