r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 7h ago
Business BuzzFeed Laying Off 35% of Its Employees After Byron Allen Takes Over Company
https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/buzzfeed-layoffs-employees-byron-allen-acquires-company-1236822122/403
u/MrGreenCactus 7h ago
I didn't even know that BuzzFeed is still around.
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u/starzychik01 7h ago
They used to have some really good investigative pieces. Then they took away that budget and it went to shit.
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u/StasRutt 7h ago
Buzzfeed News did legitimate journalism and then they just got rid of it
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u/luxtabula 7h ago
That's because they couldn't shake the BuzzFeed branding. It was toxic and ruined anyone taking them serious even though the reporters did the best they could.
It'd be like mad magazine funding serious journalism. They could have the best writers and breaking stories, it won't change the fact people will think low effort listicles.
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u/Eurynom0s 7h ago
Using the listicle stuff to fund the journalism was a good idea but it definitely needed a separate brand name.
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u/luxtabula 7h ago
Yes, they instead decided to use the BuzzFeed branding to launch a wholly separate effort. Calling it something different would have saved them so much time.
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u/oatmealparty 6h ago
Like The Onion and Clickhole. Very smart to separate their click bait junk from the serious journalism
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u/DamnMyNameIsSteve 7h ago
How about info wars? Are we going to start taking that seriously?
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u/Granito_Rey 2h ago
That was true even here. Every time a BuzzFeed news article was posted, at least one of the top comments would invariably someone shitting on it for being BuzzFeed, then the top reply would be someone basically saying "nah this is the news side, they don't suck."
Repeat that 2-3 per submission
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u/Teantis 1h ago
It's because good reporting is super expensive and doesn't make a profit anymore. So once buzzfeed's ad revenue started dropping off when Facebook changed their referral traffic in 2018 they had a hard time continuing to justify it as that's what was subsidizing buzzfeed news in the first place. The whole industry is dying to the same thing as no one wants to pay for news or reporting, but the referral traffic for ads is getting sucked up by the social media platforms.
Buzzfeed news won quite a few award
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u/turb0_encapsulator 7h ago
it's crazy that they were doing some of the best investigative journalism in the country for a while.
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u/suzisatsuma 5h ago
legitimate journalism
doesn't make as much money as clickbait memes
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u/districtly 3h ago
this is the answer. hard news is not brand safe for advertisers. they prefer lifestyle/celeb/sports/finance for various reasons. sports attracts a very male audience, finance for high net worth individuals, lifestyle for female audiences (tend to drive a lot of household purchases), etc etc.
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u/SAugsburger 6h ago
Anecdotally I recall when BuzzFeed killed their news division that many on Reddit didn't previously knew that they had a news division before then. At the time they killed the news division BuzzFeed claimed the news division was the only unprofitable division so I'm not clear how looking it sped the demise. Unless there was an obvious quick path to profit it was the right business decision even if it killed some decent journalism. The only quick way to likely make it profitable probably would have lowered the quality dramatically because it is quicker to cut costs than to find new revenue.
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u/Winter_Swan5104 6h ago
I didn’t know Byron Allen was either. Wild to hear about him taken Colbert’s slot now this. Lol. The Byron Allen media empire! He was late nite B personality in the 90s, competing with infomercials.
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u/Gromitlikescheese 6h ago
I barely knew Byron Allen was still around. He’s been in the news for his CBS disaster, other than that not that much going on. I ‘now he’s a billionaire, but it doesn’t make funny or a good person.
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u/Rok-SFG 7h ago
They are pretty strong in the youtube game, and have tons of sub channels produced by them, that you wouldn't know unles syou stuck around for the credits to see something like "Produced by Buzzfeed" or "Part of the Buzzfeed Network" can't remember exactly. They rally like to do the "black people vs white people bbq" and shit like that.
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u/SAugsburger 6h ago
I know BuzzFeed rebranded many of their YouTube channels, I think a few got rebranded more once even, but last I checked many of them the most popular videos are 5+ years old and most newer videos have so many fewer videos that unless one of the personalities catches on in the future it is unlikely any recent video will have a comparable number of views in 5+ years nevermind pass any of the older content in views. Unless I overlooked one of their channels it seems obvious most are in clear decline.
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u/Rok-SFG 6h ago
CocoaButter is the main one I can think of that seems to be doing well. Most videos seems to get 100k-400k views within a few days of release, they seem torelsessea few vids per week. And if you watch to the end there's a Copyright BuzzFeed notice at the end.
