HuffPost (The Huffington Post until 2017, itself often abbreviated as HuffPo) is an American progressive[1][2][3] news website, with localized and international editions.

[8] Founded by Arianna Huffington, Andrew Breitbart, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti,[6][9] the site was launched on May 9, 2005, as a counterpart to the Drudge Report.

[19] An early Huffington Post strategy was crafting search-engine optimized (SEO) stories and headlines based around trending keywords, such as "What Time Is the Super Bowl?

[14][46] On March 9, 2021, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said that the company had lost "around $20 million" during the previous year, and HuffPost Canada was shut down and ceased publishing.

[88] In February 2011, Visual Art Source, which had been cross-posting material from its website, went on strike against The Huffington Post to protest against its writers not being paid.

[91] In April 2011, The Huffington Post was targeted with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by Jonathan Tasini on behalf of thousands of bloggers who had submitted material to the website.

This transformed the site, which had become notable for featuring extensive sections in a broad range of subjects from a significant number of contributors.

[164] Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society, criticized The Huffington Post for allowing homeopathy proponent Dana Ullman to have a blog on the site.

[166] In January 2012, The Huffington Post was criticized for appointing as editorial director in France the well-known former TV journalist Anne Sinclair, because she stood by her husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former IMF head, when several women accused him of sexual assault.

Commentators at l'Express, Rue89, and Le Monde warned against potential conflict of interest in the French edition's news coverage.

[167] In April 2017, HuffPost South Africa was directed by the press ombudsman to apologize unreservedly for publishing and later defending a column calling for disenfranchisement of white men, which was declared malicious, inaccurate and discriminatory hate speech.

[168][169] In July 2019, HuffPost was criticized for publishing a story written by Rachel Wolfson, a publicist, that praised financier Jeffrey Epstein, a sex offender.

[3] Upon becoming the editor-in-chief in December 2016, Lydia Polgreen said that the "wave of intolerance and bigotry that seems to be sweeping the globe" after the election as US president of Donald Trump was remarkable, and that The Huffington Post had an "absolutely indispensable role to play in this era in human history.