YouTube Shorts, the competitor of the TikTok platform, is launching a watermark feature. This means that when creators make a short video on YouTube, they won’t be able to download their video and post it to other apps without a YouTube watermark.
A YouTube community manager posted about the update yesterday on support thread that timelines include updates for viewers and creators of Shorts. The post reads:
If you’re a creator downloading your Shorts from YouTube Studio to share on other platforms, you’ll already find a watermark added to your downloaded content. We’ve added a watermark to the Shorts you download so your viewers can see that the content you share across platforms can be found in YouTube Shorts. This is rolling out over the next few weeks on desktop and we plan to expand to mobile in the coming months.
When creators use the company’s technology to make a video, the platform wants to be credited. TikTok has operated the same way for years, putting its recognizable red and blue watermark on every video downloaded from the app. TikTok’s watermark has a creator handler, so if a viewer encounters the downloaded video in another app, they’ll be subtly redirected back to TikTok — plus, the watermark bounces around the screen, so you can’t just cut a video to get rid of it. from him.
As Instagram Reels tries to compete with TikTok, the Meta-owned platform has taken things a step further. Instagram explicitly stated that his algorithm would suppress the content that has a watermark from another app. For serious creators, this means editing videos in third-party apps from companies like Adobe, which then allow the creator to share the same content across multiple platforms without worrying about watermarks.
But as it is now, you can still download draft Instagram Reels without watermark. Please, Adam Mosseri, give us this.