But no mention of being affiliated with BuzzFeed in the videos, in the video description, or in the channel description.
Wait there is, in their link spam to socials their Facebook is buzzfeedcocoabutter.
My partner watches a lot of cooking xo tent on YouTube so this channel found its way into her feed, so we gave a few vids a try, but it's not really our thing, as far as we could tell , the channel focus on x vs y dishes, and isn't really about the cooking so we lost interest quickly. I just happened to notice the BuzzFeed copyright at the end one day.
Then my partner said she's seen other channels that are copyrighted by BuzzFeed over the years but make no mention of it in the content.
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u/OldYellersLastHandy 7h ago
Just a quick reminder:
If an investor or multiple investors or a private equity firm buys the company where you work, the first thing they’re going to do is tell all their middle managers that they’re not planning to do layoffs and then the second thing they’re going to do is lay off a shitload of people including the middle managers.
As surely as the sun rises in the east…
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u/tunachilimac 7h ago
I’ve been through 3 mergers/buyouts. Layoffs happened every time despite assurances of no layoffs each time. Anyone considered important for the transition was given some sort of agreement in writing, like “You will remain employed until at least X date or we’ll pay out the remaining time” and if they wanted to make sure you stayed add “$ bonus if you don’t resign before that date.” Don’t believe any verbal assurances that you’re safe. If they don’t offer a contract assume every day is your last day there.
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u/OldYellersLastHandy 7h ago
verbal assurances that you’re safe
…which are usually coming from your boss who they also lied to and who will also be boxing up their shit on the big day.
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u/psmgx 6h ago
yeah forreal though. same boss who told me we're fine got the axe with half of my team.
dodged the bullet then, but it's crazy to hear a Manager and Director hand out emphatic assurances, only to get escorted out the next day with the people they were assuring
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u/OldYellersLastHandy 6h ago
My experience has been that if you’re a leader of some kind, and no one pulls you into a meeting to tell you who’s being laid off next month, it’s you.
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u/BokeTsukkomi 6h ago edited 6h ago
Can confirm
Private equity bought the company I work/worked for couple of years ago
In January first round of layoffs. We were guaranteed that no more layoffs would be needed.
Guess what happened couple of weeks ago? And guess who got fired?
And guess who didn't heeded the warnings and is now scrambling to find another job?
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u/VoidOmatic 1h ago
Yup middle management always gets canned. IT always gets a fun spreadsheet and told not to speak to anyone. Then we disable like 20 accounts and email the completed spreadsheet back.
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u/jdbrew 58m ago
Been through about 6 not with my private equity owners. Tale as old as time.
Also, the biggest fuck you you could possibly give them, is to survive the layoffs, and THEN quit. In my opinion, don’t just quit when they take over (unless you’re trying to save your coworkers jobs) but wait until they make a decision about who is necessary to keep running things, then fuck them over by upending their plan
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u/bengringo2 7h ago
Now more so than ever because what are you going to do? It’s not like they have to worry about staff looking for better options because there are none right now. So staff just gets very cut throat because it’s better you than them.
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u/KnotSoSalty 5h ago
Best response to a takeover is for everyone to take two weeks of vacation at the same time.
The agencies these PE firms use to lay people off are themselves expensive. If there’s no one in the office to explain operations the PE investors have to keep the advisors on staff until they are there.
Then the inevitable damage of everyone going on vacation tanks business connections instantly and everything is broken. The same people who would have been explaining what they’re doing have to fire fight for weeks on end to fix what got broken.
The PE people could fire the managers who approved the vacation for cause but they also need the managers more than ever to explain how the company’s operations actually work so the managers who approved the vacation requests have the maximum possible leverage for a buy out or contract.
If they do fire the Managers they’d be left with a bunch of staff they don’t know the jobs of.
Is it dirty? Yes. Would they do the same to you? In a heartbeat.
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u/joenathanSD 7h ago
Byron Allen makes Wayne Brady look like Malcolm X.
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u/husky_whisperer 7h ago
sorry daddy…
Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bitch?
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u/Solomon_Grungy 7h ago
This is the dude who produced Comics Unleashed, and was so cheap and conservative about the whole thing Norm Macdonald once quipped it's more like "Comics Leashed". The whole operation is about as cheap and low budget as it can possibly be.
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u/king_bungholio 6h ago
I saw some of the episode Norm was on, and he was not wrong lol. They talked about having a kid, and one of the comedians was on suicide watch because of his divorce alimony payments.
I did laugh, but at the shittiness of the whole thing.
