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How BuzzFeed’s Tasty Conquered Online Food
- desigooner 9y agoAnother factor that wasn't mentioned: Plagiarism. They often use Serious Eats recipes without any sort of attribution. Edit: Some context: https://mic.com/articles/163958/the-secret-ingredient-to-buzz-feed-s-viral-tasty-videos-recipe-theft-food-bloggers-say#.nKmPburs7 https://mic.com/articles/163958/the-secret-ingredient-to-buz...
- Larrikin 9y agoI've come to realize there are very few actually good recipes online that don't come from a small number of websites. Serious Eats being a major one.
- ma2rten 9y agoWhat are the other ones that you know of?
- Larrikin 9y agoFood Wishes and Cooking With Dog have been really good, although some of the adapted recipes are so-so. Bon Appetit has pretty good recipes, but they post a lot of stuff I have no interest in eating or making.
- cwyers 9y agoThe Kitchn. NY Times Cooking (which needs a subscription now). Cook's Illustrated (also a subscription).
- rangibaby 9y agoWhat should Serious Eats do about that? Include some fake ingredients like the fake streets included in maps?
- dboreham 9y agoRecipes typically aren't copyrightable. Source : https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html
- jafingi 9y agoRecipes are. But the ingredient lists are not. The description are copyrightable as any other written work.
- jgreaser 9y ago...and it wouldn't hurt anyone to give credit where credit is due.
- dboreham 9y agoIANAL but I believe you are wrong. Source : “[The] recipes’ directions for preparing the assorted dishes fall squarely within the class of subject matter specifically excluded from copyright protection by 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).” From : http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/publications_v_meredith.htm http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/publications_v_meredith.htm
- shawn-butler 9y agoThe parent is correct and you are wrong, but they are being downvoted anyway which I expect to to happen to me as well. “Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients….. Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description, explanation, or illustration, for example—that accompanies a recipe or formula or to a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook.”[0] Clearly a cooking show or in my opinion a video showing the preparation of a dish in context and with commentary is protectable. But all of the opinion on the internet matters about as much as wind striking the face of a mountain compared to an actual litigation. [0] https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html
- arkitaip 9y ago
- atom-morgan 9y agoAre were sure Serious Eats didn't "steal" them from someone else?
- throwaway5752 9y agoPretty sure you're weren't very familiar with Serious Eats when you wrote that, can you confirm this? I find it hard to believe that someone that cooks/reads Serious Eats would say that.
- atom-morgan 9y agoYeah, I'm not. It was an honest question.
- Kurtz79 9y agoI'm not overly familiar with the website, but the few recipes from it I have come across are usually accompanied with an in-depth recount of the thought process that went into the recipe, including failed experiments and iterations, commentary on the origin of the dish and the author's experience with it, why a certain ingredient or technique was chosen in place of another, etc... Look for Serious Eats recipes/articles about Ramen, Pizza or Yorkshire Pudding for some good examples. It definitely looks and feels like OC (I really know nothing about Tasty, so I cannot comment on their alleged plagiarism).
- palidanx 9y agoPretty regular reader from Serious Eats here. Kenji (the guy who is the culinary director), puts tons of scientific rigor into all of his recipes. What sets Serious Eats aparts from everyone else is they like to answer the 'why' of food. For example here is a super detailed story: http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/the-food-lab-science-of-how-to-cook-perfect-boiled-eggs.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/the-food-lab-science-of-h...
- no_wave 9y agoAsking if Kenji stole recipes is like asking if Modernist Cuisine stole recipes. You'd have to be unfamiliar with either to ask.
- mstaoru 9y agoRecipes are not copyrightable, and I'd argue that it's actually beneficial to all of us to exchange recipes freely and allow for commercial reuse. Food is an important and quantifiable part of our lives, and improving it is a collective effort. As I support scientific papers "theft" by Scihub, in the same way I support Buzzfeed propagating good food.
