NewsBreak Has Really Done it This Time!

I received a strike for an allegedly copyrighted image which was under a CC license which they published anyway with ads and are keeping all the earnings as it goes viral.

I’ve been no stranger to calling out NewsBreak for their controversial and problematic polices and almost monthly changes to requirements and what they wanted.

At times it seemed like they had multiple personalities, one minute accepting practically anything including fiction, the next not accepting fiction but accepting topical articles, the next not accepting topical articles but only local news from anywhere in the U.S., the next claiming anyone who published anything about an area they didn’t live in was being misleading fraudulent and taking away their base pay for it, the next saying you could publish about anywhere even if you didn’t live there as long as the content was accurate, then next going back to topical articles and then adding in “expert” content which they felt competent to judge in all areas.

I’m sure my mood has come across by now — I’m angry. I was surprised -no shocked — when I went into my Newbreak account two days ago to find that my most recent article was not approved for publication and it had earned me a strike.

Going into edit to find out what the problem was, I discovered they’d flagged and rejected the article for illegal use of a photo as they claimed it was copyrighted. Here is what I saw.

I was definitely surprised as the photo was under a CC license and there should not have been an issue. The photo in question with the credit below it is as follows:

The conditions for the CC BY-SA 4.0 license are as follows:

The requirements under this license are:

Regarding what “appropriate credit,” means, it must include the title, name of creator, attribution parties, copyright notice, license notice, disclaimer notice and a link to the original material.

The photo clearly has a Creative Commons license which make it’s use legal. Since NB changed the format for crediting photos it makes it impossible to comply with most of these licenses, which I have brought up numerous times, but was ignored. In order to comply with most of the licenses, you have to include all of the above and sometimes also other things such as a link to the creator, a link to the site, and a link to the license.

NB only requires you to list the name of the creator and site it was published on, though if you only list one of these they publish it anyway. A link to the image is optional. There is no place to add the other links or information so the only way to do this is to list them as part of the credit.

But this makes the links part of the anchor text for the link listed for the image so clicking on any of the other words in the credit just leads you to the same place which is the photo. In other words they provide no way to comply with the CC licensing requirements. This means that practically all of the images on their site are not credited properly which means they are used illegally since they don’t comply with their license and should receive a strike.

Just to see if there were other ways people were complying with the CC licensing rules, I reviewed over 50 stories chosen randomly. Not one photo complied with it’s license and in no cases was the license even mentioned. So technically, every article should have received a strike for illegal use of photos.

This type of thing, I know, has happened to countless writer on NB since they instituted their “Three Strikes You’re Out” police, with two strikes leading to a shorter ban after which you are allowed back on the platform. Many writers have complained about receiving strikes for things that weren’t accurate and not being able to appeal them or reach NB to address the issue. My experience with NB is they don’t reply if you email them with a complaint and I yet to hear back from them on this issue and don’t expect to.

The really shocking thing though, was that despite it clearly saying that the article had not been accepted publication, they obviously published it as soon as they received it last Friday after loading it with ads, distributed it far more widely than any other article I’ve written in six months based on the number of impressions it received (as of first thing this morning), and also have kept all earning from over 6,000 views it had obtained, which are continuing to climb.

As for my articles published this month? 0. Earnings from previous articles for the first week of December which used to be over $100 by the end of the first day of the month, as of the end of the first week of the month?

None of the articles I published this month appear, including the one that they say they wouldn’t publish but clearly did, complete with ads. If I keep it up, I may earn as much as $13 this month, providing they don’t ban me for speaking the truth.

I’ve been asked by other writers I spoke with before writing this article what I think is going on. I believe the action is likely a punitive measure because I speak out against the platform when they do something wrong, in order to warn other writers to beware.

Most recently, I wrote up my findings when I did a basic statistical analysis on all of my stories in The Number of Views on NewsBreak Stories Predicts the RPM: Are They Manipulating Writers’ Earnings? which showed a very strong negative relationship between the number of article views and the RPM/earnings.

Truthfully, I expected a response in terms of my articles getting slashed further in terms of distribution and RPMs. It happens every time I publish something they don’t like, regardless of it being truthful. But I didn’t expect them to pull a stunt like this, where they effectively have claimed something that isn’t true so they can publish my article and keep everything it earns while saying it wasn’t accepted.

The final two nails in the coffin for me is first, since the article is performing as well as it is, if I were receiving the earnings instead of them, they would have assigned it an RPM of .01 to .08 at the most, which would have earned me pennies for the thousands of views. If they had paid me based on the highest RPM they seem willing to assign to my work, they would have owed me at most $50.

The second nail is that NB is owned and run by some of the wealthiest people in the world, almost all if not all of whom are billionaires. Jeff Zheng, co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo, Harry Shum, former Executive Vice-President of Microsoft and a world-class expert in artificial intelligence, Zhaohui Zheng, founder of Yahoo! Labs, Ren Xuyang, former senior global director for Yahoo, Zhiyuan Zang, co-founder of Yahoo, Vincent Wu, former chief operating officer of Huffington Post, and Rongqing Lu, a former Executive Yahoo search expert. I can’t even imagine the number all of their net worth's added together would come to.

So, why is there a need to nickel and dime their contributors?

Freelance writers are often taken advantage of and forewarned is forearmed. I know this article will likely get me banned completely from NB as they don’t tolerate any type of criticism, not allowing so much as a negative comment on their “Contributor Site,” only glowing praise.

But writers, especially those new to the platform or who are considering joining the NB platform need to be aware of the issues which are growing by the month.

Unless you are a legitimate journalist, with credentials and a huge online following, chances are not great that you will be earn much, or be treated well or fairly on NB. Contact as many writers on the site as possible to get their perspective and read reviews of the site before signing on to know what you are possibly getting yourself into.

The saddest thing about this situation is that all they needed to do was compensate me and treat me fairly and they would have had a loyal contributor who sang their praises to all her followers.

Update: When I again emailed NB calling into question the fact that they stated that the article had not been accepted, but published it immediately anyway, pointing out the views, impressions and shares on it, when I went to look at the article again they had taken it down. Despite fully clarifying that the photo was under a CC license, and listing the actual license (with an attempt at the link though this was overwritten by the main photo link) making it exceptionally obvious that the photo was legal and not a copyright infringement, they have removed the story which was still gaining about 100 views an hour four days after it was published. I don’t know if it is down permanently, but if they put it back up likely it will have lost momentum.

I will wait to see if they are willing to pay me for the views that accumulated until they deleted the article or if they intend to keep them along with the claim that I’d illegally used a photo which is patently untrue. There has still been no reply to any of my emails from NB.

What are your experiences on NewsBreak? Thumbs up or down?

If you found this article informative, you can find all of my NewsBreak related articles here:

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