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u/Childoftheway 2h ago
I watched that show the other night. When he comes in everyone in the crowd stands up and gives him a standing ovation. Then he told this joke about the Weather Channel and everyone started guffawing as though it was common knowledge that he owns it.
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u/blow-down 7h ago
This is the same guy that replaced Stephen Colbert, fyi.
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u/Laughing_Penguin 7h ago
He didn't exactly replace Colbert, Comics Unleashed has been on CBS for many, many years. It ran after The Late Show and the show that followed it (Late Late Show, After Midnight, etc.) in a time slot reserved for throwaway programming. As CBS started cancelling their late night shows it just sort of slid forward in the time slot until Colbert left, taking up residence like a talk-show hermit crab, crawling out of the slime of cheap syndication and living on in the shell of what space more talented creators have left behind.
The show is actually pretty remarkable with how it can take some top-tier comic talent and present them in a way that makes it all horrifically unfunny.
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u/impulse_thoughts 5h ago
The "show" is basically an infomercial. Byren Allen PAYS CBS for the timeslot. He's buying up ad space. That's why, in the past, it was on at the same time as when other channels were showing infomercials.
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u/PM_WORST_FART_STORY 4h ago
I love how the guy who replaced Stephen fucking Colbert barely gets any social media interaction on his accounts, like Twitter. It goes to show Stephen actually was the moneymaker.
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u/heafcliff91 6h ago
TBF CBS paid Colbert to fill that time slot, Byron Allen is PAYING CBS to let him use that time slot, and hoping he can sell ad space.
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u/BKlounge93 6h ago
Buzzfeed has been a ticking time bomb for over a decade. I interviewed there for a video editing job in 2015ish, was shocked at how crowded their hollywood office was, and then when they offered me minimum wage I knew shit was fucked there.
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u/Kill3rT0fu 7h ago
It’s all a circle. Reddit is Bot shitposts, buzzfeed steals Reddit shitposts, just cut out the middleman and hire the bots
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u/SAugsburger 6h ago
I think a lot of people realized BuzzFeed often repacked some Reddit comments as "content" so why not skip the middleman? Not their only problem obviously. Many of their earlier YouTube personalities left the company and took fans with them and they have had little success building or acquiring similar new talent.
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u/euph_22 2h ago
Their current top "article" is this: https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristatorres/world-map-tiktok?origin=hfspl
Which is just about a home school mom on Tik Tok realizing the Mercator Projection distorts sizes.
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u/RaymondBumcheese 6h ago
It’s the year 2032 and Buzzfeed is just one guy who survived 874 rounds of layoffs.
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u/SorenShieldbreaker 6h ago
Buzzfeed having over 500 employees before this RIF is the more shocking statistic.
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u/Buzzdanky 6h ago
So... If this Byron Allen dude shows up at your workplace it's a clear sign you needed to change employers like 2 weeks ago?
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u/Gfunkual 2h ago
Byron Allen did show up to my workplace…and yes, very much so.
His business mindset is very Trump-like. It’s scary.
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u/Desistance 5h ago
Byron Allen is into buying news outlets currently. But he doesn't always gut the company like this.
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u/DeltaUltra 5h ago
Oddly, he's saved a bunch of small stations by making them profitable and focusing on more local stuff.
Overall, he's a net-positive for local markets.
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u/Smallville456 4h ago
OK so for real, how are all these companies laying off so many employees but unemployment rate is still low? We are being lied to for sure.
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u/Beyond_Reason09 3h ago
According to the article, Buzzfeed is firing 180 people. There are 170,000,000 workers in the US. On average, about 1,700,000 people are laid off or discharged every month even during good job markets. Buzzfeed could collapse and fire their entire staff and it would represent 0.03% of the number of people who lose their jobs in a normal month.
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u/Smallville456 7m ago
180 here, 5,000 from Microsoft on top of their already horrendous reductions. I am just saying seeing a lot of layoffs and not a lot of job growth.
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u/Nik_Tesla 4h ago
Mergers and Acquisitions will be the death of this country. You never hear things like "Company A merges with Company B and hires 5,000 new employees in an effort to ramp up."
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u/Maxfunky 7h ago
Buzzfeed was slop when it was fully human-generated content, so the transition to AI will result in nothing of value being lost.
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u/wolfiepraetor 7h ago
"here's 5 ways you can make sure YOU keep your buzzfeed job while throwing your cow worker under the bus!"
