The former authors of an Apple blog have fallen victim to identity theft. The Unofficial Apple Weblog was actually closed in 2015. However, in 2023 a new owner took over. With the help of AI, he has since been publishing articles under the names of authors who no longer work there.
Christina Warren is a Senior Developer Advocate at software developer GutHub. She previously worked as a journalist for several years – including for The Unofficial Apple Weblog. But although she hasn’t written for the blog since the end of 2009, articles under her name have appeared there again since July 2024.
AI websites: Operator steals identities of authors
Warren shared relevant threads Screenshots of that, there The Unofficial Apple Weblog was taken over by a new operator who stole their identity. One of the screenshots shows that several articles appeared under the name “Christina Warren” in July 2024.
Another screenshot shows her name next to a photo that was apparently generated by an artificial intelligence and appears in a list of names of other former authors. How 404 Media reported, their photos are not real pictures either.
Meanwhile, the “About Us” page states that “Web Orange Limited” purchased the blog “without its original content” from “Yahoo IP Holdings LLC” in early 2024. However, the earlier articles had been “carefully rewritten”. If you compare the original articles from one archive from Engadget However, with the new versions, it quickly becomes clear that this is apparently poorly reformulated AI content.
SEO spam: Google penalizes low-quality content
We were unable to reproduce Christina Warren’s screenshots. The reason for this, however, is that the new operators have now simply changed numerous author names. Meanwhile, the author images have remained the same.
Web Orange Limited describes itself on its website as an “online advertising agency” based in Hong Kong. The company apparently also manages the blog iLoungewhich has since been switched off and apparently recently reactivated.
There, too, AI content appears to be presented as articles by real people. Web Orange Limited apparently hopes to achieve top rankings in Google searches with low-quality content in order to generate more clicks and thus advertising revenue.
The problem: Google is now taking targeted action against low-quality AI content. Many articles from The Unofficial Apple Weblog and iLounge This is also why they are likely to perform poorly in searches.
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