Bonum Certa Men Certa

It Looks Like BetaNews' Managing Editor Wayne Williams is Taking Over From Fagioli After Repeat Pattern of LLM Slop (State-of-the-Art Plagiarism) About "Linux"

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 04, 2025

Here we go. It's about BetaNews again. They are merely reinforcing what we said yesterday! In a sense, this is good news. It shows that our efforts to save journalism about "Linux" may pay off. And yes, LLM slop actively discourages people from writing about "Linux" or journalists getting paid to do so. LLM slop is parasitic, harmful, and cannot possibly contribute anything new. That's why we so often encourage people to speak out on this issue, even name the principal culprits or Serial Sloppers. Any LLM slop goes against real reporting and lessens to incentive to investigate, accurately report etc.

So where's the evidence that BetaNews takes action? It's in the site of BetaNews.

The deleted article was shown 2 days ago (it was LLM slop in BetaNews; it 'covered' Nitrux) and its deletion was mentioned yesterday along with pertinent details, as in evidence. Half a day ago BetaNews' managing editor published something about the same topic as Brian Fagioli's now-deleted LLM slop. One article about Nitrux was removed; another new one (very different one) was published instead. This time the person writing about Nitrux is higher up the chain, probably concerned about the reputation of the site he runs.

Is the editor writing a real article? Let's see what Wayne Williams wrote:

Forget upgrading to Microsoft Windows 11: Nitrux Linux 3.9.0 is the operating system you need!

It does not 'feel' like slop. The above text, when read by a human, sort of 'smells' like an actual person actually put in some effort to compose thoughts. The wording is reassuring in the sense that it looks like a real effort at journalism.

My 'feelings' (gut feelings) turned out to be right, not baseless. I wrote down those feelings before even checking with a scanner/analyser of slop.

Here's what gptzero.me says:

With Windows 10 set to reach its end of life later this year, Microsoft has been taking every opportunity to heavily push Windows 11 as the only upgrade path for users

Sapling the same:

One of the more popular alternatives is Nitrux Linux, which has just hit a new milestone.

The most plausible explanation is, Fagioli got caught or his conduct could no longer be ignored/tolerated. So the managing editor of BetaNews deleted his latest LLM slop and wrote a real article to replace that utter embarrassment.

What took so long?

Perhaps more importantly, does Wayne Williams intend to go fishing for all the other LLM slop and remove that too?

In situations like these, what's very common is to adopt a "no comment" approach or even make up some (coverup) story to avoid public admission of what actually happened. We'll take silence as confirmation of our hypothesis.

Wayne Williams should eliminate all the slop, not just 0.1% of it. Until that happens the site is mostly slop.

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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