Summary:
Facebook has been criticised for allowing freebooting of videos on its site, with some pages in 2015 being accused of plagiarising videos from YouTube users and reposting them as their own content on Facebook's video platform. In some cases, these videos achieved higher levels of engagement and views than the original YouTube post causing ire from several YouTube creators who criticised Facebook for its lax enforcement of third party copyrights for videos uploaded on its service.
Allegations:
- Popular YouTuber Hank Green levelled a number of allegations against Facebook's video team, including a charge of rampant copyright infringement from Facebook users uploading videos from YouTube and other platforms without the creators' consent.
- Green also pointed out in a Medium post that Facebook promoted native videos over external links by allowing them to play natively in the feed and run full screen. This was why native videos generated more views than external links on the site.
- Green criticised Facebook for misleading potential advertisers and other users by claiming its videos received more views than they actually did. According to him, Facebook counted the 'view' at a 3 second mark which was a point at which most people would be still scrolling and not engaging. He said viewership could only be accounted at a 30 second mark.
Defence:
- Facebook responded to Hank Green saying it had measures against copyright infringement in place, including allowing users to report stolen content and suspending accounts guilty of repeated violations.
- Matt Pakes, a product manager at Facebook responsible for video products, responded to Green on Medium. "If you have stayed on a video for at least three seconds, it signals to us that you are not simply scrolling through feed and you’ve shown intent to watch that video," Pakes wrote.
- The social network launched Rights Manager, its version of YouTube's Content ID which lets creators identify freebooted versions of their videos across the social network as step forward in curtailing the practice of freebooting.