Why is The Huffington Post stealing content from Reddit users?

A picture is worth a thousand words but when it gets used without photographer credit, as The Huffington Post has come to find out, in the digital world a picture can be a worth a billion trolls. According to a recent post on Reddit, the news giant allegedly used a photograph it took from one of its users without permission and did not credit it. The Huffington Post then linked the image from the host Imgur.

Reddit user Francesca Timbers (aka FrancescaO_O) apparently made attempts to have the matter settled with The Huffington Post editors but to her surprise, the response was abrasive:

“I contacted HuffPost, said it was fine for them to use the image, but could they please post credit. They responded, refusing to credit the image, stating that as it was hosted on imgur, I would have to delete it from there myself”. Francesca Timbers said.

After The Huffington Post refused to credit the image, Francesca Timbers, trolled them, quite succinctly. She, instead of deleting the photograph as they had suggested, decided to have fun at the expense of The Huffington Post. She edited the image. She put text across it, addressing her grievance and then at the bottom of the image, left the long due credit. Since The Huffington Post embedded the image straight from the Imgur link, any edits made to the image would appear in The Huffington Post’s article as a refresh and without notifying it. Like so:

It was not long after the image edit that Huffington Post noticed it. Instead of crediting the photograph they removed it, updated the article and added a correction but not a mention of the real reason behind the photograph swap.

According to Imgur Terms of Service, “By downloading a file or other content from the Imgur site, you agree that you will not use such file or other content except for personal, non-commercial purposes, and you may not claim any rights to such file or other content, except to the extent otherwise specifically provided in writing.” [Italics edited] FrancescaO_O has a point.

This is not the first time The Huffington Post has stepped on the virtual feet of Redditors. Just last week it was banned from the popular r/UpliftingNews subreddit — a section reserved for “Good News”.

According to a post in the subreddit, “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.” The post further notes that “in some cases, even to the original journalists or bloggers whose stories were shared here (and in other subreddits).”

Similar to FrancescaO_O’s case, The Huffington Post, after confronted, allegedly responded in a rather crude manner.

“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. Moving forward, we will no longer support this here, and will instead encourage support for the hard working journalists and bloggers finding and writing about the great people and actions happening all around us.”

Like so, guys. Very simple:

Image by FrancescaO_O via Imgur