The subreddit created to spread uplifting news has some uplifting news for those who don’t like parasitic websites like the Huffington Post — links to HuffPo stories are no longer welcome.
HuffPo has a long and storied history of “borrowing” content without attribution or payment, or just making it up completely (remember when they made up a “blog post” by George Clooney?). Well, their editors have apparently been sticking by that business model.
In a post entitled, “PSA – HuffingtonPost articles are no longer welcome in r/UpliftingNews and will be immediately removed moving forward,” the Uplifting News subreddit announced, “Simply put, a few of the HuffingtonPost Good News Editors have been sourcing stories from this subreddit for quite a while without any attribution to r/UpliftingNews, to reddit.com and in some cases, even to the original journalists or bloggers whose stories were shared here…”
The post claims, “After being prompted, they have recently become unapologetic about this, and instead embrace a parasitic business model that monetizes content created by others through condensed summaries without any ethical standards or creative attribution.”
So, after being told to stop ripping off their content and claiming it as their own, keeping all revenue generated by it, Huffington Post became indignant.
This should come as a surprise to no one, Arianna Huffington simply turned her biography into a business model.
(H/T Sean Davis)
UPDATE: HuffPo emailed the following statement from Kiki Von Glinow, Deputy Managing Editor, “We value Reddit and respect the community when sourcing content. The Huffington Post abides by the existing Reddit pressiquette. It is our policy to credit Reddit when we report on a story that we learned about through their platform, and reach out to Redditors when we’re interested in incorporating their original content into our coverage.”