LLM Grooming

A recent study published by the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue suggests that the Russian propaganda-spewing Pravda network has become increasingly authoritative as a result of other networks linking to its many and broadly disseminated articles.

Pravda has a network of about 90 websites, many of which look like normal, legitimate news entities, and through these platforms it has published more than 6 million articles—a new piece goes out every few seconds.

These sorts of high-output article farms can achieve greater authority, in the sense of being more trusted by search engines and other sorts of bot-driven algorithms, by having other sites link to them. They achieve this in part by linking to each other, and in part by publishing things that are meant to generate outrage and conversation, which then often leads to social media traffic. Real news sources will sometimes link to these sites, too, either to present them as one side of an argument, or to fact-check them.