Content farm

A content farm or content mill is an organization focused on generating a large amount of web content, often specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by search engines, a practice known as search engine optimization (SEO). Such organizations often employ freelance creators or use artificial intelligence (AI) tools, with the goal of generating large amounts of content in the shortest time and for the lowest cost. The primary goal is to attract as many page views as possible, and thus generate more advertising revenue. The emergence of these media outlets is often tied to the demand for "true market demand" content based on search engine queries. Content farms have been criticized for their reliance on sensationalism, misinformation, and a new reliance on AI tools, all of which have degraded the accuracy of information in circulation.

History

Historically, content farms have outsourced the writing of their articles to people in poorer countries or poor people in wealthy countries to enlarge profit margins by keeping workers' pay low. In a new generation, these operations increasingly leverage artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate content at an accelerated pace. This content can be short form videos, news articles, or social media posts, but content is anything that circulates on the internet; it does not have to have a set purpose. An example is the Instagram egg, which was the most liked photo on Instagram at the time. Content has only to have been in circulation or to be in circulation currently.

The first advertisement banner on the internet was in 1994 from AT&T on HotWired.com, and had a click rate of 44%. Since then advertising has changed drastically. AdWords automated advertising and created targeted ads, so that there was a greater incentive for high traffic, because users were more likely to make purchases if products related to them. More advertising meant more money for writers. Then came AdSense: AdSense automatically placed ads on websites for anyone who signed up; there was no need for a direct relationship between advertiser and website.

Utilizing user data including on-site and off-site browsing, signals of intent to purchase, and demographics; targeted ads have a 5.3× higher click-through rate. This has been profitable for Google, as they own AdSense, and it has helped both creators and advertisers, eliminating the need for content creators and advertisers to seek each other out. Google's largest revenue stream is their advertisements. Ease of access to advertising and the ability for anyone to create content meant those who applied for AdSense could monetize their content. This incentive and the practicality of the process gave way to the rise of content farms.

Characteristics

Some content farms produce thousands of articles each month using freelance writers or AI tools. For example, in 2009, Wired reported that Demand Media—owner of eHow—was publishing one million items per month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias annually. Another notable example was Associated Content, purchased by Yahoo! in 2010 for $90 million, which later became Yahoo! Voices before shutting down in 2014.

Pay scales for writers at content farms are low compared to historical salaries. For instance, writers may be paid $3.50 per article, though some prolific contributors can produce enough content to earn a living. Writers are often not experts in the topics they cover.

Since the rise of large language models like ChatGPT, content farms have shifted towards AI-generated content. A report by NewsGuard in 2023 identified over 140 internationally recognized brands supporting AI-driven content farms. AI tools allow these sites to generate hundreds of articles daily, often with minimal human oversight.

Criticisms of content farms

Critics argue that content farms prioritize SEO and ad revenue over factual accuracy and relevance. Critics also highlight the potential for misinformation, such as conspiracy theories and fake product reviews, being spread through AI-generated content. Some have compared content farms to the fast food industry, calling them "fast content" providers that pollute the web with low-value material. The word "sponsored" displayed when searching has raised questions on the reliability of the site, as it was likely paid to be pushed to the top of the search options.

Criticisms of AI and content farms have coalesced because of the new use of AI tools and AI's tendency to "hallucinate" facts. AI's permeation of journalism, even in examples some consider trivial, like a summer reading list published by The Chicago Sun-Times which was written by AI, have created distrust of artificial intelligence. The prevalence of AI to aid in the creation of content for the purpose of monetization has increased and become common on the internet.

Social media content farm accounts totaling hundreds of thousands or millions of followers are not a rarity either.Usage of AI in high stakes environments like court cases as well as low stakes environments like the summer booklist publication and social media posts have left many questioning AI's role in the world.

Wider effects in society have been seen, like disruption of court cases because of hallucinations from AI tools dealing with usage among lawyers in citations. Another instance was a New York man using an AI avatar for his own court case defense. This has raised many concerns based on AI bias, its susceptibility to fabricating information, and how AI makes mistakes on subjects of varied importance like in writing and law.

Content farms can also suffer from AI cannibalism. This a process in which large language models (LLMs), models designed for interpretation of text, speech, translation, and text generation, start to consume the content they created. Over time these text generators can present significant deviation from the original information on which the models were trained. If a content farm uses an LLM to generate text and the LLM is using its own content, its accuracy will fall, leading to misinformation and worse content overall.

Content farms have also been used to intentionally misinform the public and attempt to influence election results. In the 2016 US election over 140 fake news websites from Veles in Macedonia portrayed themselves as American websites, and wrote sensationalist articles in an effort to garner more shares on social media. The United States was targeted because US viewers on Facebook have a higher average revenue per user, about 4 times as high as the world average. This revenue potential incentivized writers to create attention-grabbing content they knew would be shared. These content farm articles can often get hundreds of thousands of people to engage in posts.

Similarly, content farms have used bots to create inauthentic reviews of products. This manufactured website traffic encourages advertisers to bid higher prices for website advertising space; most companies have automatized bidding meaning unverified spaces can cost companies a lot of money for no return. It is estimated annually $13 billion dollars is wasted on this advertising.

Search engine responses

Search engines like Google have taken steps to limit the influence of content farms. In 2011, Google introduced the Google Panda update to lower the rankings of low-quality websites. Other search engines, like DuckDuckGo, have also implemented measures to block low-quality AI-driven sites.

Content farms have been a problem for ad exchange platforms, and many have policies around them, but enforcement of those policies is rare. Google said AI generated content alone is not a violation against their advertising policies. Notably, NewsGuard, a rater of the reliability of websites and news sources found Google to overwhelmingly serve more ads to content farms.

See also

• AI slop
• Brain rot
• Click farm
• Elsagate
• Enshittification
• Google Panda
• Misinformation
• SEO spam
• Spamdexing