Viral Aussie TikTok quizmaster Miles Glaspole found some pretty familiar questions appear in The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun this week and not because he put them there. He claims the newsroom allegedly nicked his questions without asking and tried to pass them off as its own — like a kid sneaking glances at someone else’s work in the middle of an exam.
Today the TikToker has announced on Twitter that News Corp has apparently since apologised to him.
“Update on this: News Corp and the third-party company involved have got in touch, apologised for plagiarising these questions, and have taken steps to ensure it won’t happen again. Thanks to everyone who reached out,” Miles’ tweet read.
Update on this: News Corp and the third-party company involved have got in touch, apologised for plagiarising these questions, and have taken steps to ensure it won’t happen again. Thanks to everyone who reached out. https://t.co/6aiI7q6Zso
— Miles Glaspole (@milesglaspole) July 14, 2022
The Melbourne-based TikToker and freelance quiz writer — whose daily Top 10 trivia seshes from his parked car rack up hundreds of thousands of views — noticed eerie similarities in the Tele team’s Quizmaster section On July 11.
He quickly realised they were his own questions from his TikTok show published six weeks ago.
Questions that I wrote for my show 6 weeks ago vs today’s Daily Tele quiz 👀 pic.twitter.com/UW7t2Q4kyx
— Miles Glaspole (@milesglaspole) July 11, 2022
Speaking with PEDESTRIAN.TV, Miles said it wasn’t that the questions were similar — they were allegedly word-for-word the same as his.
“Last night I was tagged in a TikTok from a user who recognised the questions so I cross-checked them with my episodes from early June — the wordings were almost identical,” he said.
“One question had been changed to remove a reference to the date. When I say identical – 9 out of 10 of them were verbatim save for the date change one.”
@tiktok10quiz
It seems the TikTok Top 10 quiz king has only recently been allegedly ripped by the News Corp trivia section. Once he realised something was up he checked back to last week’s Quizmaster questions but found them to be vastly different.
“I checked last week’s — different questions, not really my writing style,” he said.
“As far as I’m aware this started yesterday. The wording is identical, and six out of 10 of them were in one episode of my show, with the remaining four from the previous day’s. It’s only too similar.”
At it again today, no acknowledgement. @theheraldsun any danger? https://t.co/6aiI7q6Zso pic.twitter.com/FLIfLXUIcq
— Miles Glaspole (@milesglaspole) July 12, 2022
Miles hadn’t reached out to the News Corp publications when we spoke to him on July 12. He told us that he now has an agent who is handling social media inquiries, and they’re looking into what can be done on TikTok’s end with the alleged plagiarism.
He started his self-written daily quiz in mid-2021 as something to do amid Melbourne’s on-again-off-again lockdown and also to push for his dream job — to be a full-time quiz host on TV.
“I’m happy with how far the channel’s come,” Miles said.
“I didn’t think yelling quiz questions at a screen in my Smart car would lead to the downfall of the Murdoch empire but proud to have played a part.”
Since he kicked it off he’s released around 280 episodes (save for a few days when he felt like skipping it) with his most popular episodes involving best-selling author Hank Green and a recent op based entirely on Taylor Swift trivia.
