EFFORTPOST Valnet, I'm calling you out

Everything below is solely my opinion and totally not meant to be taken as fact. Go away feds.

Let's talk about life, wodie. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that people do not care about you. People will exploit you for all you're worth and then kick you to the curb, all while pretending they are your friend. The pursuit of money brings out the worst in people, and folks will throw away their morals and treat others horribly just to keep a job they hate and continue to put food on the table.

I don't bring this up arbitrarily. The reason why I discuss this matter is because I'd like to discuss a workplace where there are no morals. Workers are treated horribly, are disposed of without a second thought, and are paid far below minimum wage. The company I'm talking about is Valnet. If you're lucky, you've never heard of it, but Valnet is a monster that has been steadily growing and making the internet considerably worse, wodie. I'm not even joking. This is a company actively spreading misinformation, deteriorating the quality of the internet as a whole, and utilising slave labour for the sake of profit. Valnet is an intensely immoral business, and I'd like to illustrate why.

This won't be a massively long essay, wodie. My aim is simply to stick to the most important points and prove that you should never visit Valnet sites and, no matter how desperate you are, NEVER work for this evil corporation. And yes, I am directly calling out management because they are the ones who decide to treat humans like garbage and prioritise greed over being good people. Yes, this refers specifically to CEO Ouissam Youssef, a deeply selfish human being who runs a global sweatshop that is currently facing lawsuits. He is not my wodie. Youssef and his business are responsible for monumental amounts of heartache, tears, and broken dreams, and they have profited immensely from this.

Throughout the course of this essay, I will point out the company's insatiable desire to buy up as many reputable brands as possible and milk them for all their worth. I will point out Valnet's use of AI, and the systemic use of plagiarism that keeps this hellish business afloat. Everything I point out will be backed with evidence, wodie.

I'm about to speak up. Not because it is easy or because it will help me gain money. I am speaking out because it is the right thing to do. Valnet has been getting away with its wicked ways for too long, and someone needs to put a stop to it. I may not have the resources to take on a giant like Valnet through courtrooms, but I do have the power to speak out and say NO to evil businesses that put profits over people.

The essay will go as such:

1. What is Valnet?

2. Valnet's Enshittification of the Internet

3. Working for Valnet

4. Valnet the Bully

5. Conclusion

What is Valnet

To be clear, Valnet is powered by human suffering. It is a necessary element of the company's money-making strategy. Their entire business model is contingent on grossly underpaying writers and demanding unrealistic workloads. But how did this nefarious business become the monster it is today? That's what I seek to discover.

Valnet was founded in 2012 by Ouissam Youssef. He and his wodies were interested in acquiring acquisitive businesses and making a profit from them, and through their ventures, they learned a lot about the world of investing, and they also realised there was a lot of money to be made with geek culture websites. Here's an interview in which Youssef discusses business and his career. It's important that you watch this because it offers you some insight into Youssef's mind, wodie. Valnet isn't a company that cares about video games or pop culture, it doesn't care about workers or about the readers of the sites (in my opinion). Valnet is solely interested in generating profit by any means necessary. Valnet's aim is to buy businesses and wring them for everything they're worth with no regard for the human cost. And there is an extremely high human cost.

Geek culture has exploded in the last few decades and what was a niche community has grown into a global movement that generates billions. Geek hobbies like tech, gaming, and comic books have proven to be extremely profitable as businesses like Bethesda, Marvel, and Embracer are discovering. However, many of these new businesses hoping to profit off of geek culture do not care in the slightest about their product or about their customers. They simply exist to make the most money possible, regardless of the means. The result of this is that a very small number of people benefit while the rest of us have to deal with the negative consequences. Enough, it's time to shovel all that nonsense back into Valnet's face, wodie.

Over the years, Valnet has rapidly expanded thanks to its constant acquisition of new sites centred on tech, gaming, and pop culture. Some examples of sites Valnet has snatched up:

• Comic Book Resources

Comic Book Resources is a site that covers mainly geek topics such as comic books, films, television, games, and anime. The business was founded in 1995 and was snatched up by Valnet in 2016.

• Collider

Collider is yet another popular pop culture site, this time with a focus on film and television. It was founded in 2005 and it receives a significant amount of traffic daily. As of 2020, it is under the ownership of Valnet.

• MovieWeb

MovieWeb follows the same mould as Collider, offering news on the entertainment world. As of 2021, Valnet owns MovieWeb

• Screen Rant

You've probably heard of this site before. It is the acne of Google; impossible to get rid of. Screen Rant posts clickbait articles centred on gaming, anime, television, and film. It's sister site, Game Rant, is focused on gaming, wodie.

