Slopwatch: BetaNews, Linuxsecurity, and Other Prolific Slopfarms
The Web is contaminated with LLM slop. Many fake articles occupy many corners of the Web and not everyone can spot them. It's therefore essential to name the principal culprits, more so among those that target "Linux" because it's a topic that matters to us. If the problem is left untackled, it'll lessen the incentive to do real journalism in that area.
Let's start with BetaNews. Yesterday we wrote about supposedly new management with 'new' writers having a go at it. Well, we're not sure those are writers at all and so far it's only one name and all the output is deemed LLM slop, including the latest:
Who 'wrote' this? Someone linked to a new Twitter (X) account with no posts, no followers, and LLM slop as 'articles'. This could be a functional person, a la Sports Illustrated, but time will tell. It seems like the site is now a slopfarm.
And speaking of slopfarms, take a look at Linuxsecurity, with its latest 3 fake 'articles':
They keep saying "Linux", but this is LLM slop, trying to outrank real articles (on which the slop is based).
Lastly, if one searched Google News for "linux" yesterday, there would be two links to two connected slopfarms:
Both the text and the images are slop. Both perpetuate FUD about Linux, as usual.
One key thing to do is, name and shame the sites that establish such proliferation of slop. Over time people can be inoculated against those. █