Last November, a YouTube video accusing Facebook of “stealing billions of views” went viral, accumulating over 2.7 million views since its release. The original video was posted by Munich-based YouTube channel and design studio, Kurzgesagt. The video received support from content creators on YouTube and other executives.
Here were the Main Points of the Kuzgesagt Video:
• 725 of the top 1,000 most viewed videos on Facebook were ‘stolen’ from the original creators and re-uploaded to Facebook’s video player. According to Kurzgesagt, this has amounted to 17 billion stolen views.
• The original content creator does not receive any of the viewership credit from the Facebook video. Only the person who posted the video to Facebook would receive the viewership credit.
• The Facebook algorithm is set in place so that Facebook videos will appear on news feeds more often than YouTube videos.
• Facebook counts a ‘view’ after three seconds of playtime. Even if the video was auto played and muted, Facebook still counts it as a ‘view’ compared to YouTube counting a ‘view’ by interaction with the video via a comment or ‘thumbs-up’ or at least 30 seconds of watch time.
• Unlike YouTube, Facebook’s copyright infringement policy is very different compared to YouTube’s Content ID system. Meaning that the person who took the original video from YouTube does not have to worry about negative consequences.
In defense of Facebook, they do have a system called Audible Magic which detects copyright-infringing videos and offers a system to allow users to flag freebooted videos. Penalties for repeated copyright infringement may include the suspension of the user’s account.
Freebooting is still a problem on Facebook, drawing much criticism by content creators and executives.