Recently a popular Youtube personality named Matthew Santoro has been accused of plagiarism. Santoro’s videos are typically top ten lists like those found on sites like Buzzfeed, MTV or Gawker. However, Santoro’s top tens were in video form, but evidence suggests that Santoro has stolen the contents of his lists from the websites Listverse and Reddit. In many cases, Santoro copied other people’s entire lists for his videos.
Evidence against Santoro is seemingly overwhelming. Youtube personality, going under the username GradeAUnderA, has uploaded a video showing evidence he has found against Santoro. Since GradeA’s video has been uploaded, more people have come out against Santoro, offering more evidence against Santoro. Even the website Listverse posted a comment on GradeA’s video, claiming that their lists get plagiarized often.
Since this information has come out, Santoro responded by saying that he would now be citing his sources in his videos, even adding citations retroactively to videos he has already uploaded. While this is seemingly a good thing, the question must be asked; why didn’t he do this in the first place? A large portion of the damage has already been done.
Listverse has stated themselves that they pay their writers, and Matthew Santoro makes money from YouTube ad revenue. Websites like Listverse and Buzzfeed also make ad revenue, and benefit greatly from people reading their articles. This means that if Santoro has been stealing from these websites, he has been indirectly stealing money from Listverse and other websites for years.
The list articles Santoro has been allegedly using require a lot of research and time to put together. Santoro probably puts a lot of time into editing his videos, but what value does that have when the content of his videos is taken from somebody else? As GradeA says in his video, “What exactly do you think you’re creating, the audiobook to the article?”
Writing is hard, and thinking of something to write about can be equally as difficult. Santoro may or may not be guilty of plagiarism, but copying somebody else's writing without crediting them is theft, especially if the content is stolen from a website that aims to make money from its original content.
