Mumbai: After Facebook recently announced a significant increase in its regular video viewing service from four billion hits to a staggering eight billion hits per day; a Munich-based YouTube channel has accused the social media giants of pilfering billions of views from YouTube.
Youtube Channel Kurzgesagt have posted a 5-minute long video that points out how Facebook is facilitating theft and freebooting of original contnet with an objective to boost the number of daily video views.
According to the video, 725 of the top 1000 most viewed videos on Facebook in 2015 (Q1) were stolen, accumulating to a total of 17 billion stolen views.
It pointed out that several sites and content aggregators ‘steal original work from Youtube channels’ to go viral on Facebook. However, the reason behind the videos going rampant can be credited to Facebook’s deceitful methods.
The video further elucidates that Facebook rig their algorithms so videos uploaded in their player are preferred over YouTube links. This strategy helps Facebook to keep users engaged to their site rather than visiting an external site.
Facebook also cheats when it comes acquiring views. The social media giants in a recent move forced videos upon their users by automatically playing them on their site, irrespective of the user willing to view it or not.
These videos on Facebook are counted as views automatically after three seconds, even if the video is muted. As videos start playing on their own, a user will be involuntarily counted as a viewer.
Widespread freebooting on Facebook
While the issue of increasing viewers through devious methods is unjustified, the greater controversy revolves around freebooting of original content on Facebook.
Kurzgesagt said in a post: “This number is made out of lies, cheating and worst of all: theft. All of this is wildly known but the media giant Facebook is pretending everything is fine, while damaging independent creators in the process.”
The video suggests that Facebook prefers its own video player to YouTube’s player. As a result, stolen videos reach way more people than the original one.
Citing a personal incident, Kurzgesagt pointed out that one of their posts garnered around 3.2 million views and 1,40,000 shares on Facebook in just two days while their own post just reached 1,00,000 people and was shared 1,000 times.
It further points out that there are millions of other original content creators who have to deal with this issue almost regularly.
A prominent YouTube channel Smarter Everyday faces an even greater setback, as some of its videos that are stolen frequently get viewed up to 17 million times on Facebook.
Owner of the channel Destin Sadlin has given a detailed explanation about ‘Facebook Freebooting’ to make users aware of the issue.
The video also informs that a whole group of people have made their online presence around stealing other people’s original work, which is really bad for independent creators.
Stealing the videos leaves the original creator with no exposure at all, and the only ones who gain are the content aggregators and Facebook.
Unlike YouTube who at least have some copyright rules and regulations, Facebook ‘pretends everything is fine’ and constantly keeps on making profits out of stolen videos.
Hard to claim copyrights on Facebook
According to the video, Facebook’s process of claiming copyrights is also flawed and lengthy. Unless a friend posts a direct link or tweet, it is almost impossible for a user to find his stolen content on the vast site.
Most of the time a user has to depend on luck to find their stolen work. However, even if a user manages to locate any stolen content, they have to fill out an annoyingly long contact form, which might not always get the job done. In the mean time the video keeps on gaining views and it’s too late by the time Facebook takes it down. Astonishingly, even after the video is taken down, the perpetrator escapes with no consequences at all.
Here is the full video that explains how Facebook is making billions out of stolen content and how you can help stop it:
(Video Credit: Kurzgesagt)
