LLM Slopfarms gbhackers.com, "Cyber Press" and CyberSecurityNews Are Drowning Google News (and Shame on Google for Feeding and Facilitating Them)
All are run by the same people
Today, for a change, it won't be a "Slopwatch" but instead we focus on gbhackers.com, "Cyber Press" and CyberSecurityNews. We don't know if they game Google or Google is willingly being gamed by them. This has gone on for about half a year already and the slopfarms operated by those people grow in number. Google, in response, adds the new ones to its "News" index. This is a problem and we'll explain why. We also hold Google accountable for it; after firing a lot of staff in Google News the quality of results deteriorates and Google just doesn't seem to care. It has no commitment to truth. All it does is count ad money or some metrics which are irrelevant to journalism.
Here you see a bunch of sites that badmouth SSH using automated crap or LLM slop (below are three sites operated by the same people and boosted by Google News):
Notice the similarity. Nobody made those images. That text is just the output of what Richard Stallman calls a "bullshit generator".
When people look for online news about SSH, security, Linux etc. they get presented with the above. It even borrows the legitimacy of Google News!
Also new:
Notice all the images are always slop and the text is also slop.
Here are almost identical LLM slop outputs with different slop images:
The above are hours-old, as are the following (in Google News today):
The main problem is that we saw some reputable sites, due to their reliance on Google News, actually linking to the LLM slop as legitimate sources. That's very dangerous as it means that misinformation feeds into information sources, not vice versa. It also encourages Serial Sloppers. It rewards them.
In some sense, Google actively helps charlatans and online scammers succeed. We need to talk candidly about those things.
Some Linux-centric writers send me E-mail about it, but they never write about it in public. It's really pissing them off that their work is being plagiarised with bots, then passed off as "original" through Google News, Slashdot etc. █