There are plenty more sites owned by Valnet, including:

• TheThings

• The G*mer

• Fextra Life

• Dualshockers

• Hardcore G*mer

• OpenCritic

• Hot Cars

• Top Speed

• Car Buzz

• Simple Flying

• The Travel

• Give Me Sport

• Football Fancast

• Football League World

• The Sportster

• TheRichest

• Backyard Boss

• Android Police

• XDA

• Pocket-Lint

• MakeUseOf

• How-To Geek

So what happens when Valnet buys a new site? Well, Valnet gets wealthier, and Youssef gets more money in his pocket. However, for literally anyone else involved with the site, life gets significantly worse. We'll discuss that more in the next few sections, wodie.

Valnet's Enshittification of the Internet

The internet never used to be the way it is today. Once upon a time, Google was quite trusted, and you could rely on it to return useful sites providing valuable information. That is not the case any longer. Pretty much all search engines are a pain to use, and they seldom return trustworthy information from credible sites. Instead, the sites that land up at the top of search terms are the ones that follow internet trends and stuff their site with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) keywords. The higher up sites land on Google's search engine, the more views a site gets, and the more ad revenue the owners receive.

You all know how it goes. You need information on a pop-culture-related topic, and spam from Valnet's sites dominates the front page. Want to look up something about your favorite game? Well, the entire front page of Google is just Game Rant, The G*mer, and Dualshockers. To add insult to injury, the information is often incorrect or features a misleading headline that tricks you into reading vapid clickbait pieces with no substance.

Consequently, sites that wish to make a profit play the SEO game and attempt to manipulate Google's search algorithms to increase their visibility. You'll notice that most Valnet sites follow a similar format, down to the font used and the layouts of the articles, wodie. This is because the format has been expertly designed to maximize SEO, often at the cost of good writing. You see, you have to realise something, wodie. Valnet isn't selling genuine articles. They're selling SEO magnets that are vaguely pop-culture-themed. The aim isn't to provide you with information, the aim is to get you to click on their links and bring them that sweet ad revenue.

You can see this enshittification by analysing your typical article from a Game Rant site. They all use the same format, so a critique of one site basically applies to all of them. Let's start with this article titled "Pokemon Fan Shows Off Ogerpon Cosplay".

https://g*merant.com/pokemon-ogerpon-cosplay/

First and foremost, this article represents perhaps one of the most annoying trends of modern day content creators. All they do is snatch up Reddit content and post it as their own. This is lazy and completely degrades the entire industry of games journ*lism. The whole field has been corrupted into mere clickbait and vapid content with 0 substance. This article in particular is just referring to a Reddit post that was made literally less than 24 hours before the Reddit article.

https://old.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/1iywwqh/ogerpon_cosplay/

So, assuming the article was actually written by a human, we have someone who is scouring Reddit for content and reposting it as blogspam in under 24 hours. This isn't even exclusive to the /r/pokemon subreddit. Game Rant does this for all the major games, including Red Dead Redemption, Starfield, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, and more, wodie. The users of these subreddits are sick of it, as it's not just Game Rant that does this.

In an attempt to fool sites that simply gather their content from Reddit, some subreddits have set up fake posts with fake information to fool sites. This happened with WoW which reported on Glorb, something which real sites began posting on, which was quite hilarious. This trick was repeated in the No Man's Sky subreddit where they tricked publications into reporting on a fake hidden boss in the game. This goes to show that these sites are not interested in reporting factual information. Instead, they are solely focused on getting clicks and making ad revenue.

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/1ei75wx/how_to_unlock_the_new_secret_atlas_boss_fight_a/

We move down the article and we arrive at our next problem - the use of AI. Yes, I can 100% assure you that Valnet sites routinely use AI on their articles. When you see that "summary" section, know that it was generated using AI. It's built into their CMS (content management system, essentially where folks write their articles). So don't believe Valnet when they say they don't use AI. It's literally required that writers use AI.

We can also make a couple of educated guesses regarding the use of AI to write the body of the articles. I suspect that several Valnet writers routinely use AI to write their articles. My reasoning? Well, some writers are operating at non-human levels, producing 5-6 articles a day for weeks on end. This isn't realistic, and it suggests a strong likelihood that writers are using AI to help boost their output. I don't blame them. What is required of writers is ridiculous, and the expectations make it such that it is impossible to produce quality content while still keeping up with the quotas. I'll post a random writer for example. At one point they publish 11 ARTICLES IN ONE DAY. Even if they didn't use AI, there is literally no way to possibly produce good content at this rate, wodie.

https://g*merant.com/author/josh-cotts/

If you attempt to read the aforementioned Pokemon article, you'll notice that it doesn't say anything useful, and it is barely coherent. The whole thing exists as an excuse to stuff in as many keywords as possible, along with a slew of backlinks to other Game Rant articles to keep readers on the site. These tricks are implemented to trick Google's algorithm into boosting Game Rant's article to the top. Consequently, these substanceless articles get more exposure than meaningful, well-researched articles, leading to the continued enshittification of the internet.

