Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Today's "Slopwatch" deals with 5 unique domains, starting with linuxbsdos.com. What the heck is this?
As we noted here throughout the summer, something went very wrong in linuxbsdos.com. Some other former Linux sites experimented a little with LLM slop, but then sort of relented.
There's still hope that linuxbsdos.com will realise that going down this route will disgrace whatever good output the site had in the past, going more than a decade back. My wife and I still fondly remember the old articles from that domain.
On we move to linuxsecurity.com, which once upon a time produced real articles about security and about Linux. These days it is just a slopfarm:
Then there's WebProNews. For over a decade it had loads of real articles, typically about Web-centric topics like Google and browsers.
Now? Well, it's 100% slopfarm composed by pseudonyms.
To make matters worse, Google News is boosting at least 7 of their slop/spam pieces today... when searching for "Linux":
A lot of the above are LLM slop with slop images derived from Phoronix articles. All of them are slop, but the majority are Phoronix ripoffs. I can sympathise with Michael Larabal on this. To be clear, this domain (WebProNews) is a firehose of slop on loads of topics, not just "Linux".
Why is WebProNews not delisted by Google News? Heck, Google search (in general) ought to blacklist it for plagiarism on a massive scale.
Sadly, many former news sites went astray and the remaining ones are being aped by slopfarms. It hurts those remaining few that are honest. Some of them write to us, bemoaning the problem. We can relate.
This is from some days ago:
Linux Journal deleted many old (real) articles and is nowadays producing LLM slop. Then there's the Serial Slopper Brian Fagioli publishing fake articles about all sorts of things, including "Linux":
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place. █