What are these fake obits and how do we stop them?

April 28, 2023 1:51 PM

A friend's child was murdered last week, and before the Medical Examiner released the name (yesterday), there were a number of "obits" on sites like memorial-note, death-honor, and obituary-chapel dot com. Other than name and age, literally nothing in the writeups (they all look AI-generated and are then copypasted) is correct. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK and how can these sites be taken down? (Not just for my friend's child, but for everyone.) Thanks.
posted by 2soxy4mypuppet to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I am so sorry this tragedy happened to your friends, and that this insidious behavior is compounding their grief.

I found this Ask from a few years ago, which appears similar in nature. Sure enough, it looks like Search Engine Optimization spamming. I have no clue how the creeps got the name of the victim so quickly, though, and I share your sense of shock and disgust.

You may find the answers at the earlier Ask helpful, though there is some link decay. It is unthinkable that anyone would use the violent death of a child to drive traffic to their useless websites in this way. I wish I had more wisdom to offer. This really is just horrible, and I’m so sorry.
posted by armeowda at 3:03 PM on April 28, 2023 [11 favorites]

I'm so sorry. This is hideous. Maybe sites like these pull the name/age details from earlier missing-person or Amber alerts, and generate the rest of the "obit" content? Obituary-chapel dot com also runs missing-person "articles."
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:52 PM on April 28, 2023

Any chance your friend lives in Florida and their sunshine laws mean the child’s info was released as a public record and these … bottom feeders scraped that info to use for SEO purposes?
posted by terrapin at 5:49 AM on April 29, 2023

They do this to sell advertising. Contact the advertisers and tell them they are using a hateful site, and that you will be asking everyone you know to boycott them. Anyone reading this thread can do the same, since you provided links. It's possible that a local funeral home is using an advertising service and not fully aware. I'm so sorry for your friends' tragedy and the exploitation.
posted by theora55 at 9:44 AM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]