Over the years, video game journ*lists have lost their reputations and have become quite loathed among g*mers. Honestly, it's often not the journ*lists that are the problem, wodie. They enter the industry with big dreams of reporting on an industry they have a genuine passion for. However, the demands of companies like Valnet forces these writers to become drones produce mindless content for the sake of selling ads. When you see shitty gaming articles, don't blame the writer. They're literally just trying to put food on the table. Lay the blame with the companies that force writers to fill the internet with nonsense.

Working for Valnet

As you can probably guess, working for Valnet is a geniunely horrible, soul-crushing experience. The company takes writers, wrings them for everything they're worth, then throws them to the curb. There are some genuinely hardworking writers at Valnet who are having their talents squandered by wasting them on a company that has them writing 20+ pieces of clickbait a week.

So, there are several reasons to despise Valnet's working conditions, wodie. Let's start with the pay. Valnet pays its workers peanuts. It is absolutely disgusting. The payment system has changed drastically over the years, and it differs between websites, but they all pay about the same terrible rate. As a senior writer, I was earning $14.50 for a 600-word article in 2023. Bear in mind, writing a single article requires research, writing, gathering images for the articles, and sticking to a very strict format that requires you to completely butcher your writing to adhere to SEO regulations. Consequently, a single article can take you a whole afternoon, and that's if you're rushing and genuinely don't care about accuracy or quality. After all that, it's highly likely your article will still come back for edits from the editors who treat you as though you're actually being paid a fair wage to care about it.

So, let's say an article takes you 6 hours. That's about $2.42 an hour, with no benefits. To put that into context, in the USA the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Anyone paying workers $2.42 is being GROSSLY IMMORAL. Yes, I'm referring specifically to the CEO of Valnet, Ouissam Youssef. The business he runs is evil and exploits human beings for the sake of generating profit. Ouissam, what you're doing is deeply wrong, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Valnet is also very keen to fire writers whenever they believe it'll save them money. Take CBR for example. When the site was acquired by Valnet, they fired a lot of key workers as they turned the site into a content mill. Consequently, lots of writers on the site left in protest. Even the social media manager sabotaged the company, sick of their immoral ways.

For any Valnet workers who may be reading this - leave the company right now. Trust me, nothing good will come from continuing to support this shitty company. No, this won't be a stepping stone to a better career. Nobody takes Valnet sites seriously and if anything they will be a blight on your CV, wodie. Everyone on the internet hates you and if you try to share your articles anywhere you will be met with hostility and hatred. Nobody is impressed with your below minimum wage job, and your time would be better spent as a literal McDonald's cashier where you would have better hours and earn more.

Valnet the Bully

All the things I've described so far are pretty bad, but perhaps the worst thing Valnet does is try to silence anyone who criticises them, wodie. With that said, I am taking a significant risk writing this, and I considered posting this on Reddit first but I decided to post here instead because quite frankly I am aware that Valnet is happy to swing its weight around and use the law to try and silence anyone who says anything bad about them.

The YouTuber FireB0rn made a video criticising Valnet. The video was accurate and featured interviews from previous Valnet employees. In response, Valnet sent out copyright strikes against the YouTuber, resulting in the videos being taken down. This isn't the first time the company has done this. They also bullied Jenny Geist who dared to speak up against Valnet, sending her a physical cease and desist to her address. Twitter user Josh Tyler also tried to speak out against Valnet, and was hit with a cease and desist. Josh is not taking it lying down, fortunately.

Here's the full response, along with the original cease and desist letter issued by Valnet, at the link below. https://t.co/NIvg968IcL

— Josh Tyler (@joshtyler) December 4, 2024

There is a silver lining, and that's the fact that people are fighting back, wodie. Currently, Valnet is dealing with a big lawsuit. The lawsuit claims that the company misclassified content creators as contract workers. I hope Valnet loses this lawsuit hard and has to pay all those workers. Some writers have reported that they have received emails from Valnet offering them $100 to not pursue legal action. LOL I hope they lose tons of money. They deserve it to the fullest, wodie.

https://www.classaction.org/news/valnet-misclassified-content-creators-as-independent-contractors-class-action-claims

Conclusion

Wodie, why does it seem like the workplaces that pay the least, treat you the worst? Valnet is a horrible company that represents everything wrong with late-stage capitalism. Such a business is made possible by greed and a disregard for humanity. Think about how many people have slaved away out of desperation only to earn pennies for their work. How many writers suddenly found themselves without a job, not because of their terrible writing, but because Valnet management got a little too greedy.

When I spend a lot of time in isolation, weird things happen, wodie. I learned this trick where you close your eyes and, I guess, open yourself up to your thoughts but suppress all instincts to judge. If you do this, you'll detatch things and events from their imbued meaning and see things for what they truly are. Once I thought about jeans and I could just experience them without thinking of them as "pants" or "things to put on your legs". I hope I'm making sense. If you do this with other things in your life, it can help you to contextualise things which is useful if you've been obsessed with something and need to lower the intensity of the emotions you feel towards it.

Alright, wodie. That's all I got for today. In short, gaming journ*lism is dead and Valnet delivered the killer blow.