Slopwatch: Lots of Fake Articles About "Linux" Infect the Web, Google News Still Promotes These as 'News'
No week would be complete without some "Slopwatch". In Slopwatch we cover examples that illuminate the problem with LLM slop. In the area of Linux, a lot of hostile FUD (anti-Linux words salad) can be traced back to LLMs, typically operated and manipulated by Microsoft "Open" "AI".
Before the weekend we saw this:
As typical (for this domain), it's detected as LLM slop:
And this was the only other 'article' from that day:
Same:
While it's possible that they edit it a little, the original "body of text" is spewed out by a company's LLM. They have rogue agenda and LLMs generally spread lies, even if they don't "mean" to.
Then consider what showed up in "Google News" (noise) near the top of the results for "Linux", speaking about the Microsoft-connected CISA: [1, 2, 3, 4]
The above is a twin of slopfarms. Those are fake articles with slop images.
Google is apparently too "understaffed" to figure this out, having laid off a lot of "Google News" (noise) staff.
Google also placed the following LLM slop about an IPFire release near the top:
Nobody wrote those 'articles'. They're slop, just like the following about "Linux USB Audio Driver Vulnerability":
So people who go to a site like google.com or Google News or even social control media (where users get links from Google) will be directed to read slop, i.e. pure garbage. █