How Facebook is Stealing Billions of Views
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it to explain freebooting, Facebook's inflated view metrics and why Content ID matters for small creators.
What it is
Kurzgesagt argues that Facebook's claimed 8 billion daily video views are inflated by freebooting, meaning re-uploads of creators' videos. It describes how this harms independent creators.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2015 to 2019.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec rryan · 2016-02 · on “Content ID and the Rise of the Machines”
While you're right that Google's implementation of Content ID doesn't handle fair use well, Content ID is critical for indie creators. Facebook's lack of protections lead to tons of lost revenue for them (and for indies, it matters!). This video changed my opinion on Content ID when I saw it last year: [this video]
Recommends sean_patel · 2016-09 · on “Facebook Overestimated Key Video Metric for Two Years”
"How Facebook is Stealing Billions of Views" - Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell exposed this with detailed analysis and evidence. Watch it here => [this video] This is neither a bug nor a "mistake". It's straight up fraud. Fraud because Facebook uses these false #s to prove to their advertizing clients that they are getting a HUGE ROI, when they really aren't. Also the investors and analysts bump up their ratings and the stock goes higher and higher on false ad view #s. By counting a view as a legitmate view after the video plays only for 3 seconds, their "algorithm" counted billions of views even when the user has not even seen it, because Auto-play is enabled by default and you have to opt-out / disa
Recommends sean_patel · 2016-09 · on “Facebook Overestimated Key Video Metric for Two Years”
Yes. straight up fraud. "How Facebook is Stealing Billions of Views" - Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell exposed this with detailed analysis and evidence. Watch it here => [this video]
Recommends sean_patel · 2016-11 · on “Facebook’s ad metric problem is becoming Zuckerberg’s headache”
This is not new, and I've spoken about this here before. Facebook used fraudulent methods to artificially inflate their view counts, and pedelled those fake and grossly exagerrated #s for "eyeballs" to the unsuspecting advertizers. "How Facebook is Stealing Billions of Views" - Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell exposed this with detailed analysis and evidence. Watch it here => [this video] I contracted with their Ad team for a few months, and can't say more for NDA reasons, hence I am pointing you to publicly available media / expose.
Recommends apexalpha · 2018-12 · on “EU Copyright: Block Everything, Never Make Mistakes, but Don't Use Upload Filter”
[this video] This does a very good job of explaining how small content creators are practically powerless now on the web in terms of protecting their content being stolen.
Recommends apexalpha · 2019-03 · on “European Parliament approves copyright reform”
A lot of European media sees their content stolen and re-uploaded by anonymous users on YT, FB, etc... FB in particular have not responded to this and thus content creators lose a lot of views and money. This video sums it up nicely: [this video]
Cites rryan · 2016-02 · on “Content ID and the Rise of the Machines”
This video claims that Facebook's lack of a content ID system is harmful to individual / small content creators as their videos are copied and go viral with no compensation to the content creator. [this video] The video paints Google and content ID in a very positive light. If what you're saying is true, where does this video go wrong?
Cites rryan · 2016-02 · on “Content ID and the Rise of the Machines”
What do people think of this video? [this video] IMO Content ID is essential for a healthy video creator ecosystem. Google's implementation may give the big media companies too much power, but for indie creators it is crucial. Facebook, on the other hand, seems to not care about video piracy at all and as a result small creators suffer.