Huffington Post banned from posting on Reddit section in attribution row

The Huffington Post has been banned from posting content on a section of Reddit, after the US social media website accused the AOL-owned news aggregator of lifting content “without attribution”.

A post on the r/UpliftingNews subreddit accused some editors of the Huffington Post’s Good News section of embracing a “parasitic business model” and said HuffPo articles would be “immediately removed”.

It comes after Reddit, which is owned by Advance Publications, the parent company of magazine publisher Condé Nast, posted a set of “pressiquette” guidelines in August in an attempt to crack down on news organisations lifting news tips, photos and other content from the popular social media community website without attribution.

The post on HuffPo on the r/UpliftingNews subreddit stated: “Simply put, a few of the Huffington Post Good News editors have been sourcing stories from this subreddit for quite a while without any attribution.

“After being prompted, they have recently become unapologetic about this, and instead embrace a parasitic business model that monetises content created by others through condensed summaries without any ethical standard or creative attribution. Moving forward, we will no longer support this and will instead encourage support for the hard-working journalists and bloggers finding and writing about the great people and actions happening all around us.”

One of the Reddit pressiquette guidelines states that media outlets have to ask for permission from the original poster “prior to using it in an article or list”.

Kiki Von Glinow, deputy managing editor, the Huffington Post, said: “We value Reddit and respect the community when sourcing content. The Huffington Post abides by the existing Reddit pressiquette. It is our policy to credit Reddit when we report on a story that we learned about through their platform, and reach out to Redditors when we’re interested in incorporating their original content into our coverage.”

Reddit claims to be the 56th most popular website in the world, pulling in more 110 million unique visitors a month.

It is made up of more than 7,800 online communities – known as subreddits – each of which has it owns theme, rules and moderators.

Subreddits can be dedicated to shows, games, trades, humour, science, and even bringing happiness to strangers through ‘random acts of pizza’.

To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@theguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.