Ashton Kutcher’s viral content site A+ accused of plagiarism
Ashton Kutcher’s viral content site, A+, which touts itself as “the fastest growing site in the history of the internet” has been accused of plagiarising articles from BuzzFeed and Huffington Post.
In a similar style to the likes of Buzzfeed, A+’s content is predominantly listicles, videos and lifehacks.
It claims to have pulled in over 30 million unique visitors in the 100 days following its 2013 relaunch.
However, The Daily Dot found that some articles had been copied directly from BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Cracked and Instagram and pasted onto its pages without credit.
Daily Dot reporter Rob Price took screen-grabs of numerous examples which show copy lifted entirely or published with minor changes made to headlines.
According to reports, upon request for comment from A+ all of the highlighted articles were removed. Additionally, all A+ content from before July has been removed from the site, all tweets have been removed from before 6 August, and all Facebook posts before 4 August.
A spokesperson for A+ said: “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.”