The unofficial Apple blog has been resurrected, but the ad agency Web Orange has turned it into a nightmarish plagiarism grounds for AI-generated copy and, even worse, the plagiarized bylines of writers who have long since moved on.
Unofficial Apple Weblog
Following the dot-com bubble in 2000, it seemed like there was a website for everything, even though the internet was relatively small compared to today's corporate-driven market. Apart from enthusiasts putting up billboards on the web, some websites sprang up under larger financial groups, like Weblogs, which was backed by Mark Cuban in 2003.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) was launched in 2004 under the umbrella of Weblogs Inc. and was one of the company's most popular sites. Recently, what remains of TUAW, except for archived content, was acquired by a public relations agency called Web Orange.
They then clearly scraped other sites to fill in the content. A quick look through shows some obvious hallucinations and verbiage stolen from us by AI scrapers and all the other Apple-centric sites.
That's pretty bad, right? But it gets even worse.
Many of today's giants of technology journalism, such as Christina Warren and Scott McNulty, got their start at TUAW and are still hard at work in the field today, and we even have veteran reporters from TUAW working for us from time to time.
And maybe you know this name.
This is not AppleInsider's William Gallagher.
And now Hong Kong-based Web Orange, after purchasing the TUAW domain, has attached their name, and that of our own William Gallagher, to that AI-summarised content for a slick SEO strategy.
Someone bought the TUAW domain, stuffed some AI generated garbage on it, and reused the name of a job I had when I was 21 in an attempt to pull an SEO scam that won't work in 2024 because Google changed their algorithm. Idiot! H/t Gruber pic.twitter.com/1JQeNljarT
— Christina Warren (@film_girl) July 9, 2024
The bylines are familiar names, but the photos and bios are AI-generated, and the SEO strength of the author names might have helped this farcical website if Google hadn't used AI to screw up SEO.
But this is a problem closer to home than Google theft, and we hate what Web Orange has done to a once-great site.
TUAW, Weblog, AOL
Weblogs Inc. was home to many of the blogs you're familiar with, including Engadget, Autoblog, TUAW, etc. After being acquired by AOL in 2005, these smaller blogs bounced around from parent company to parent company, eventually coming under the umbrella of Verizon, before being sold again to a private equity firm.
The web media landscape has been in flux for over a decade, with most Apple enthusiast websites disappearing or forced to change their financial strategies. The vacant domains left behind are often owned by large corporations and can be SEO goldmines if exploited by the right or wrong organization.
meanwhile Apple Insider We have survived through the turmoil of the past 27 years, but it would be horrifying to know that our name and site are being used in this way in a future where we no longer exist. Some of our staff are MacNN And we’re terrified at the idea of ​​being replaced by terrible AI bylines.
There's not much we can do about AI rewriting content hosted elsewhere and zombifying TUAW, all we can do is point it out.
And do as we do: find the real people behind the work you love and support them.
Do not support this abhorrent attempt to steal journalistic integrity and other people’s content and identities through AI fraud.
TUAW's About page states, “Our mission has been reimagined to continue to provide reliable and engaging content for Apple enthusiasts and tech professionals.” Their relaunch is a far cry from that promise, and something that seems to be on the outer edge of our solar system.
Maybe it will recover, but given the history behind reopening such a trusted and venerable institution, that seems doubtful.