Bonum Certa Men Certa

Overall Accuracy and Honesty Ought to Count More Than Number and Quality (or Source Diversity) of Links

Google News has stopped accepting sites that use external links in articles



Summary: Ahead of our fourteenth anniversary we're planning to put more emphasis on text than on links

O

NE INCREASINGLY COMMON demonisation argument to be leveraged against small sites (or autonomous publishers) is that they lack links to support their claims. It shields false narratives from being questioned, where money sets and cements those narratives. If these small sites have lots of links, they get accused either of not using "good authority" links (like corporate sites and widely-gamed Wikipedia) or linking to themselves, a.k.a. cross-referencing (being self-referential is perfectly acceptable if nobody else covers the same topic and it's not necessarily an indication of weak supporting data as much as proof of media suppression/blind spot). Some go further and say that failing to link to many different domains is also a necessarily bad thing (and that all those domains must be "good authority" links -- whatever that even means). What this typically boils down to is someone disliking the message -- even if it is 100% accurate/factual -- then nitpicking things like typos/grammatical choices and, failing that, the "quality" of links. Never mind if many so-called "good authority" sources, such as corporate news sites/newspapers, have no links at all, not even textual references appended at the end (for a printed medium anchor text and clickable items aren't a possibility at all). Never mind bribed-for fake 'reporting' (like the EPO bribing academia and mainstream media). We're just asked to trust them blindly because of their budget, typically derived from the very same companies/institutions they write about. Regarding radio/television, forget about any form of sourcing/referencing. It's an audio/visual presentation, lacking anything resembling even one single reference ("he said"/"she said" hardly counts and quotes can be distorted/paraphrased to appease partisan audiences with a divisive agenda in mind).

"We have some important revelations and leaks coming (it's in the pipeline already) and we don't want to be in a position where we choose between self-censorship and something else."In the above screenshot we see how Google's spam dump (plagiarism cesspool known as "Google News") assesses the supposed 'credibility' of publications. Superficialities galore. Bearing in mind our shift to text-only daily bulletins, at least as a choice, we might also reduce the amount of linking we do. Links are not visible in that publication form anyway. Our site has long been accessible to blind people (down to the level of explaining all images in terms of descriptive text) and we're rarely proven wrong on important points. Prove otherwise...

Silly Dogs: Not enough links! Too many links! Your links suck!It's a safe prediction that over time we'll invest more effort in independent publishing in both the association and the technical sense (the latter aspect means isolation from centralised and monopolistic platforms). We have some important revelations and leaks coming (it's in the pipeline already) and we don't want to be in a position where we choose between self-censorship and something else.

Over the past few days we saw Microsoft googlebombing "Linux" with WSL/2 'spam' and a week prior to that it was all "Edge". Because Microsoft's proprietary software is "Linux" when it comes to 'the news' (or Google News).

"If possible, don't use Microsoft Windows. Buy a Macintosh or use Linux. Don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer, period." - Bruce Schneier

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Old Days
In the early days of this site (2006) it was mostly just a couple of people, plus comments
Links 28/03/2026: Microsoft's LinkedIn a National Security Risk, Microsoft's Slop "Ambitions Face Investor Scrutiny Amid Soaring Costs"
Links for the day
 
