content mill

English

Alternative forms

• content-mill

Noun

content mill (plural content mills)

1. (Internet, authorship) Synonym of content farm

   Coordinate term: paper mill

   • 2011, Peter Guber, Tell to Win, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 72:

     The crux of the hostile narrative was that Demand Media was a “content mill.” An article in Wired magazine actually triggered the drama by comparing Demand Media's system to Henry Ford's production line for cars in the early twentieth century.

   • 2015, Zachary Petit, The Essential Guide to Freelance Writing‎^[1], Penguin, →ISBN:

     Think of the content mill as a modern-day literary sweatshop—writers hunkering down at hot keyboards, plowing away at 3,000 word articles for, literally, pennies. Content mills were born because someone figured out that by targeting popular search result terms, they could commission an army of crappy posts catering to these terms and dominate Google's results.

   • 2023 October 19, Brendan I. Koerner, “Watch This Guy Work, and You’ll Finally Understand the TikTok Era”, in Wired‎^[2], →ISSN:

     One night in early 2019, Magana and Alvarado went to a party at a gaudy, largely unfurnished Los Angeles mansion, the sort of place rented by packs of influencers to use as content mills.

Further reading

• content farm on Wikipedia.Wikipedia