00:00A few days ago, Facebook proudly announced that they'd achieved 8 billion video views a day.
00:05That's really impressive, until you learn that in the first quarter of 2015,
00:10725 of the thousand most viewed videos on Facebook were stolen, amassing a total of 17 billion views.
00:18Sites and content aggregators steal videos from YouTube to go viral on Facebook. These videos go viral because Facebook is cheating.
00:27They rigged their algorithm so that videos uploaded into their player are preferred to YouTube links,
00:32because users should be kept as long as possible on the site, so Facebook can show them as many ads as possible.
00:37This is, after all, their business model.
00:40But it also cheats when it comes to views. A view is counted after three seconds, even if the video is muted.
00:47Which means that because of autoplay, if you scroll through your timeline slowly enough, you count as a viewer.
00:53That means engagement is terrible.
00:56Compared to YouTube views, Facebook views plummet after a few seconds, because most views are not real.
01:02But large numbers are impressive, so Facebook keeps pretending.
01:06While this force to virality is weird, the real problem is the so-called freebooting, the stealing of videos.
01:12Since Facebook prefers its own player, stolen videos reach way more people than the original.
01:18Lately, this has happened to us more and more often. The most recent example amassed 3.2 million views and
01:24140,000 shares in two days, while our own post just reached 100,000 people and got shared 1,000 times.
01:31Other creators are hit even harder.
01:33Smarter Every Day's videos get stolen constantly, getting viewed up to 17 million times.
01:39But even this is dwarfed by examples like Tyrese Gibson, a singer who steals viral videos like this one, with
01:4586 million views on his Facebook page. He adds a link to buy his music, too.
01:50He's not alone in this. A whole group of people have built their online presence around stealing other people's work.
01:56This is really bad for independent creators.
01:59Contrary to popular belief, stolen content gives creators close to no exposure at all. Only the thief and Facebook profit from this.
02:08Quality content takes a lot of creativity, time, and love. In our case, a single video literally takes hundreds of hours to make.
02:16Even we, with more than a million subscribers, are dependent on the ads and exposure.
02:21Without ads and the support of our generous patrons, we could not make videos.
02:26For a small creator, a viral video can mean the difference between a career and a hobby. On YouTube,
02:31this kind of theft is not a problem, because they have major safeguards that protect content from being stolen.
02:37Although the content ID system is far from perfect, especially for film critics and gamers.
02:43Facebook, on the other hand, pretends everything is fine and constantly announces one milestone after the other.
02:48But things are not fine.
02:50Let's look at the process of claiming your copyright on Facebook in the last year.
02:541. Get an email or tweet from a fan that gives you a direct link to your video.
02:59It's not possible to search for your videos on Facebook yourself. You depend on luck to find your stolen videos.
03:052. Search for Facebook copyright infringement on Google, because it's actually faster this way.
03:113. Fill out an annoyingly long contact form.
03:154. Watch the views on your stolen videos rise.
03:185. Facebook finally pulls the video.
03:22Conveniently, the video has already gained a 99% of all the views it will ever get. The thief doesn't have to fear any negative consequences at all.
03:30This is what successful creators have to deal with constantly, and on top of losing out in terms of exposure and money,
03:35it just feels like a violation to be treated like that.
03:38In a recent statement, Facebook announced they want to change,
03:42but it's hard to take them seriously when it still takes days for a stolen viral video to be taken down,
03:47and Facebook does not share the profits made from it. At this point, Facebook is not a partner creators look forward to working with.
03:55They've built their video empire on stolen content and disregard for original content creators.
04:00This is absolutely unacceptable for a corporation worth billions of dollars.
04:05Facebook is already testing various monetization models that will give the uploaders a cut of the ad revenue,
04:11which, with the current state of play, is troubling. Right now, this is mainly being tested with big media companies,
04:17but as creators, we don't feel like we're being asked or taken into consideration by the giant that is Facebook.
04:23What can you, as a viewer, do to help here? If you spot stolen content on Facebook, make a comment linking to the original content.
04:30Alert the original creator, because only they can file a copyright report.
04:35Share this video or the one done by Smarter every day.
04:38We all want the same thing, a free internet that's the basis for creativity, community, and great stuff.
04:43We sincerely hope that Facebook will soon become a partner, instead an obstacle to this goal.
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