TUAW Returns as a Gross, Zombie AI-Generated Garbage Site

https://sixcolors.com/link/2024/07/tuaw-returns-as-a-gross-zombie-ai-generated-garbage-site/

by zdw • 2 years ago

57 15 2 years ago

sixcolors.com

kyleyeats• 2 years ago

Don't be mad at the people who bought TUAW. Be mad at the people who hawked TUAW.

superb_dev• 2 years ago

I’m gonna be mad at both

zdw• 2 years ago

Running and upgrading any site has a non-trivial amount of work, especially if it has any sort of dynamic content or CMS.

What would you propose a person or company do if they want to stop running a popular site (ie, not fund it going forward), but still keep the content up, if without any changes?

This keeps happening - older tech sites like https://techreport.com also got sold off and all the new publishing is sensationalist/cryptoscam crap.

What we need is a benevolent crap-free way to just freeze old sites in place, with all the URLs intact, and all the hosting paid for...

timestretch• 2 years ago

I'm not sure what value that provides either. See https://www.macsurfer.com/

filmgirlcw2• 2 years ago

Automattic offers this as a service. I think it’s $35,000 — so not too much, but probably out of range for a lot of places.

This is what I said to 404 Media yesterday [1]:

“It’s gross. We have decades of this stuff built up and it keeps changing hands and changing hands. And what recourse do we have as the writers?,” Warren said. “We also do such a bad job of web preservation, of preserving the history of the web as it was. So it’s kind of fucked to me that these approximations of the past are being recreated in these really blasphemous ways.”

Unfortunately, an archive wouldn’t have solved this particular issue. The problem here was threefold.

First, the original domain had been inaccessible (but still owned by AOL/Verizon/Yahoo/Apollo Global) for close to ten years. It used to redirect to Engadget.com, where most of the archives (sans images as most of them were mangled in CMS migrations, I guess) still exist. (It is important to note they didn’t redirect individual URIs, just to the main Engadget domain.) That means that what was sold was explicitly the domain and not the content. (Many of us original authors owned the content, it turns out. And AOL and its I guess follow-on companies had a non-exclusive perpetual license to it)

Second, the domain was sold (and explicitly not the content) to a shady web hosting adjacent operator who runs a lot of these sorts of spam/splog operations, who then decided it would be fine to take the content from archive.org, recreate slugs (which I’m pretty sure there is no legal recourse for in any jurisdiction, which is fine) and poorly rewrite the articles (this is probably copyright infringement, as many of the headlines and text are extremely close or identical. Just worse because they’ve been mangled by AI summarizers) and then attribute that content to the bylines (incorrect at that) of the old staffers

Third, this operation then decided to start publishing automated and ripped off content under those same bylines of previous staffers, potentially creating confusion and professional repercussions, not to mention making a mess of SEO for those authors, etc., etc..

If the owner of a domain or brand determines that there is value in that domain or brand, having archives (which we had here) isn’t enough to stave off absolute ghouls who want to use late 2010s splog techniques to try to game Google or something, attempting to steal the bylines and identities of the former contributors. (The economics of this whole thing make no sense. But whatever. Not my circus.)

I’ll quote myself again (also from my interview with 404 Media):

“What’s worse than not having a good archive of my work is having one that is bastardized with my name but not my face and not my words on it,” Warren told 404 Media. “If they wanted to try to revive an old brand, fine, but leave the original writers out of it, and leave the old content out of it too because a lot of that old stuff has been rewritten and regurgitated and I don’t have any idea what it is, and it’s not what I actually wrote.”

[1] https://www.404media.co/a-beloved-tech-blog-tuaw-is-now-publ...

blastonico• 2 years ago

I'm mad at people that don't hawk TUAW.

filmgirlcw2• 2 years ago

(Putting the very funny pun aside)

No, as the person who is responsible for this story becoming “a thing” and one of the people whose identities was misappropriated, I’m mad at both.

I’m mad at AOL/Verizon/Yahoo/Apollo Global/whoever the owner of the original domain was for selling the domain in this way. Especially since the the site and domain had been dead for almost 10 years (and the content on that site was archived, granted the images didn’t survive, on Engadget), which makes me question why they’d wait so long and do it this way.

But I’m genuinely and completely outraged that my name was used, however briefly, on new articles (as well as AI-summarized versions of old articles I didn’t even write the first time — tho my original words were rewritten with AI and had another byline slapped on them) on a website that used to exist, and is for better or worse, something that will always have an association with me.

The most disastrous damage has been resolved, thanks to bad publicity and a strongly-worded email I sent yesterday threatening legal action if my name wasn’t removed (and I would have contacted a lawyer to send a cease and desist if they hadn’t removed my name), but despite seeing zombie sites reappear, it genuinely never occurred to me that anyone would be brazen enough to try to reconstruct archives and new content and attribute it to the original staffers of a publication.

xnx• 2 years ago

Good luck to anyone trying to understand or even recognize this reference in 5 years' time.

sgerenser• 2 years ago

It appears they just set it loose on MacRumors, telling it to rewrite the stories using different phrasing and a made up bio line. But pretty much every story maps 1:1 with MacRumors.

stalfosknight• 2 years ago

Why must things be this way today?

rchaud2• 2 years ago

To the shovel seller belongs the spoils.

al_borland• 2 years ago

People using AI to most low quality tech articles are not the shovel sellers.

tivert• 2 years ago

We did it guys! Generative AI is set to make the web fantastic again!

rchaud2• 2 years ago

Sports Illustrated, CNET.com, TUAW....the creme de la creme of the web is using GenAI to drive value. Take that, Goldman!

bananapub• 2 years ago

this is basically the back story of Anathem - arseholes used generative AI to flood the Internet with garbage.

it really is just sad how many people and businesses apparently had no interest at all in quality and were just waiting for cheaper ways to generate lower quality crap to flood the world with.

TUAW Returns as a Gross, Zombie AI-Generated Garbage Site

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