Is this fake B2B news or AI generated content run amok?

As part of our normal research process of examining M&A transactions for Global 5000 companies, we came across a number of postings & articles that look like fake news. They look like automatically generated content and the info in them is wrong and bad.  Junk that is wasting space and adding to the noise online.

How we discovered this was when researching the acquisition of Harman International Industries by Samsung Electronics which closed in May 2017. Harman was traded on NYSE under the ticker HAR but stopped trading when the deal closed in March.

We came across these 3 articles (and there were others) all posted in November-

• Week Hearld – Sioux Falls SD
  • https://weekherald.com/2017/11/20/somewhat-favorable-media-coverage-somewhat-unlikely-to-affect-harman-international-industries-har-stock-price.html
• TrueBlue Tribune – New Port Richey FL
  • https://www.truebluetribune.com/2017/11/19/comparing-tenneco-ten-harman-international-industries-har.html
• Dispatch Tribunal
  • https://www.dispatchtribunal.com/2017/11/20/contrasting-harman-international-industries-har-and-delphi-automotive-plc-dlph.html

The web sites all look alike.  The articles are all relating to the ticker symbol HAR which was closed over 8 months ago. We found similar postings for other, long departed ticker symbols.

Seems there is a pretty common practice of registering legitimate sounding names/URLs and then auto-generating content for some unknown reason.

What a waste.