Slopwatch: linuxconfig.org, linuxsecurity.com, and Google's Promotion of the Worst and Most Prolific Slopfarms
Today's Slopwatch will be relatively long for the simple reason that we found a lot of new LLM slop about "Linux".
Let's start with this LLM slop. It says: "Analysts such as ItsFOSS expect Linux gaming growth to accelerate through 2025" Analysts? Really?
Lucas Rees seems to have put together some slop bits, then added several slop images on top of these, then mildly edited and added links. This is what we've said for months already that linuxconfig.org appears to have become. It's sort of like "curated slop" or mildly-edited low-quality junk. Even the headline alone looks like classic slop piece recipe. There's something about those titles that's a giveaway because they're bland, dreary, and generic.
On we move to linuxsecurity.com, basically a slopfarm that started by replacing actual articles with LLM slop and then, in due course, started to decorate the fake text with fake images. Now it has these three:
Slop about slop... something something something something "Linux".
"Cloud"...
Something something something "Linux Malware" something something something...
SEO spam, made with LLMs.
Over in Google News it has been quite chaotic this past day, as about a third of all search results (for "Linux") are LLM slopfarms.
This is a slopfarm ripping off Phoronix:
Notice all the images are slop. The author names are fake.
Also in Google News: Red Hot Cyber, another slop site.
Samba is not Linux, even if there are components of it inside the kernel (a low-level layer). Here's the same done by a triplet of slopfarms using LLMs with word permutations and slop images:
The above spam was promoted by Google News three times. Google clearly has no control over (or concern about) quality.
Google is happy to relay garbage to people. The above is classic; and from the same slopfarm:
This is Google News; this is what Google gives people, attributing a Windows issue to other things.
Remember: no person wrote the above. It's just a 'word diarrhoea' from an LLM.
Google apparently cannot afford (no budget) to keep standards high in its search results. About 2 years ago it also fired loads of Google News staff. █