Last month, Futurism published an investigation into a company called Brown Brothers Media, which has attracted tens of millions of page views per month by acquiring struggling news sites and turning them into AI-powered content mills. (One of the brothers behind the company, we also reported, has extensive ties to Ghislaine Maxwell, the incarcerated collaborator of deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.)
Brown Brothers Media achieved this extraordinary success by inventing fake journalists and subject matter experts, often outfitting them with fraudulent credentials and personal histories, and using their bylines to churn out thousands of SEO-optimized articles on its network of publications. These pieces were often plagiarized from real reporting, based on made-up personal experiences, or so sloppy that they provided no value to readers.
According to data we reviewed, the operation has sourced much of its audience from Google. The search giant didn’t have much to say in response to our investigation — but after we published, it moved to suppress Brown Brothers sites from its platforms such as Search and Google News. Soon afterward, Brown Brothers Media abruptly halted publication.
Now, Google has updated its guidelines to explicitly forbid the use of fake bylines and AI-generated headshots, saying it will no longer “prioritize” sites that engage in those deceptive practices.
