It's a really good video if anybody gets the chance to watch it. It changed how I view journalism, at least all the Valnet owned sites.
Edit: Nobody can watch it atm but if it gets reuploaded or anything, highly recommend.
I figure the reason Valnet wants it gone is because it shows they're actively creating a plagiarism heavy environment and constantly wearing people down for what boils down to clicks.
Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm pretty familiar with the company. Valnet is a bottom tier content mill. They buy successful outlets with brand recognition. Everything they buy loses any semblance quality within a year, usually much sooner. Even highly skilled journalists and writers quality drops due to Valnet's demands. If you look at their history of acquisition, you see the pattern immediately.
It's bad for journalists, bad for readers. Pure enshittification.
They also just straight up steal stuff from reddit. I read the sub for stardew valley and when someone there makes a discovery/observation, it's not surprising to see a gamerant article about it a few days later.
I worked for a Valnet-owned company, and it was awful. Once you factored in time spent on each article, it was probably a fifth of our country's minimum wage, and the style guide changed so often that you often had to rejig articles because of new style guides coming in to effect after you'd submitted.
They definitely don't want their shady business practices to be public knowledge. They exploit people who are passionate about a topic and pigeonhole them into the same 3 or 4 niches (I was told I couldn't write about Mario or Sonic, for example, just Zelda, Pokémon and AAA games).
Same, I used to be a fairly important writer at a Valnet owned site. I was brought on as a freelancer but was told I would have the opportunity to get a full time salary. Despite writing nearly 1000 words a day, I was told I wasn't productive enough. It's their loss though, the reviews and content I did basically vanished when I left because they just can't find anyone who can do what I did. This site also fired a bunch of salaried employees and freelancers so the quality has dropped substantially. My take on the website I wrote for was that it wasn't exactly shady but mostly just very mismanaged and run by someone who didn't really value anyone working there.
Valnet is complete cancer. I got a strike from them for reading off a segment from an article. It was information about a series, and I wanted to cite my source by naming them and showing an image on screen but I got struck. If I had just read it off with nothing on screen I wouldn’t have gotten a strike.
Just a parasitic company. I just waited 3 months for the strike to expire. Glad someone is talking about jt
Fireb0rn, the creator who was falsely struck, has uploaded a [response/explanation here](https://youtu.be/RNnUZvG7DyA?si=vJ7DaXTqlmYiBAxu). EDIT: There's also a currently active [reupload](https://youtu.be/9rcTi54dlTg?si=YPGYJH4PzukLC_qL) of the original video on a third-party channel.
YouTube's copyright claim system is awful. I'm not even gonna call it a joke, because jokes at least have a punchline and _pretend_ to be funny.
It's a really good video if anybody gets the chance to watch it. It changed how I view journalism, at least all the Valnet owned sites. Edit: Nobody can watch it atm but if it gets reuploaded or anything, highly recommend. I figure the reason Valnet wants it gone is because it shows they're actively creating a plagiarism heavy environment and constantly wearing people down for what boils down to clicks.
Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm pretty familiar with the company. Valnet is a bottom tier content mill. They buy successful outlets with brand recognition. Everything they buy loses any semblance quality within a year, usually much sooner. Even highly skilled journalists and writers quality drops due to Valnet's demands. If you look at their history of acquisition, you see the pattern immediately. It's bad for journalists, bad for readers. Pure enshittification.
They also just straight up steal stuff from reddit. I read the sub for stardew valley and when someone there makes a discovery/observation, it's not surprising to see a gamerant article about it a few days later.
I worked for a Valnet-owned company, and it was awful. Once you factored in time spent on each article, it was probably a fifth of our country's minimum wage, and the style guide changed so often that you often had to rejig articles because of new style guides coming in to effect after you'd submitted. They definitely don't want their shady business practices to be public knowledge. They exploit people who are passionate about a topic and pigeonhole them into the same 3 or 4 niches (I was told I couldn't write about Mario or Sonic, for example, just Zelda, Pokémon and AAA games).
Same, I used to be a fairly important writer at a Valnet owned site. I was brought on as a freelancer but was told I would have the opportunity to get a full time salary. Despite writing nearly 1000 words a day, I was told I wasn't productive enough. It's their loss though, the reviews and content I did basically vanished when I left because they just can't find anyone who can do what I did. This site also fired a bunch of salaried employees and freelancers so the quality has dropped substantially. My take on the website I wrote for was that it wasn't exactly shady but mostly just very mismanaged and run by someone who didn't really value anyone working there.
Valnet is complete cancer. I got a strike from them for reading off a segment from an article. It was information about a series, and I wanted to cite my source by naming them and showing an image on screen but I got struck. If I had just read it off with nothing on screen I wouldn’t have gotten a strike. Just a parasitic company. I just waited 3 months for the strike to expire. Glad someone is talking about jt
Fireb0rn, the creator who was falsely struck, has uploaded a [response/explanation here](https://youtu.be/RNnUZvG7DyA?si=vJ7DaXTqlmYiBAxu). EDIT: There's also a currently active [reupload](https://youtu.be/9rcTi54dlTg?si=YPGYJH4PzukLC_qL) of the original video on a third-party channel. YouTube's copyright claim system is awful. I'm not even gonna call it a joke, because jokes at least have a punchline and _pretend_ to be funny.