Consider this mock-up tabloid front page.

Alarmist headlines, dubious levels of truth, poor citations. So what tabloid is this from?

Answer: it’s not from a tabloid at all. All the headlines above are taken from Slashdot stories from the past few days.

True, Slashdot has never exactly been a bastion of journalistic integrity: in reality, it’s nothing more than a hivemind-operated news aggregator. However, in recent years, it’s been slipping slowly towards a Daily Mail level of sensationalism.

The “Facebook linked to rise in STDs” story was republished straight from The Sun, and the one about Facebook data sharing was clipped from an excerpt of a single TechCrunch article based around a short segment of a statement from Facebook regarding some changes to its privacy policy. Perhaps I’m being unfair to /. here: if anything, its users are to blame for this downward trend.

However, Slashdot is based entirely around user submissions, but the peer review process seems to have broken down lately. Microsoft-bashing headlines (often with poorly-sourced foundations) are becoming ever more frequent, and when Slashdot republishes a Daily Mail story practically verbatim (one which has already been debunked, no less) you know you’re in deep trouble.

I recently removed Slashdot from my RSS subscriptions list, simply because the encroaching stupidity was getting too much for me to be bothered with every day. I’ll still pop on from time to time, and I’ll continue to receive the daily digest e-mail. However, from now on, El Reg and Ars will be my primary tech news sources: I’m not willing to have double standards when it comes to gutter-press journalism.