"Holy shit… I can’t leave this damn app for an hour without breaking news of Trump committing another felony
Congress needs to begin very legal and very cool impeachment proceedings ASAP" - The Distinguished William LeGate
Why don't you go take a midnight swim in Horseshoe Lake?
Is trolling all you do? Don't you have anything constructive to add to this discussion?
I can't help it, Chief. It's my job. Your job is to use reliable and honest news sources. To wit:
Criticism and controversies[edit]
Plagiarism[edit]
Benny Johnson was fired from BuzzFeed in July 2014 for plagiarism.
BuzzFeed has been accused of plagiarizing original content from competitors throughout the online and offline press. In June 2012,
Gawker's
Adrian Chen observed that one of BuzzFeed's most popular writers—
Matt Stopera—frequently had copied and pasted "chunks of text into lists without attribution."
[69] In March 2013,
The Atlantic Wire also reported several "listicles" had apparently been copied from
Reddit and other websites.
[70] In July 2014, BuzzFeed writer
Benny Johnson was accused of multiple instances of plagiarism.
[71] Two anonymous Twitter users chronicled Johnson attributing work that was not his own, but "directly lift[ed] from other reporters,
Wikipedia, and
Yahoo! Answers", all without credit.
[72] BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith initially defended Johnson, calling him a "deeply original writer".
[73] Days later, Smith acknowledged that Johnson had plagiarized the work of others 40 times and announced that Johnson had been fired, apologizing to BuzzFeed readers. "Plagiarism, much less copying unchecked facts from Wikipedia or other sources, is an act of disrespect to the reader", Smith said. "We are deeply embarrassed and sorry to have misled you."
[73] In total, 41 instances of plagiarism were found and corrected.
[74] In 2016, claims surfaced of the YouTube channel BuzzFeedVideo stealing ideas and content from other creators.
[75] Among the accusers are YouTube users Akilah Obviously, Cr1TiKaL(penguinz0)
[76] and JaclynGlenn.
[77]
BuzzFeed has been the subject of multiple copyright infringement lawsuits, for both using content it had no rights to and encouraging its proliferation without attributing its sources: one for an individual photographer's photograph,
[78] and another for nine celebrity photographs from a single photography company.
[79]
Accuracy and reliability[edit]
In October 2014, a
Pew Research Center survey
[80] found that in the United States, BuzzFeed was viewed as an unreliable source by the majority of people, regardless of political affiliation.
[81][82] Adweek noted that most respondents had not heard of BuzzFeed, and many users do not consider BuzzFeed a news site.
[83] In a subsequent Pew report based on 2014 surveys,
[84] BuzzFeed was among the least trusted sources by
millennials.
[85][86] A 2016 study by the
Columbia Journalism Review found readers less likely to trust a story (originally published in
Mother Jones) that appeared to originate on BuzzFeed than the same article on
The New Yorker website.
[87]
In 2013, Buzzfeed named "My Lips are for Blowing" as one of "21 Awkwardly Sexual Albums"; the
Museum of Hoaxes subsequently reported there was no such album and that the image of the album used in the Buzzfeed article had been lifted from a 2010 fictitious album cover design created by a blogger going by the name Estancia de la Ding Dong.
[88]
On July 14 2013 Buzzfeed failed a fact check by fact checking website
Politifact, by reporting that "a toothbrush and toothpaste may sold to the same customer on Sunday in
Providence, Rhode Island.
[89]