Facebook is not a creator-friendly platform. In fact, they re hostile.
— Destin Sandlin, who has a YouTube channel called SmarterEveryDay, on being a victim of freebooting. For example, Sandlin tells Slate his video on tattooing, which as of today has more than 24 million views on YouTube, also got millions of views on Facebook — but after it was stripped of his credits, edited, then posted on the world s largest social network.
Right now I know there are dozens of examples of my stuff being stolen on Facebook, Sandlin — who doesn t earn ad revenue from Facebook like he does on YouTube — told Slate. But I can t do anything until the SmarterEveryDay following finds it and tells me about it.
The freebooting that Slate s Will Oremus writes about comes amid reports of the growing YouTube-Facebook video battle. Jeremy Quach wrote on SiliconBeat a couple of weeks ago about a report that showed Facebook gaining on YouTube in video views: Facebook s video views reportedly jumped from 77 billion in the third quarter of 2014 to 315 billion in the first quarter of 2015. The social network is reportedly testing videos that follow users as they scroll down their news feeds. And last week, Facebook announced that it would let some video publishers on the social network earn ad revenue for the first time.
But that doesn t help Sandlin right now. He says that even when Facebook responds to his complaints about freebooting, it typically takes the company a couple of days to take the plagiarized video down — probably after it has already been viewed plenty of times.
Facebook told Slate it s working on the issue.
Above: Screenshot of the SmarterEveryDay channel, which has about 2.8 million subscribers, on YouTube.
