Keeping Track of Machine-Generated Faux News Sites ⇥ newsguardtech.com

I find the alarmist tone of this series of reports from NewsGuard to be largely unwarranted. People used to worry about blogs or the internet itself spreading misinformation, which has undeniably been the case, but you could make that argument about every publishing medium in history. Do not get me wrong; I understand why robots churning out fact-free nonsense in an trustworthy tone is concerning. I am just unsure that it is a unique problem. It is just more nonsense in the sea in which we are already swimming.

This feels to me like the inverse of yesterday’s news that CNet is purging its archives. Just as a wave of sites embraces machine-generated articles — including CNet itself — it is erasing a legacy of contemporary coverage.