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An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

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Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#311

Post by blactuary »

g947o wrote: post #281

I am finding less value in reading Ars: * They are often late in reporting a story. This is fine for what Ars is, but that means by the time they publish a story, I have likely read the reporting and analysis elsewhere already, and whatever Ars has to say is stale * There seem to be fewer long stories/deep investigations recently when competitors are doing more (e.g. Verge's brilliant reporting on Supernatural recent…

Some companies have enough of a track record that they should be nuked from orbit, and "Company bad" is all that is worth saying. Meta is one of those companies. Palantir is another. Not holding them accountable and acting as if we should continue engaging with their products is part of the reason we are rapidly sliding towards dystopia

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#313

Post by alright2565 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #270
lapcat wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What places on the internet remains where articles are written by actual experts? The personal blogs of experts.

Examples? :)

First one that comes to mind is https://morethanmoore.substack.com/

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#314

Post by mbreese »

anthonj wrote: post #236

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

I think the fact that they one of the last places surviving from that generation of the Internet says a lot. The Condé Nast acquisition may have been a tragedy, but they managed to survive for this long. They’ve been continuously publishing online for about 30 years. It’s honestly amazing that they’ve managed to last this long.

Yes, it’s very different than it was back in the day. You don’t see 20+ page reviews of operating systems anymore, but I still think it’s a worthwhile place to visit.

Trying to survive in this online media market has definitely taken a toll. This current mistake makes me sad.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#315

Post by beepy »

crims0n wrote: post #292

I used to go to Ars daily, loved them... but at some point during the last 5 years or so they decided to lean into politics and that's when they lost me. I understand a technology journal will naturally have some overlap with politics, but they don't even try to hide the agenda anymore.

Perhaps it’s because politics have “leaned in” to the topics they cover, like the FCC, NASA, the FDA, and EVs.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#316

Post by mikkupikku »

kethinov wrote: post #245
everdrive wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ars has been going downhill for sometime now. I think it's difficult for a lot of these bigger publishers to be anything other than access journalism and advertising. I'm not saying Ars is fully there yet, but the pull is strong.

The comments section on Ars is particularly depressing. I've been posting there for two decades and watched it slowly devolve from a place where thoughtful discussions happened to now just being one of the worst echo chambers on the internet, like a bad subreddit. I've made suggestions over the years in their public feedback surveys to alter their forum software to discourage mob behavior, but they don't seem to be d…

Try reading Slashdot these days and it's the same story. I stopped reading regularly when cmdrtaco left but still check in occasionally out of misplaced nostalgia or something.. The comment section is like a time capsule from the 00s, the same ideas and arguments have been echoing back and forth there for years, seemingly losing soul and nuance with each echo. Bizarre, and sad.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#318

Post by seanhunter »

Springtime wrote: post #5

Ars Technica being caught using LLMs that hallucinated quotes by the author and then publishing them in their coverage about this is quite ironic here. Even on a forum where I saw the original article by this author posted someone used an LLM to summarize the piece without having read it fully themselves. How many levels of outsourcing thinking is occurring to where it becomes a game of telephone.

It’s fascinating that on the one hand Ars Technica didn’t think the article was worth writing (so got an LLM to do it) but expect us to think it’s worth reading. Then some people don’t think it’s worth reading (so get an LLM to do it) but think somehow we will think it’s not worth reading the article but is worth reading the llm summary. Feel like you can carry on that process ad infinitum always going for a smaller and smaller audience who are somehow willing to spend less and less effort (but not zero).

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#319

Post by phyzome »

raddan wrote: post #300
g947o wrote: post #281

I am finding less value in reading Ars: * They are often late in reporting a story. This is fine for what Ars is, but that means by the time they publish a story, I have likely read the reporting and analysis elsewhere already, and whatever Ars has to say is stale * There seem to be fewer long stories/deep investigations recently when competitors are doing more (e.g. Verge's brilliant reporting on Supernatural recent…

There are still a few authors worth reading on Ars. Beth Mole has a loyal following for a reason-- her stories are interesting, engaging, and never fail to make me squirm with horror. Jonathan Gitlin has a tendency to drop into the forum to snipe at comments he does not like, and I have no interest in supercars, but by and large his automobile reporting is interesting. And if you like anything rocket related, Eric Be…

Here's a recent Jonathan Gitlin piece that I found particularly egregious: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/01/exclusive-volvo-tells-u...

Absolutely zero discussion of why this might be a bad idea. It's not journalism, it's advertising.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#320

Post by phyzome »

anthonj wrote: post #236

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

It gets pretty bad at times. Here's one of the most mindlessly uncritical pieces I've seen, which seems to be a press release from Volkswagen: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/volkswagen-unveils-sedr... Look at the image captions gushing about the "roomy interior" of a vehicle that doesn't even exist! I actually wrote in to say how disappointed I was in this ad/press release material, and the response was "That was not a VW ad and we were not paid by VW for that or any other story". I find it interesting that they only denied the ad part, not the press release part...

As I mention in another comment, https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/01/exclusive-volvo-tells-u... is in a similar vein.

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