“Bum,” said one precocious News Break user in the comment section of my recently-published op-ed. 

If he was referring to me, then yeah—maybe. But what really disturbed me about the ordeal was the fact that articles written by The Blue & Gold staff, which are specifically designated for the microcosm of Chamblee High School, were being reposted by an AI news aggregator with over 23 million monthly users. 

Since the beginning of November, every article I’ve published on this website has made it to the local news tab of News Break, a Silicon Valley-based app developed by tech mogul Jeff Zheng. Somehow, my op-ed (now unlisted) hit an optimal spot in News Break’s algorithm and brought 1,600 new views to our website on November 11—the date of the article’s publication. And as mentioned above, it did endure some flak in the process. 

But never mind that: News Break’s AI algorithm considers The Blue & Gold serious journalism. Wow, flattering.

Actually, concerning. According to News Break’s help page, which is inexplicably riddled with typos, reposting articles shouldn’t be an automatic process, meaning that there’s some sort of moderation initiative involving the website publishers that has to occur before the algorithm picks a source to repost from. But I’m a website publisher, and to my knowledge, this never happened with The Blue & Gold. So in other words, the Google-translated help page is a liar, and the bar is nonexistent when it comes to the content News Break aggregates.  

Here’s why that’s a problem. Let’s say I hypothetically went rogue and published an article with the following headline:

“WARNING! NEW CORONAVIRUS VACCINE CAUSES AIDS”

In hours, News Break’s AI algorithm picks the article up and reposts it to their website. And if I purposely pump the article with buzz words that align with News Break’s rapidly-changing algorithm, it’s sure to gain some traction on the local news tab—far more than it would if it had just stayed on its source website. That’s a result of News Break’s automatic tagging system, and it explains The Blue & Gold’s considerable, albeit unanticipated spike in views on November 11. 

Because News Break’s reposting system avoids copyright infringement through displaying a short preview of an article and linking to its source page, I’m guaranteed some traction on my website as well. And, if I’m running ads on my rogue website in this hypothetical scenario, more traction yields…you guessed it, an uptick in profits. 

I now have a monetary incentive to continue publishing the same type of inflammatory article that, in my experience, garners more clicks. A crash course in clickbait—that’s what this is, and that’s also what drives the constant publication of front-page grisly murder articles on Fox News, the overwhelmingly conservative bias of New York Post, and the god-knows-what’s-going-on with Buzzfeed. Thus, the rise of AI aggregators, which rightfully gives a voice to local news outlets in a market monopolized by national media companies, wrongfully plays a role in fueling the slow, drawn-out demise of journalistic ethos.  

Here’s some nuance: News Break doesn’t actually do a lousy job when it comes to weeding out nonreputable sources on their main home page. But on their local pages, tabloids do periodically make it to the trending tabs, dwarfing more reputable sources and contributing to the online fact-fiction web that most AI aggregators spin. For instance, a wholly untrustworthy Detroit news source called Designs Salad, with iconic news headlines like “51-YEAR OLD MAN BLOWS UP WALMART BATHROOM WHILE TRYING TO COOK CRYSTAL METH,” did manage to snag a prime spot in the app’s local crime section when I last checked.

Back to my hypothetical situation. If I go total “Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler” and resign myself to producing profitable over credible content, I’m actively contributing to the destruction of news literacy and breeding a vein of misinformed readers. But wait! Readers would probably be able to tell that my dubiously-sourced (but nonetheless, front-page) article is a fallacy, right?

Not when they’re delusional themselves. 

Keep in mind that it doesn’t take much justification to fuel a conspiracy theorist’s argument. And News Break, where comment sections are galvanized by sensationalism, seems to be rampant with them. Here’s an example, on a reposted article confirming Biden’s lead in Wisconsin:   

“If I had known it was legal to vote for a president after day at I would have voted for my mom from my dad from granddad MMA granmammy on both sides my family and all my uncles and all my aunts that had passed away and I had a lot of Them. That whole election processes bull **** and the democrats just tried to steal the presidency from trump because they are bunch of day and control freaks that want to control us that’s why would still wear in the stupid mask and they are what is killing us [sic].”

Moreover, with its clunky, ad-polluted interface, News Break attracts a crowd that isn’t so concerned with online aesthetics. Or, a crowd that’s too technology illiterate to discern what’s aesthetic and what isn’t—namely, baby boomers, the demographic most susceptible to the misinformation that fuels alt-right beliefs, which clarifies why News Break is such a prevalent Trump stronghold. Again, its flawed AI algorithm, which brings local news enthusiasts to one ultra-concentrated app, is a breeding ground for small-town Internet users to feed into each other’s racist ideologies. If you’re curious what I mean, look at the comment section on absolutely any reposted article. It is a cesspool.  

Because News Break is so oriented towards local news, users also have the ability to post their own advertisements—in the ‘classifieds’ tab, a place reminiscent of Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. But with News Break’s typical audience in mind, this tab is messy. Consider the following screenshots: 

Gallery • 4 Photos

(A note: the monkeys are available for shipping everywhere in the US. So if the owner approves your purchase, and you happen to live in one of the 19 states prohibiting monkey ownership in their exotic animal laws, what then? Aside from contributing to the death of ethics in journalism, you’re also getting involved in the illegal pet trade, which is something even eBay steers clear from in their terms of service. Yikes!)

Nevertheless, I can see some semblance of pure intent behind the app: bolster local journalism in a world headed on a straight path towards globalization. And for some journalists, the extra traction is a mixed blessing. For The Blue & Gold, however, it’s a painful reminder that with online publication, streamlining our content-audience interaction is no longer an option.