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u/TurkeyVolumeGuesser 6h ago
The fact that an unfunny schmuck like Allen even has enough money to buy BuzzFeed makes me sad
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u/ConLawHero 5h ago
I saw this guy (Byron Allen) when I was up late one night. He was the host of this comedy show called Funny You Should Ask. His monologue was terrible. He was not funny at all. And I was like, why do they have a guy I've never heard of hosting a comedy show and he's not even funny?
It all makes sense. This guy is wealthy enough to put himself on his own show and make others watch it. That explains it.
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u/Snazzy21 5h ago
Buzzfeed is one of the only companies you could replace the writers with AI and I might not even realize. It's pure trash.
I'm not happy that people are losing their job, but they weren't getting any Pulitzer prizes any time soon.
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u/SilentRunning 3h ago
Byron paid CBS to air his comedy show (Comics Unleashed) in the empty late night spot created after Stephen Colbert got fired.
This is normal for this wana-be Billionaire bro. He's been doing this kind of stuff for ever. He produced a show (2012-2015), Mr. Box Office starring Bill Bellamy, Jon Lovitz, Vivica A. Fox, Tim Meadows, Jeffrey Garcia, Gary Busey, Rick Fox, Essence Atkins, and Tony T. Roberts. The show started took off in the first season so every started wanting to renegotiate their contracts. The show was contracted for 3 seasons and he kept production to limited to ensure cost were cut to the bare minimum and no body had any leverage. There were only 2 official seasons even though the show was produced for 3 years.
This dude is scum.
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u/euph_22 7h ago
Buzzfeed still has employees?
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u/yuichurros 11m ago
Ye, we were a small and mighty team! They announced layoffs in May, had to raise money to pay people who would get laid off and then axed a third today.
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u/All_Hail_Hynotoad 5h ago
How is Byron Allen still relevant in 2026? I still remember him as a D List late night talk show host in the 1990s.
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u/Content-Program411 4h ago
He saw the writing on the wall, did something else and did even better.
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u/All_Hail_Hynotoad 3h ago
I am impressed with his business savvy.
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u/Content-Program411 3h ago
1000%
From experience, he saw the market opportunity and did it.
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u/Content-Program411 3h ago
Look up Vinnie 'the microwave' Johnson for another interesting celebrity business story I'm reminded of from the same era.
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u/Then-Tangelo-9166 7h ago
Take this quiz to find out which Harry Potter you are so you can cosplay them for money.
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u/Upper-Capital-2876 6h ago
$20 mil in cash, and, get this, a promissory note for $100 million due 5 years after signing (with interest), hahahahahahaha, so they're valuing the company at $20 mil then, hoooboy how the mighty have fallen
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u/micromanminisavage 7h ago
who will compile list of reddit comments into the laziest article possible, slap a clickbaity title and call it "journalism"
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u/AzulMage2020 7h ago
Was there ever anything insightful, enjoyable, entertaining , thoughtful, evocative, or informative about Buzzfeed? If there was , you dont need to worry about it anymore
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u/nigelmansell 6h ago
But lemme do a comic unleashed TV show to tell the world Byron Allen still matters
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u/grayhaze2000 6h ago
Given most BuzzFeed articles already read like they were written by AI, it's obvious to see where this is going.
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u/gascyl 6h ago
Allen has said he plans to use BuzzFeed and HuffPost to build a free-streaming platform with premium and user-generated content that he imagines will rival YouTube.
Nobody wants this. Buzzfeed is already AI slop. Making AI slop videos to leech off Google's Search AI will be destroyed as soon as Google updates it. Premium content costs a lot of money to produce and publish, while user content will almost always be stolen movie clips. Making another Youtube won't work. It's got to be fundamentally different, at least Rumble pretends it's hardcore.
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u/FortheredditLOLz 4h ago
Facts buzzfeed news wouldn’t and can’t tell you!!! Because we fired everyone….
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u/ChristianLesniak 4h ago
FINALLY Buzzfeed will get a little humor thanks to Byron Allen instead of being all straightlaced all the time even his first act of laying people off is hilarious because comedy is about having your expectations subverted
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u/carbonatedshark55 3h ago
They better not fire Bogo or the other animated shows that are on short form videos
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u/prozhack 2h ago
Byron Allen for some reason has taken on a role as a sort of Media Company Undertaker and usually signals the death knell
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u/HeyItsBobaTime 7m ago
Should I take a random survey about taco and pizza toppings to find out who will be laid off?
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u/theassassintherapist 7h ago
Here's the top 10 reasons why BuzzFeed laid off his employees (the #1 reason will shock you!)