- maxerickson 9y agoThat doesn't answer the charge of plagiarism.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rblatz 9y agoIt's videos of people making food on Facebook. It's not an academic article. No one cares, it isn't actionable.
- maxerickson 9y agoPlenty of olds have quaint ideas about giving credit where credit is due.
- sanj 9y agoIt is a video of a cartoon mouse named "Mickey" that only kids watch. It's not an academic article. No one cares, it isn't actionable.
- replicatorblog 9y agoCorrect, that is a copyright violation. Based on the links above Tasty's videos are neither plagiarism, which is an offense in academia, but not commerce, nor Copyright, the commercial equivalent, which does not protect recipes.
- 9y ago
- fgandiya 9y agoIt isn't just the recipes. They got called out for ripping off other ideas on YouTube last year. I guess originality is hard.
- ericmcer 9y agoIs putting ice cream in between two pieces of bacon a recipe?
- nickbauman 9y agoHi I work for BuzzFeed engineering, but this is just me talking, not my company. The guy that started Tasty uses an empirical technique he devised in-house to come up with recipes people love. Wish I could say more than that. But I believe the "recipe space" he explores can come up with recipes that can at times look like previously published recipes. There are only so many combinations of ingredients that will click with the human palate. I guarantee you he's not directly ripping anyone off.
- trumpownsyou420 9y agokill yourself, you people are cancer.
- objclxt 9y ago> I guarantee you he's not directly ripping anyone off. You can understand why people might be less inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, given that in the past Buzzfeed has extensively plagiarized: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/editors-note-an-apology-to-our-readers?utm_term=.gjRWykdEgQ#.mvzjoqXZEA https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/editors-note-an-apology-to... https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/buzzfeeds-happiest-facts-all-time-were-mostly-plagiarized-reddit/317576/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/buzzfee... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/buzzfeed-video-akilah-hughes-petiton-plagiarism-a7112936.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/buzzfeed-vi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Stopera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Stopera
- nickbauman 9y agoYour citations quite literally mentions two people who wrote for BuzzFeed as far back as 2008, not even for Tasty.
- leesalminen 9y agoSurvivorship bias?
- mustacheemperor 9y agoIt must be a truly incredible formula to consistently produce the same results as when serious eats spends multiple iterations researching and developing a recipe and documenting the process.
- aphextron 9y agoIt's interesting to see this shift in the web to blatant plagarism and copyright infringement. In the days before social media having dupe content was the mark of death for your Google page rank. Now that doesn't matter anymore because of social network sharing, so it's just become a gigantic cesspool of hacks feeding on hacks.
- Dowwie 9y agoI don't know about all that hype. Serious Eats, the Sporkful, etc are all better.
- gcb0 9y agosearch for recipes 3 times a day and never even saw that site before. seems like a paid puff piece.
- dewey 9y agoThey are not really a recipe site you find via your usual search engine use to cook something. They just show up in your IG / FB feed all the time. From my experience people just "like" them because they look nice but never try to recreate them as the sped-up video format isn't great for that.
- ebola1717 9y agoYeah, their videos are for entertainment (as food porn) and for inspiration. You'll look up a real recipe later.
- darioush 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised if watching these gifs somehow makes you even less likely to cook at home. Similar to the effect of salad being on the menu making it less likely that you'll make healthy choices.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eridius 9y agoThat's why they now have their new Tasty mobile app. The app gives you a full recipe in addition to the video (and even hyperlinks each step in the recipe to the point in the video that shows it).
- acomjean 9y agoI'll miss cook's science (http://www.cooksscience.com http://www.cooksscience.com), now thats its moving to America's test kitchen and thus behind the paywall. The america's test kitchen show is fun but the cookbooks I really kind exceptional. They tend to explain why your cooking. Trying to burn through csa veggies, we're using platejoy (YCS15)
- aquamo 9y agonever heard of it, conquered?
- rhaps0dy 9y agoI blocked these things from Facebook because they were too addictive to watch. The OP article draws a similar comparison that I did at the time: food porn draws on similar urges than those of actual pornography, and it's not good to see too much of it.
