Screen Rant, The Gamer, Collider, And CBR Parent Company Threatens Journalist Who Researched Into Google Algorithm Bias For Their News Sites

Valnet, the parent company of ScreenRant, CBR, Collider, and The Gamer, are becoming well-known for their censorship and agenda transcending any news they produce. Now, film journalist Josh Tyler is exposing legal demands the company is making to silence him.

Last month, Fandom Pulse had a former employee of Screen Rant come forward anonymously to tell us about the working conditions there, forcing the D.E.I. agenda at the expense of journalism.

Like many mainstream news agencies, Screen Rant, The Gamer, CBR, Collider (all owned by Valent) are reliant upon Google search and discovery algorithms pushing them at the expense of other news outlets to get their stories seen. A pop culture journalist insider told Fandom Pulse the strategy behind these sites is to spam as many articles as possible to dominate search engine optimization.

Many have noticed there appears to be some kind of corruption present here since certain sites seem to come up far more often than others. There’s even speculation of a pay-to-play situation with companies like Valnet, which calls into question both Google and Valent publications’ objectivity.

Joshua Tyler wrote an expose on how these Google searches worked for the mainstream media, to which he alleges he was sent a cease and desist letter from Valent.

Tyler posted to his site Geek Freak In Robot, “Earlier this week, Valnet, the media company that owns websites such as Screen Rant, Game Rant, Movie Web, Collider, and CBR, issued a cease and desist letter in which it claims my journalism “disparage[s],” “tarnish[es] and damage[s] Valnet’s reputation,” “defame[s] Valnet’s credibility,” constitutes “harassment,” contains “abusive statements” and “intentionally and maliciously spew[s] false, frivolous and slanderous accusations about Valnet.”

Despite this C&D letter, he has stated he’ll refuse to back down in posting about the Google algorithm and the state of online news.

Tyler posted to X about the situation, “Screen Rant owner Valnet has issued new demands to silence my reporting, listing more X posts I must remove. If I fail to do so, they've informed me Valnet will be ‘monitoring’ all of my “articles, social media posts and other public activities" in order to take legal action.”

He also posted a screenshot of the threat from Valnet which then goes into a thread of some of the misdeeds he’s seen in trying to silence him.

The legal threats against someone looking into Google seeming to prioritize sites like ScreenRant and CBR in the algorithm are bizarre if they’re not occurring, which only fuels speculation of the lack of objectivity in online news reporting.

Fandom Pulse started on Substack because Google took to throttling our main site in April 2024. Our results were popping up in both Discover and search results, and once we were gaining traction during the Sweet Baby Inc. controversy, Google pushed those results to zero where it remained for more than a full month.

It appears as if advertisers, search engines, and media outlets are colluding to keep certain sites preferred as online news sources, even in entertainment.

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