How one small company’s SEO garbage made it to Sports Illustrated and USA Today

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A company called AdVon Commerce was behind seemingly AI-generated content at Sports Illustrated and USA Today. Its cofounder, Ben Faw, has flooded the web with garbage for years.

In the summer of 2018, staff of the Chicago Tribune awoke to find a story they didn’t recognize on the newspaper’s website. The article, multiple sources say, had something to do with a purse carried by Meghan Markle, the royal also known as the Duchess of Sussex. Advertisements frequently masquerade as news articles at the bottom of actual journalism — this is the phenomenon some have dubbed “the chumbox.

But at BestReviews, no one noticed the links until months after they were inserted, according to a person who worked at the company. The idea that Faw allegedly had created competing reviews sites — some of which directly ripped off the work of BestReviews — while still working at the company he helped build was shocking. “No matter how you feel about a company, who does this?” they said.

 

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