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Facebook Freebooting - Smarter Every Day 128

SmarterEveryDay · 905.1K views · 2015-01-19 · 8:34

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as the first-hand account of video piracy on Facebook whenever the platform's treatment of creators comes up.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2015–2019

Topics

Internet culture & memesTech industry & business modelsLaw, policing & justice
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What people said

pen2l · 2015-07 · Recommendation

Did you watch his video where he explains his views himself? I find it pretty convincing: [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.

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wolph · 2019-07 · Reference

It's apparently a bit of a hassle to get it removed at times though. And in most cases far to late for it to really matter: [VIDEO]

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TAForObvReasons · 2018-05 · Reference

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] [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by SmarterEveryDay, played through YouTube.

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