It's even odder to see people make the defence "Well, BuzzFeed News isn't BuzzFeed, and people are silly to mistake them".
No, people aren't silly to mistake them. They're part of the same company, they share a brand, it's perfectly natural that people would associate one with the other.
If The New Yorker started a division called New Yorker Feed that did nothing but published stolen content from Twitter and reddit in such a way as to make teenagers neurotic about nothing and feel no self worth, nobody's going to say "Well, you shouldn't confuse The New Yorker Feed with The New Yorker, they're totally different", ditto any other respected publication house.
By the same token, FOX News having one hour of thoughtful, unbiased, unopinionated news that represents the two mains sides of the American political spectrum thoughtfully, equally, and respectfully doesn't make up for the other 23 hours of a day.
I don't care about BuzzFeed or BuzzFeed News one way or the other, but let's give the people who confuse the services a break.