LLM Slopfarm: A Site's Last Incarnation Before Throwing in the Towel, Going Offline Permanently
Two years ago we repeatedly pointed out that something had gone very wrong in "Helsinki Times" (misnomer) and dropped it from coverage. We no longer link to it and we've lost sight of it*.
Two days ago I noticed that Gizmodo had turned from a slopfarm (it got caught years ago) into a spamfarm. It pushes spam (products) as "news"; that site is practically worthless now. Google ought to delist it.
Going back to Finland ("Helsinki Times" isn't quite Finnish, unlike finland.fi or yle.fi), we have a likely noteworthyy revelation. A lot of coverage that claims to be about Finland is chatbot-generated nonsense or poorly-plagiarised work.
The "real" media*, which may even deserve a name like "Helsinki Times" or "Finland Times", is making some more cuts. Corporate media and even national broadcasters (like Yle) perishing is part of the "new normal", but what ever happened to "Helsinki Times" (www.helsinkitimes.fi)?
We decided to check and then found out that the site was practically dead. It's a slopfarm run by bots.
Our first (and random) check:
It's not even a real article.
What a travesty. Some of the other pages look even worse. The above is the leading story (front page) right now. The images are not slop (yet), but articles like this one (dated today) are deemed "100% AI generated" ("We are highly confident this text was AI generated"). █
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* To reiterate some of the more salient points from the old article in question, the site should be renamed as it borrows a brand ("Times") it has nothing to do with and it's not run by journalists, it's biased by intention, and it openly advertises puff pieces or paid placements as a product/service. This means that it's just some site that presents itself as a news source but acts like a marketing agency. Two years ago we showed who owns it and today we just merely provide additional context about why the points are still relevant, seeing that from marketing it turned or crossed to the "dark side" (to slop); it's unclear which one is less ethical (slop or spam), but in both cases readers are misled.
** The one taxpayers are paying for. Yle is making some more cuts despite the growing risk of foreign media or social control media brainwashing the local population via Finnish Internet services. What if www.helsinkitimes.fi turned out to be funded by Tehran? What if Twitter (now X) in Finland turned out to be owned by Riyadh and led by a person who fancies nazism?