- vanderZwan 9y agoWhenever I see any gif with a recipe come by on my social media, it always seems to follow the same meta-recipe: hyperpalatable ingredient mixed with other hyperpalatable ingredient, the end result being something that has fat, sugar and salt in abundance. I guess that it makes sense, producing the clickbait equivalent for taste (you watch it and think "oh that looks mouthwatering") but I don't recall ever watching these and thinking they look healthy. EDIT: To clarify, I am specifically referring to adding a lot more sugar, salt and fat than we need; I do realise a lot of these recipes use vegetables, have plenty of fibres and essential nutrients, and so on, but hyperprocessed foods that lack those qualities is a different kind of unhealthy than what I'm talking about. For the record, I never actively look online for recipes on any of these sites, so maybe that is also the reason I only see these recipes.
- drozzz 9y agoA few of my healthier favorites: Cauliflower Bites 4 Ways (https://www.facebook.com/officialgoodful/videos/1379543625449433/ https://www.facebook.com/officialgoodful/videos/137954362544...), Spaghetti Squash 4 Ways (https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/1769340553318586/ https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/17693405533185...), Tornado Zucchini (https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/1867017893550851/ https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/18670178935508...), Garlic-flavored zucchini chips (https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtastyjapan/videos/1672966079631008/ https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtastyjapan/videos/167296607...)
- vanderZwan 9y agoI guess that you mean that these recipes use vegetables as a base, which is more healthy than recipes for cookies or ice-cream. However, in all of them, there is still more fat, sugar and/or salt added than is healthy. Take the cauliflower one: it's basically cauliflower, but now grilled with oil and topped with sweet/fatty/salt flavouring to make it more palatable.
- Smaug123 9y agoCauliflower has basically no nutritional value anyway. Minimal vitamins and minerals, no digestible carbs or protein or fat.
- matteuan 9y agoTasty is evil. Usually, their receipts waste half of the ingredients by making you overcooking them, or you will cover taste because they want to mix too many things together. They have very good marketers, now they should hire a proper cook.
- dspillett 9y agoAnd in many cases: so. much. cheese. And cheese. And more cheese.
- matteuan 9y agoExactly, what's the point of cooking anything more if it will taste of mozzarella and parmesan anyway?
- iagooar 9y agoWell, you know what some Italians say, when asked how much parmiggiano should you add to your pasta plate? They'll say: as much as you can afford. So lots of cheese isn't that much of a problem, in my opinion.
- matteuan 9y agoIt's not a problem, but if you fetch fresh veggies and then you add a ton of tasty cheese, you will miss all the delicate flavour of the vegetables. P.S. be careful, I'm italian :)
- iagooar 9y agoTotally agree about the fresh veggies. And yeah, won't take on the risk of discussing food stuff with an Italian ;)
- miguelrochefort 9y agoI've used some of these recipes as guidelines before. I think the format is extremely useful. Most traditional recipes go into too much details, use unnecessarily complicated measurements and ratios, and aren't easy to visually memorize. These gifs or short clips are easy to skim through, easy to memorize and very accessible. Are they the healthiest, most traditional or best tasting recipes out there? Probably not. Are they a great way to get people to start cooking? Absolutely.
- wklauss 9y agoA lot of negativity in the comments of this article here in HN but I feel exactly the same. Tasty recipes have tremendous value because they show that cooking can be easy, that most of the time recipes are just guidelines (with the exception of bakery and a handful of dishes) and that it's ok to experiment and mix different things creatively when cooking.