Fedora at the Mercy of Microsoft Because of Back-Doored Kick-Switch Boot
We'll soon revisit the defamation attacks on Torvalds
Links 29/03/2026: Water Shortages and No Kings Rallies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/03/2026: Return to Gopherspace, "Zen of Marking Playing Cards"
Links for the day
The Real XBox is Dead, So Microsoft is Calling Everything "XBox" Now
It even wanted to run a campaign to convince everybody that XBox is not actually a console
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 28, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, March 28, 2026
Open Web Destroyed by Centibillionaires, Says Anil Dash of Blogging Fame
Blogging was going through its 'prime years' about 20 years ago
"Linux" Slop Going Away, Microsoft et al Pay 'Linux' Foundation to Promote Slop
It's a timely reminder that the Linux Foundation exists to promote whoever pays the Linux Foundation, even pedophiles and companies that attack the GPL
Gemini Links 28/03/2026: "Finding My Base Tone", "Astrobotany", and BugoutBack/OFFLFIRSOCH
Links for the day
Links 28/03/2026: More Worldwide Bans on Social Control Media (Harms to Adolescents), Protests in US Against Dictatorship
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 26 Out of 200: Asking for Documents and Information You Already Have, Even Letters and E-mails That You Yourself Sent!
barristers are expensive
Gemini Links 28/03/2026: Echo Delay and 0x0.st
Links for the day
Rumours of More IBM Mass Layoffs at Beginning of April
IBM is not doing well
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 27, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, March 27, 2026
"Headcount" as Distraction From Mass Layoffs and Salary Reductions
Things aren't looking well when one considers revenue is acquired, not earned
"Linux" Slop Turning Rarer, New York Times Nowadays Contaminated With LLM Slop
Another day has passed without much slop about "linux"
Links 27/03/2026: Studying Whale Births, Apple is Cancelling Products, Cambodia Arrests Journalists Over Photographs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/03/2026: GTD, Gopher Catchup, Gemini Crawlers, and "Slop Everywhere"
Links for the day
Mozilla Was Ruined Like Sirius Open Source Was Ruined - From the Top Down
Mozilla will never return to its Free software roots
Nokia Could Never Recover From Microsoft
It's very important to remember what really happened
Why Techrights and Many Other Sites Stopped Doing April Fools’ Day Articles
Well before slop (made by LLMs) it was "bad optics" to have satire or humour in a site, irrespective of the day of the year
President Not-Cocaine Campinos Notified of Historic EPO Strikes (Thousands of Workers Not Coming Back to the Office)
Please do pay attention to how the media treats these strikes in Europe's second-largest institution
Slides From the Presentation Discussing EPO Strikes Until End of June or Until End of 2026 (Maybe Next Year Too)
More to come soon (later today)
IBM Cuts Are Everywhere (Global), the Aim is to Lower the Pay
Because the revenues keep falling (IBM buys other companies' revenues using borrowed money)
Perpetual Strikes to Begin at European Patent Office (EPO), Large Majority Votes for Strikes Any Day of the Week
Approved industrial actions [...] Notice how none of the media or even so-called 'IP' blogs write about it
Mozilla is Not a Privacy Company, Mozilla is Run by GAFAM Executives and Managers Who Came From American Surveillance Companies
Would you trust a VPN they claim to be "free"?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 25 Out of 200: That Time Matthew J. Garrett Got Temporarily Banned/Suspended From Twitter
That he gets banned from large social control media platform is hardly surprising given his combative communications
Ubuntu Started as Free With ShipIt, Now It Becomes Payware That Exploits Debian Volunteers (Slaves)
"Ubuntu" the distro now replaces the GNU components inherited from Debian with a bunch of Microsoft GitHub (proprietary) things that reject reciprocal licences
Last Night The Register MS Published a Fake Article. It Mentioned "AI" 27 Times.
Paid-for nonsense! [...] What's left of once-respectable news sites actively harms society
Links 27/03/2026: Google Executive (GAFAM, US, Surveillance) "Named the New BBC Head", Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/03/2026: "Being Busy" and "Posting Again"
Links for the day
GNOME Has No "Real" Executive Director, Only an IBM (Perma)'Interim' One With No Openings in Sight
GNOME is having financial problems
Microsoft Experiencing "Leadership Exodus"
Microsoft's current position is no better than Meta's (Facebook)
GNU/Linux Distros Should Reject "Age Verification" and Uphold Software Freedom for Users
It's not about protecting children
Slop Plunge
we can already "smell the blood" of the so-called 'AI industry'
IBM Media Puff Pieces While Layoffs Go On and On
Has the PR industry absorbed the press?
Media Says Microsoft Hiring Freezes, But There Are Already Microsoft Layoffs
They want the public to talk about Microsoft as if it's just not hiring when it is actually firing
Richard Stallman lynchings: Sruthi Chandran splitting Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 26, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 26, 2026