Verge
•70% Informative
Fake obituaries claim that Brian Vastag and Beth Mazur died together in December 2023 .
The fake articles were published by over a dozen sites that published articles about Mazur ’s death.
The sites have hallmarks of being generated using artificial intelligence tools.
Google has long struggled to contain obituary spam.
Some websites churn out a constant stream of clickbait news articles about the deceased.
One site called The Thaiger churns out more than 20 stories a day at times, including the SEO obituary articles about people who died after illnesses; college students who died by suicide; and minors who were in fatal car accidents.
Google says it's working to launch updates that will significantly improve search results for queries like these.
FreshersLive says staff attempts to contact family of the deceased.
It's unclear how the site finds and assesses deaths to write about.
The obituary for Beth Mazur was published on January 12th, weeks after she died.
VR Score
57
Informative language
48
Neutral language
43
Article tone
informal
Language
English
Language complexity
56
Offensive language
possibly offensive
Hate speech
not hateful
Attention-grabbing headline
not detected
Known propaganda techniques
not detected
Time-value
short-lived
External references
14
Source diversity
7
Affiliate links
no affiliate links