- vanderZwan 9y agoNobody is deriding the format. I think the clichés deserve to be made fun of it a teensy bit[0], but otherwise I agree it's a wonderful innovation, making good use of the possibilities modern media provide. Kinda like explorable explanations[1]. But the medium isn't being criticised, it's the way it is used. And sure, even that can be explained in the context of everything being optimised for drawing attention these days, but that doesn't make it right. There is nothing about video-based recipes that fundamentally goes against healthy recipes. [0] https://gfycat.com/HonorableThankfulHeron https://gfycat.com/HonorableThankfulHeron [1] http://explorabl.es/ http://explorabl.es/
- dawnerd 9y agoI'm not surprised. Some of the early BuzzFeed people came from Demand Media, which if you remember brought you the seo spam machine that was eHow. BuzzFeed uses a lot of the same tactics we used, but they're more protected now because of social media. I can't imagine Facebook/Instagram/etc doing a "panda-esq" update to stop them.
- mmirate 9y ago> they're more protected now because of social media I'm sorry, I don't understand. The techniques, or BuzzFeed? And how does social media protect them?
- dawnerd 9y agoWith eHow we solely relied in flaws in the google ranking algorithm and crawler. Buzzfeed relies on social shares so it's not really something hint an algorithm can fix (easily). It'd also bring a lot of complaints from users if anyone tried to anyways.
- gcatalfamo 9y agoI have never heard of buzzfeed tasty before.
- nols 9y agoYou may not be in their primary audience, but they're pretty popular. I just looked at their Facebook page and it has 87 million followers.
- gcatalfamo 9y agoI honestly wonder how much of those are not USA or UK.
- Symbiote 9y agoJust going by my 12 friends who've "liked" the page, 4 are British, the rest from elsewhere in Europe. My friends are about 50:50 UK:rest-EU. I'm surprised either group bothers with the recipes. The ingredients are American, as are the quantities (pounds/ounces), and the oven temperatures in Fahrenheit. I generally can't be bothered dealing with this, and in search results will prefer a British (or Australian) website to avoid needing to convert anything.
- gumboshoes 9y agoTasty? Never heard of it.
- trumpownsyou420 9y agololbuzzfeed. trash for idiots.
- gregjw 9y agoI first heard about Tasty 3 days ago, since then, I've seen it mentioned in various forms over 20 times. What the heck. Big content marketing push?
- wink 9y agoCall me pedantic, but first thing I noticed that the video has 350°C/175°C and I suppose that should be F/C :P
- DrScump 9y agoDenatured proteins are lower in calories.
- pdeuchler 9y agoI long for the days when all BuzzFeed content was banned from HN. BF seemed to make a bet on financing a small amount of "real" journalism in order to white wash its incredibly shady and slimy beginnings and it seems to have mostly worked, as people now consider it less of a general sore on the internet (HN now allows certain BF articles, like the one on soundcloud on the front page right now). Of course, as one could have easily predicted, Buzzfeed has responded by slowly blurring the lines between its "viral" and "long form" content, and given the company's historically unethical control of content by the business side it hasn't surprised me at all to see "sponsored content" show up on the supposedly higher quality articles. I've often wondered, given the investigative bent they've shown how many articles have been quashed due to a timely cheque from a valued advertising partner. I am quite positive that BuzzFeed's foray into recipes and the culinary world will soon be accompanied by a push with restaurant reviews, exposes on "trending" diets, advice on how twenty-somethings can eat healthy for cheap, etc. etc. This will also probably be given a thin veneer of respectability (i'm guessing a high profile hire or playing up the recruitment of minority writers[0]) until they've captured a profitable demographic and the corporate money starts rolling in. As many have already pointed out, they seem to see no harm in blatantly plagiarizing in order to bootstrap this product. I guess in the end it's just really surprising to me that people are willing to forgive BuzzFeed for it's past and current crimes (seriously, they're given more leeway than venerable publications like the NYT and Washington Post, not that those publications deserve a pass) and continually compartmentalize parts of an organization that have been demonstrably proven to be ruled by the revenue department. Until people wise up and start wholesale banning all facets of BuzzFeed content they'll continue to get away with it. Fruit of the poisoned tree and all that. [0] As a side note, since i'm already kind of ranting, buzzfeed's use of their hiring of minorities as a shield for their dishonest business practices has always tilted me the wrong way