Chinese media veterans create News Break mobile app, which is stealing data too
While TikTok has been all over the news after President Trump drew attention to the potential theft of data from Americans and the endangerment of officials, a silent giant has put the hard work and talent of local entrepreneurs and workers on display without permission or a conversation. News Break, created by Chinese media veterans, is a news aggregator application that is robbing small American businesses of their intellectual property, infringing upon copyrighted material, and denying them the potential for revenue.
Founded by Jeff Zheng, the application blatantly steals original work from media outlets like Neuse News and other local journalists by utilizing a bait and switch tactic on their users. Instead of linking the article directly to the originating content as Google News does, users who are on News Break are prompted to download the News Break app.
News Break built robots and systems to aggregate geographically-based local news, then steal the content for their own platform. They’ll show a local news outlet’s story, then entice viewers to download their app to get the full page. News Break is an example of the dishonesty and corruption the president and other political leaders are speaking out against.
Screenshots of News Break taking Neuse News content without permission and filling their site and app with ads. Neuse News receives zero compensation from this blatant theft.
While they boast about having thousands of community publishers/partners, Neuse News has never inquired or applied to be a partner and has never been asked by News Break to be a “trusted community partner” as they call it. They just take our copyrighted information and use it to entice people to click on ads and download their app.
It is one thing to compete against other local print publications, but it is another when all the local independent publishers and papers combined cannot compete with the bots of Chinese-backed conglomerates. News Break ads can be blocked manually on our website via Google Adsense, but according to the Facebook Ad Library, they are running 3,300+ ads with a range of $50-$200 each. News Break is running 1,300+ Facebook Ads just on September 25, 2020 alone.
News Break is running 1,300+ Facebook Ads just on September 25, 2020 alone.
We have no way to stop all of their Google and Facebook ads or enough capital to drown them out or file suit. Furthermore, the negative press on this topic is virtually unavailable because their bots publish insane amounts of information automatically through these systems, controlling the narrative. If we could block their IP address we would, only for them to possibly purchase more IP addresses to steal our content.
Facebook Ad Library
This is really a David and Goliath tale for the modern age with Goliath firing down at us with all his height and strength in the name of “supporting local news” and using “trusted local sources”. To change this, one would need federal intervention, including better oversight of Google and Facebook ads potentially run by bots and not humans, copyright infringement tightening, and making sure platforms launch responsible ad networks to protect publishers.
Small businesses are said to be the backbone of our economy. TikTok’s latest developments should shed light on the unscrupulous business practices of Chinese-supported companies including News Break. In our digital age, small publishers like Neuse News need help protecting our assets, or else the meaning of copyright or local news is worthless.