Updated in 2021
Almost every thing written in this article in 2015 stands to in 2021. Only difference, YouTube is not the only source of living video to put on Facebook.
With Tiktok becoming famous with their short vertical video format, every platform, including YouTube, is focusing on bringing short Vitthal content on their platform.
And Facebook once again becomes a place where a lot of content is lifted from Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok.
Original Article beyond this line
You may have seen the rise in sharing of videos on Facebook. And now they even started playing them automatically in your news feed. It’s all part of Facebook’s plan to take on Google’s video-sharing website YouTube.
Every day, I come across at least five videos in my newsfeed that I’ve already watched on some other page, and even those pages are not the original creators of the video.
For example, here is a video Shared by a page called ‘The Virgin Morning Show’ lifted from another Facebook page called ‘ZOO Magazine’ and mentions it in the description (probably because the video has a watermark that says the name). It’s a plain description, and no link leads you to the Page.
But when I searched for the Page’ ZOO Magazine’ manually, I found that the Page is pretty popular with over 2 million page likes, and they are a page of a Magazine that shares pictures of Hot girls (and that could be a little NSFW).
And it seems even the ‘ZOO Magazine’ Page is also not the original creator of the video, it’s a compilation of relevant short clips stitched into one, but I think it has been lifted from somewhere. Because several videos are shared by the Page that is not even remotely related to what the Page is all about, i.e., Hot girls.
A video shared just five days ago has reached over 1 Million views. And there is a video that has been viewed over 129 Million times in just 45 days.
The videos are all probably stolen from Random YouTube Channels, and the reach of these stolen videos on Facebook is crazy. A video shared just five days ago has reached over 1 Million views. And there is a video that has been viewed over 129 Million times in just 45 days.
Had the video generated this many views on YouTube, it would have made approx. $100,000, give or take a few thousand dollars. 1, Which means the original creators are losing money because of this, and It’s not a small amount to lose in just 45 days.
Using the share button is the right way to share the content. It makes the content stay on the creator’s Page, and its name is displayed to everyone viewing it. It also helps their Page get exposure and grow.
This is precisely what these Facebook pages want, they want to grow faster, and because downloading a video from Facebook is more accessible than making one, they do it. It’s the more accessible, faster way to get content for the Page and grow the Page.
Facebook claims that it now serves over 4 Billion Videos views per day, which means thousands of videos are viewed in large numbers. Most of them are stolen from one place or the other.
And this is not going to stop, at least not shortly, with over 1 Billion people using Facebook every day, confirming that there are more people to reach. Because Facebook is so obsessed with getting ahead of YouTube in Videos, these publishers want to gain followers by being the first ones to share videos, even if they are stolen.
Because ordinary people like you and me never care about it, we want entertainment, we click on the video and share it with our friends, no one knows (or wants to know) if the content belongs to the page sharing.
People familiar with Piracy know it is illegal to download a song from the Internet without paying for it. But some of them think it’s not illegal to download something if it’s available for free.
The free videos also make money by ads, and in this case, the ads played before you watch YouTube videos. And when you are playing these videos on Facebook, you are not going to watch them on YouTube, which means no one will see the ads, and the original creators will not be paid for the hard work they did in creating the videos.
This is worse than downloading a song illegally, at least you are keeping the song to yourself, and the pieces are produced from Major Music labels with multiple streams of revenue.
But, when someone downloads the freely available content and publishes it under their name (without a proper link to the original work) is a more significant theft than downloading a song. It’s Piracy 2.0.
And this is exactly what is happening on Facebook. Most of the videos that land in your newsfeed are stolen.
Also Read: you will also save some data bandwidth
How can you help the original creators?
YouTube publishers like Destin are well aware of this practice and have even coined a name for it, it’s called Freebooting. They have been actively telling everyone about it. They want users to help them by reporting the stolen content by Facebook Pages that do not give proper credit to the original creator (a link back is the bare minimum).
Here is a Infographic to help you figure out if the content you are viewing on Facebook is stolen or not.
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You can go ahead and disable the Auto Play of the videos in Facebook. This will save you from getting distracted by a moving photo, (you will also save some data bandwidth).
If you come across any video by a page that is different from the content shared in the video, you can →
★ Go to its Page and see if the Page indulges in Freebooting, meaning it has more such videos with no relevance to Page’s topic.
★ Go to YouTube and search for the title of the video you came across on Facebook. Most of the time, they even keep the video titles the same.
★ If you find a YouTube video, grab its link and share it on Facebook, people can still watch YouTube videos inside Facebook.
You find the content on YouTube doesn’t guarantee the original creator uploads it. Still, the chances are meager compared to Facebook, the ocean of stolen videos, which is becoming more significant with time.
