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Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Linux Journal (Slashdot Media), UbuntuPIT, and Google News (Noise)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 17, 2025

Slashdot Media, LLC

This evening's Slopwatch starts with one of the most ludicrous slopfarms out there (LinuxSecurity), one that went from real author names to pseudonyms about a month ago:

Slop or fake: F5: BIG-IP Important Privilege Escalation Flaw ID 2023-1026

It does not even remotely look or "smell" like a real article. The same goes for the following in Linux Journal, which once upon a time was an excellent site and magazine with large circulation. Now it's just some author spewing out mindless LLM slop:

Slop or fake: Bcachefs Ousted from Mainline Kernel: The Move to DKMS and What It Means

Slop or fake: Linux Mint 22.2 ‘Zara’ Released: Polished, Modern, and Built for Longevity

Linux Journal is owned (and purged) by Slashdot Media, which feeds other slopfarms. How about UbuntuPIT? It feels like it's trying to improve a bit (after getting caught), but we still see slop thrown into the mix, e.g. here:

Slop or fake: Mesa 25.2.5 Released: Critical Vulkan, Intel, and Zink Fixes Across the Graphics Stack

There are slop summarisers in the body. That has all the characteristics of LLM slop.

Over in Google News, which has gotten really bad, a triplet of slopfarms all show up when searching for "linux". Notice the headlines (aside from the slop images):

Slop or fake: LinkPro Rootkit Uses eBPF to Conceal Malicious Activity

Slop or fake: LinkPro: An eBPF-Based Rootkit Hiding Malicious Activity

Slop or fake: eBPF Module to Hide Malicious Activities

How can Google not detect these as 1) duplicates and 2) slopfarms?

At least they say "GNU/Linux", but eBPF isn't GNU.

Is Google News really that understaffed after the mass layoffs 2 years ago?

It also links to this slopfarm right now:

Slop or fake: Windows 10 Support Ends 2025: Windows 11 Privacy Risks Fuel Linux Alternatives

It's difficult to believe that a company as large as Google cannot detect that this is a slopfarm.

So one can deduce Google et al just don't really care about egregious plagiarism.

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