I’ve gotten messages telling me @buzzfeed featured my post on their snap today and my question is, once again, where’s my cut of the check going to whoever’s job it is to literally screenshot my content and repost it?
@buzzfeed why do you pay your employees to copy+paste my content? why not hire creative people instead? just wondering.
@buzzfeed either start paying me, or stop using my stuff thanks!
I genuinely do not care when people on reddit or facebook or somewhere else screenshot and repost my content, because they’re not getting paid either.
What bothers me is that @buzzfeed has paid employees who have at least ten times now reposted my content to earn their paychecks. Whereas I am blogging for free on a platform that offers virtually no opportunities for content creators to profit from the time we spend.
I clearly offer something Buzzfeed wants and values as marketable, but rather than reach out to me to discuss how I could be an asset to them, or to at least ask permission to repost my content for free, they just pay their employees to scour my blog and make money off of me without benefiting me in any way.
It’s bullshit, and I’m genuinely tired of it.
@buzzfeed stole one of my posts for a listicle and apparently it was so good they quoted it verbatim for the article header to get clicks. Never once heard from @buzzfeed about permission or compensation. I could really use that too because I’m disabled and struggling on govt aid. So @buzzfeed you paid someone to steal my content in order to earn ad revenue for your selves so how about giving a cut to the people actually creating the work?
What is it gonna take though? @buzzfeed getting sued by a creator? Getting sued by multiple creators? Constant DMCA takedowns? There is no way @buzzfeed can claim they aren’t successful enough to pay all of its contributors. The exposure argument doesn’t work when so much of the stolen content is poorly credited or not at all. Its pure theft and hoping to get away with it by either the creators never seeing it or hopefully the creators being jazzed that they showed up on buzzfeed.
Go on Twitter and tweet that they stole your work. Link to their page and to your original work. Tweet out that you’re looking for other writers and artists who have had their work stolen and posted by buzzfeed without compensation. Make sure that every single person who responds includes a link to their own work and a link to the buzzfeed page that uses their work. Make sure to @ buzzfeed in each and every tweet from every complainant. When you have a roll going, tweet that you’re looking to file a class-action suit against @buzzfeed. Tweet that you’re looking for a lawyer. You will get a response from buzzfeed. They will want to avoid even the preliminaries of a lawsuit, and will certainly want to avoid bad press.
hi friends, i deal with this on a regular basis too. despite my pleasing, bitching, endless demands, threats and appeals to their humanity, newspaper editors and journalists do not appear to give a single shit about journalistic integrity or paying people they steal content from. as a way to combat this i have been listing myself as a writer for those publications in my twitter bio and added them to my resume
whenever people get mad at me online for making a bad post i tell them to contact my “’employers” and complain until they remove my content. i highly suggest everyone else does this as well.
often i get people (or journalists) asking me if i work for those publications and if they’ll give me a foot in the door and i usually behave like a terrible lunatic so i poison the brand that stole from me. i also encourage you to do this.
e: also dont listen to the idiot above suggesting a class action lawsuit, they’re within their legal right to do so bc twitter allows them the right to use anything you post on there without your explicit permission. that’s what you sign up for when you sign up for an account on twitter. just bc its legally fine doesnt mean its not morally bankrupt
