We call them ” click bait “, “click trap” or sometimes even “putacclicks”. Social networks are full of these sites, which, to attract the attention of Internet users, rely on deliberately scandalous titles, which often do not reflect the purpose of the texts. What we do not know is that a good deal of this content in Quebec is produced by the same company, which owes its spectacular growth in recent years, among other things, to cheap labor, sometimes paid as little as $5 per
Few people know the name of H&L Media. But the company boasts of generating more than two million clicks daily thanks to these different platforms, such as Marker, Fanadiens, Noovelles, L’Informateur or ToutQc.
The company has also acquired Facebook groups and pages with huge reach, such as Spotted: Montreal, which has 120,000 likes. These spaces, which initially had a completely different function, are now used to promote the content that the company produces. Thus, thousands of Quebecers are now being exposed to articles from H&L sites without having asked for it.
“They understood better than anyone, and especially better than traditional media, how social networks work. If true, they have two million traffic [de vues] on their sites they have to make money like water with Google advertising”, emphasizes a competitor who did not want to be named so as not to damage his business, but who acknowledges that H&L Media is displacing other groups that have also adopted clickbait .as a strategy.
Violent growth
A few years ago, the phrase ” click bait was mainly associated with sites such as Monde de stars or Grands Titres, which were bought in 2016 by the production company Attraction. At the time, Marc Ouimet and Patrick Dragon were still running separate blogs on the Canadiens. They joined forces in the summer of 2020 to form H&L, and since then their business has continued to grow.
Today, the duo manages dozens of pages and pages, several of which are dedicated to hockey and pools sports people. H&L was especially associated with until last year The blue pocket, the most popular sports podcast in Quebec. The two businessmen have also expanded their activities to include gossip sites. H&L provided services to Qc Scoop, a page with more than 200,000 followers on Instagram that built its reputation by relaying gossip about influencers. The creator of Qc Scoop, Simon Waddell, made it clear on Thursday morning that he remained the sole owner of his media, as H&L Media had only offered a template for his website, he explained.
As for the various pages linked directly to the company, the content is most of the time written by freelancers, “bloggers” as H&L Media calls them, even if the latter are not asked to give their opinion or actually dig original stories. In fact, they are rather mandated to rewrite news found on other sites to make rather rudimentary texts of barely a hundred words.
Those who worked for H&L report that their job was basically to find headlines catchy enough that people can’t help but click on them. Alex Déry, a claims adjuster from the Quebec City area, remembers being paid $2 per article when he started in 2018 for the Habs and NHL site, which was then solely owned by Patrick Dragon before the latter teamed up with Marc Ouimet.
“In the beginning, when you start, you are not really aware of the value of an article. I did it mostly for fun because hockey is my passion. It wasn’t my main thing job. But over time you realize how much money they make from it. You kind of feel like you’ve been had,” says Alex Déry, who stopped working with H&L Media a year ago. He was then paid $5 per Article.
Paid “pinottes”
The duty could speak to four other former employees of H&L Media. Although they all asked that their anonymity be preserved for fear of reprisals, they confirm that the pay for “bloggers” generally hovers around $5 per hour. Article. They also say that freelancers are under pressure to write as many articles as possible as quickly as possible. Some remember that they had to write at least one article a day, seven days a week.
“I remember getting up at 4 a.m. to write my required article because I didn’t have time for the rest of the day. I was a student and my goal was to make a living from my passion, hockey. I knew that it wasn’t a big payday, but I thought it would open doors for me. After a year and a half, I realized it didn’t make sense. I also saw that there were no opportunities for advancement. All we did was copy articles found elsewhere to change the title. We fooled the readers,” laments a former editor.
We have not been able to confirm whether these terms still apply. However, in the ‘terms and conditions’ section of H&L’s websites, it still states that a blogger is considered an ‘independent contractor’ who acknowledges the right to ‘no salary’ and ‘no remuneration’.
The company also appears to blame bloggers in the event of a lawsuit. We can read on the pages operated by H&L: “Opinions and other statements of our users and third parties (such as bloggers) belong to them and are not ours. Content created by third parties is solely the responsibility of such third parties, and its accuracy and completeness are not approved or guaranteed. »
H&L’s business model was first revealed in January 2021, when entrepreneur Olivier Primeau stated in a publication that he was looking for columnists for his Beach News Everyday site, for a fee of $5 per Article, which had caused anger in the journalistic world. At the time, H&L was linked to the site of Olivier Primeau, who says he ended his business relationship with the company two years ago.
We repeatedly asked the two owners of H&L Media for a telephone interview. Patrick Dragon replied that they were overwhelmed with preparations for the next hockey season, which does not begin until October.
An earlier version of this text suggested that Qc Scoop belongs to H&L Media. However, according to the creator of the page, H&L is not the owner, but rather a service provider.
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