Huffington Post hit with $105 million class-action lawsuit

A class-action suit was filed today against The Huffington Post and AOL, which recently acquired the left-leaning political website for $315 million. The plaintiffs, led by former Huffington Post blogger Jonathan Tasini, claim that thousands of writers have not been fairly compensated by the site and are asking a court for $105 million in damages. “In my view, the Huffington Post’s bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation,” Tasini said today during a conference call, according to Forbes. “She wants to pocket the tens of millions of dollars she reaped from the hard work of those bloggers.”

In a statement, the Huffington Post said: “The lawsuit is wholly without merit. As we’ve said before, our bloggers use our platform — as well as other unpaid group blogs across the web — to connect and help their work be seen by as many people as possible. It’s the same reason people go on TV shows: to promote their views and ideas. HuffPost bloggers can cross-post their work on other sites, including their own. Aside from our group blog, to which thousands of people from around the world contribute, we operate a journalistic enterprise with hundreds of paid staff editors, writers, and reporters.”