By James Titcomb12:35PM BST 04 Aug 2015Follow

Facebook is "lying, cheating and stealing" in order to establish itself as the world's biggest video website,
a popular video blogger has claimed.

Hank Green, an American entrepreneur whose YouTube channel vlogbrothers boasts more than 2.5
million subscribers, said the social network was actively inflating statistics about how many people view
its videos and willingly hosting pirated material so that it can claim to be bigger than YouTube.

He claimed that the social network, which recently claimed it was streaming 4 billion videos a day, is
inflating the numbers in order to claim YouTube's crown as the world's biggest video streaming service.
Green said videos hosted directly on Facebook are promoted more aggressively than a YouTube video
posted to the social network, and that a Facebook video only had to be watched for three seconds to
count as a "play", against around 30 seconds for YouTube.

Facebook has since responded to the claims, defending its promotion of videos hosted on Facebook and
promising to do more to protext intellectual property.

Green, who was one of three YouTube personalities chosen to interview Barack Obama earlier this year,
wrote: "Facebook says it’s now streaming more video than YouTube. To be able to make that claim, all
they had to do was cheat, lie, and steal," on his Medium blog.

Facebook is lying...and cheating...and also stealing in order to be able to call itself #1 in online video:
https://t.co/dr9gZCCpK9

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) August 3, 2015

"When Facebook says it has roughly the same number of views as YouTube, what they really mean is that
they have roughly one-fifth of YouTube’s views, since they’re intentionally and blatantly over-counting to
the detriment of everyone except them," he said.

He also accused Facebook of being too slow in responding to pirated video content being uploaded, so
as not to lose out on views. He said that the social network has no way to protect video creators beyond
belatedly taking videos offline, unlike YouTube, which redirects video royalty payments to rights holders
with its "Content ID" system.

"It’s a little inexcusable that Facebook, a company with a market cap of $260 BILLION, launched their
video platform with no system to protect independent rights holders," Green wrote. "It wouldn’t be
surprising if Facebook was working on a solution now which they can roll out conveniently after having
made their initial claims at being the biggest, most important thing in video."

In response, Facebook said it took intellectual property "very seriously". It said it had suspended
accounts and improved reporting tools, and that it was "actively exploring further solutions". The
company is expected to introduce further measures to clamp down on piracy in the coming months.
A spokesperson said: "We take intellectual property rights very seriously. This is not new to Facebook.
We have a number of measures in place to address potential infringements on our service. For years
we've used the Audible Magic system to help prevent unauthorized video content.

"We also have reporting tools in place to allow content owners to report potential copyright
infringement, and upon receiving a valid notice we remove unauthorized content. We also suspend
accounts of people with repeated IP violations when appropriate.

Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video https://t.co/1l4b64ukfg <- YouTube still the king of video, sorry Mark..
pic.twitter.com/VD1nh4LSGn

— Anish Abraham (@the_anish) August 4, 2015

"As video continues to grow on Facebook, we're actively exploring further solutions to help IP owners
identify and manage potential infringing content, tailored for our unique platform and ecosystem.”

On Monday night, Matt Pakes, a Facebook project manager, defended how the social network promotes
its own videos over those from rivals such as YouTube. He said that Facebook users are more likely to
interact with "native" videos, and that the three-second play count barrier worked for Facebook as a
signal that users are watching a video, rather than scrolling past it.

Facebook has identified video - a lucrative advertising opportunity - as one of its major growth areas. It
claimed to have 4 billion views a day in the first quarter of the year, up from 3 billion three months
earlier, with most of those on mobile devices.

It is reportedly preparing a music video service, which would help it rival one of YouTube's most popular
uses, and earlier this year it allowed users to embed Facebook videos on other websites, as YouTube
does.

A YouTube video that accuses Facebook of "stealing billions of views" is going viral and receiving a ton of
support from content creators and prominent tech executives.

The video, created by the Munich-based YouTube channel and design studio Kurzgesagt, was released on
Monday, shortly after Facebook announced it was generating 8 billion video views each day. Kurzgesagt's
video has gotten more than 1.1 million YouTube views in that time.

Here are the main accusations of the fast-paced, five-minute animated video:
In the first quarter of 2015, 725 of the 1,000 most viewed videos on Facebook were "stolen" from the
original content creators and re-uploaded to Facebook's native video player. Kurzgesagt said this
amounted to 17 billion stolen views in the period.

The video says freebooting, or the stealing of videos, is happening more and more often. It's bad for
content creators as they receive next to no exposure or revenue for their videos - "only the thief and
Facebook profit."

Facebook "rig[s]" its algorithm so the videos uploaded to its player are preferred to YouTube links. In
other words, you're more likely to see a Facebook video in your News Feed than a YouTube video.

Kurzgesagt says Facebook "cheats" because a video "view" on Facebook counts after three seconds of a
video is played, even if the video is autoplaying and on mute as a user scrolls through his or her News
Feed. (YouTube doesn't disclose its view metrics. With video ads, it counts a video view as when a user
engages with the content, or if a user has watched 30 seconds or more, or if someone has watched to
the end of a shorter video. The internet advertising industry's standard for a viewable video ad
impression is that at least 50% of the video is in view for two consecutive seconds or more - so Facebook
is actually ahead of the industry, by one second at least.)

The video says the process of claiming copyright infringement is clunky compared with YouTube's
Content ID system. And it complains that the thief "doesn't have to fear negative consequences at all."
The narrator adds: "It just feels like a violation to be treated like that."

Facebook declined to comment on the Kurzgesagt video, however it has publicly addressed the issue of
freebooting on its platform before.

Facebook does use a system called Audible Magic to detect copyright-infringing videos, and it has a
system in which users can flag freebooted videos. And the company says users who make repeated
copyright infringements may find their accounts suspended.

Facebook published a blog post about video management, in which it mentioned freebooting, in August.
The company said it had heard from some video publishers that there were ways in which it could be
doing a better job and that it was taking steps in response. In addition to employing Audible Magic,
Facebook has been building video-matching technology that will be available to a "subset of creators."

Facebook was challenged over the issue of video copyright infringement by popular YouTube star Hank
Green back in August, in a Medium post entitled "Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video."
In response, Matt Pakes, who works in Facebook's product team, wrote his own Medium post outlining
that people at the company "absolutely do care" about digital video creators and that it takes intellectual
property rights "very seriously." He explained that people tend to interact slightly less with non-native
videos and that the three-second view count signals to Facebook that users are not simply scrolling
through the feed and that they've shown intent to watch that video.

Nevertheless, freebooting is still clearly a problem on Facebook, and many prominent content creators
and executives have been voicing their support for the Kurzgesagt video and sharing it on Twitter. People
have been complaining about copyright infringement on Facebook, and the celebrities who have
engaged in it, for months - and those complaints aren't dying down.