The Next Round has accused SEC Country of directly stealing its social media content.
What We Know: In a post on social media, The Next Round directly accused SEC Country of plagiarism. The company shared several side-by-side instances of content it created that were later repurposed by SEC Country.
What They Said: “As a small sports media company, we rely on content monetization for a good chunk of our income. Whoever runs the SEC Country page has been frequently stealing our content for nearly 2 months now. And recycling it as their own. The pages have a collective following of over 2 million followers (far more than we do). And are using our content to generate more views on their own page, which is hurting our opportunity to monetize. We’re not sure who runs these pages anymore, as SEC Country used to be owned by Cox Media, but know that they do not operate these pages anymore, as they shut down the site in 2018. We work really hard to produce high quality, unique content, and really wish the person(s) stealing it would stop.” -The Next Round statement
What Remains Unclear: If SEC Country will address the situation publicly. As of this publication, the X account for SEC Country has not published any content on Wednesday. SEC Country has not deleted the posts in question.
What It Means: With the rise in monetization on platforms like X and Facebook, the incentive to plagiarize content has never been higher. Couple with the use of AI to recreate content, it’s never been easy to copy the work of someone else. It has become more and more prevalent. And The Next Round calling attention to it is likely to curb others from acting similarly.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
