World of Buzz : Stop Feeding Content Regurgitation Websites!

A former World of Buzz writer just exposed really goes on inside that infamous clickbait website, and show us why we should stop feeding such content regurgitation websites.

 

World of Buzz : Who Are They?

World of Buzz claims to be Malaysia’s no. 1 social news website. It is basically a content farm, reposting content scraped from social media websites.

World of Buzz may not be as bad as The Coverage Bureau (which deserves a special mention for reposting old news!), but they are still pretty notorious for their scraped content.

They are part of Influasia, which also runs Lobak Merah, NOODOU, and Munch.

 

World of Buzz : Former Intern Tells All!

After World of Buzz got banned for a month on Reddit, one of their former writers wrote an expose on what really goes on behind the scenes.

This former writer for World of Buzz was an intern who worked there for four months, and shared evidence to back up his/her claim :

  • official documents
  • a campaign brief
  • emails with the founder
  • employment / onboarding emails

This was what he/she revealed on Reddit :

I was a former intern for 4 months in World of Buzz and am here to spill the tea on this heaping pile of crap they call a “news publication”.

Without revealing too much (am using a throw away account because I am afraid that somebody from Influasia lurking in this sub might be able to pinpoint who I am with my main account), I was a, so called, “content creator”. Only problem is I didn’t create content, I stole them. I was ordered by the bosses to basically rip off whatever I can find on Facebook in the morning when I reach the office.

Obviously, I didn’t join World of Buzz for its Pulitzer Prize winning news reporting. But I never knew how bad their ethics were until the first day I stepped into the office. On the first minute on the job, I was immediately told that I had a strict KPI to follow, 3-5 articles a day, and 1 video per day if you’re a video editor. If you remotely know how news reporting and video production works, you’ll know that this is practically impossible. Hence, why so many articles they publish are basically rip-offs of some other news source. The bosses didn’t care about validity and truth, all they cared was views and revenue.

 

World of Buzz : Stop Feeding Content Regurgitation Websites!

Clickbait websites like World of Buzz and The Coverage have long been detested by writers and content creators, but the fact is we, the READERS, are at fault.

We feed these websites, and encourage them to keep farming and regurgitating content from social media and other websites.

What we readers don’t understand is that content creation is HARD WORK.

It may take us just a few minutes to read an article that a writer probably spent several hours writing. And that’s not even counting hours spent in research and fact checking.

Do We Want To Be Donald Trump?

Unfortunately, people today have very short attention spans. The world is moving away from serious, in-depth pieces to short, easy-to-understand blurbs.

Even better if it’s just a picture or a short video clip. People will skip anything too long to read. They even created an acronym for that – TLDR : Too Long, Didn’t Read.

In essence, we are becoming more like Donald Trump, and less like Barack Obama.

Why Are Our Standards So Low?

And with thousands of websites targeting the same readers, the only way to grab our attention is to introduce shocking or scandalous articles, and it doesn’t matter if they are old, fake or misleading!

Why? Because most of us don’t even read beyond the title or first paragraph! And we certainly don’t care whether it’s true or accurate. We just click and share.

Because our standards are so low, we drive the demand for clickbait websites that regurgitate content without verification and fact-checking.

We Are So Entitled + Cheap

We are so entitled, we feel that content creators should not only give you articles and videos for free, they should not have those irritating advertisements.

So we install ad blockers. Why should they be allowed to run ads if the Internet is meant to be free? They should be lucky we even want to read what they write! /s

What readers don’t understand is that many websites do not get paid a single cent, unless you click on the advertisements in their articles or videos. Even those who get paid by views (impressions) are paid mere cents per thousand views!

That encourages them to churn out as much content as possible with as little effort possible. And the easiest and cheapest way to do that is to regurgitate (copy and paste) social media content.

Ultimately, we killed the media industry by making it unprofitable to create content, and created content regurgitating monsters like World of Buzz by making it profitable to just regurgitate content.

If we want things to change – we have to stop being so entitled and cheap.

Stop reading and sharing posts from media regurgitation websites, and start supporting websites that actually create content.

 

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