1 HN user recommended this commentary1 month2015–2019score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN cites it as the first-hand account of video piracy on Facebook whenever the platform's treatment of creators comes up.
Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day explains 'Facebook freebooting', where Facebook users re-upload YouTubers' videos natively and the original creators lose views and revenue. He describes his own attempts to get Facebook to act.
Did you watch his video where he explains his views himself? I find it pretty convincing: [this video] Interestingly, a lot of people are getting very frustrated with Facebook for other reasons as well. Famously, there's Veritasium's video: [link] I can really appreciate what they're feeling. With piracy as we have traditionally known it, at least usually the pirate is not directly profiting from his act of piracy. With freebooting, Facebook is literally profiting from other people's work. It's directly diverting money flow from the creator (who REALLY NEED THE MONEY) to Facebook. I think it's plainly ridiculous this is happening, and obviously Facebook will turn a blind eye to it because it's making them money. This is one of the reasons why I encourage whitehat security researchers to turn a little gray when it comes to Facebook and do things to bring them down, it'll be for the greater good to bring the behemoth down.
Creator explains his views on Facebook freebooting convincingly.
They're both at fault, to varying degrees, explicitly or implicitly. Destin mentions in his "intro to freebooting" video his various attempts to contact Facebook regarding the piracy, and that it was only removed after a Twitter campaign led by his viewers: [this video] I don't know much, or have any experience with DMCA, but it's my impression that if there's a copyright violation on Youtube, the video can be taken down very quickly, and the burden of proof is then placed on the uploader to get it back up.
Creator describes trying to get Facebook to remove his pirated video.
It's parasitic because of its particular approach. For example, it could embed youtube videos... so that the real creators get their pay, but no, Facebook would rather that the videos be Facebook videos, thereby the original creator getting zero profit from his hard work. See [this video] for a first-hand account of the situation.
First-hand account of creators losing revenue to Facebook re-uploads.
I didn't say Udemy was responsible for flagging content. But I am saying there's no fucking way there are only 125 copyright infringing cases. It's a shit ton more. It may not be their responsibility to find them. But to imply that's the extent of the problem is wrong and a lie. "nor can anyone other than the copyright holder reasonably be expected to" I don't think this is a fundamentally true statement. For example I believe that Facebook has a moral obligation to provide tools to stop freebooting. [this video]
Consider as well that Facebook steals money from content creators who really need the money . See [this video] & [link] Also, the idea of having Facebook at the cost of giving up your privacy to this behemoth, and more importantly, at the cost of this company exploiting your cognitive biases to get you to buy things hardly seems conducive to a spirit of bettering the world.
>“Freebooting” is a silly but oddly appropriate word invented by YouTubers CGP Grey and Brady Haran that means “taking online media and re-hosting it on your website without permission.” [link] [this video]
Facebook has a history of fraud in their other services. Veritasium fell victim to FB's scams as a publisher a couple years ago[1]. I know first-hand that Facebook's advertising model is deeply flawed. When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn't care about Veritasium (but I wasn't aware of this at the time). They drove my reach and engagement numbers down, basically rendering the page useless. They also have a history of encouraging video fraud[2][3]. [1] [link] [2] [this video] [3] [link]
Cited as evidence Facebook encouraged video fraud.
SmarterEveryDay told a story in one of his videos about slow-mo clip of tatoo machine in action being ripped from one of his movies by the large press publisher, Bauer, and reuploaded on Bauer's Facebook page. Then Bauer moved on to claim DMCA on his original uploaded by him on his Facebook page: [this video]
Story of a slow-mo clip ripped, reuploaded, then DMCA-claimed against the original.
It's absolutely insane that freebooting [1] on Facebook was allowed to persist for so long. It's easy to see the right to monetary remuneration as a method of addressing a massive loophole exploited by Facebook and certain users for years. [1] [this video]
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