Speaking of Steve Jobs doppelgangers, Ashton Kutcher might be in hot
Mr. Kutcher, who’s an actor in the sheets but a tech guy in the streets (or is it the other way around?), apparently owns a viral content site called A+. And the site’s being accused of plagiarism, the Daily Dot reports.
Ironically, the site’s being accused of lifting content from BuzzFeed (BZFD) — which recently came under fire after one of its writers was found to have plagiarized from such esteemed reference sites as Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers.
The mysterious site has “no editorial masthead, no author pages, and until recently, not even and About page,” the Daily Dot reports. It’s the viral content farm of your nightmares. It’s also probably the viral site most similar to the Onion’s satirical click farm, Clickhole.
The Daily Dot has the deets on the article that appeared to have been lifted from BuzzFeed:
The A+ article “This Girl Was Sent Home In Tears Because Her Dress Was Too Short. So Her Mom Did The Most Awesome Thing Ever.”, for example, is almost identical to a BuzzFeed post by Ryan Broderick. The only significant difference, besides the headline, is the removal of one photo and the addition of a request for readers “to share it with your friends.”
That article, along with every post published to the site before July, was deleted shortly after we reached out to A+ for comment. […]
A BuzzFeed listicle celebrating Independence Day (“The 26 Most American Comebacks In The History of The World”) was also reposted, with the captions and the headline slightly altered. The same is true of A+’s “50 Awesome Tattoos Inspired by Books You Grew Up With As A Kid,” which is structured identically to a popular listicle by Alanna Okun.
The evidence is pretty damning.
(h/t the Guardian)
UPDATE: A spokesperson from A+ sent us the following statement:
“We take these allegations seriously and are looking into them. The content that was removed was taken down as a precautionary measure. Respecting the intellectual property of others is extremely important to us.”