Satanic Mills (of the term paper variety)

From Inside Higher Ed: Internet giants have been urged to block advertisements for contract cheating websites by a global alliance of higher education regulators.

The Global Academic Integrity Network (GAIN), representing 40 standards agencies, has written to platforms including Google, X and LinkedIn, urging them to “take a stand and join the fight against academic dishonesty” by blocking links to essay mills, which allow students to pay someone to write an assignment on their behalf... GAIN’s open letter warns that recent years “have witnessed a proliferation in the marketing and promotion of online cheating services across digital platforms.”

It invites internet giants to form a partnership with higher education regulators to review and uphold community guidelines on essay mills, arguing that this would “significantly reduce the visibility and impact of essay mills and contract cheating services and send a powerful message worldwide about the value of legitimate academic achievements.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2024/09/13/block-essay-mill-ads-global-regulators-urge-internet-giants.

But wait! Maybe the choice is now letting the paper-writing mills - that provide employment for folks, often in third-world countries where jobs are scarce - do the writing, or letting chatGPT kill all those traditional jobs. After all, the paper-writing mills' products can be viewed as "skilled artisanal, hand-crafted" essays, an artform endangered by cheap report-writing machines. If we don't preserve the mills, our grandchildren will never experience the art of hiring someone - a real flesh-and-blood person! - to write a term paper. Just saying...