Casey Newton noticing Facebooks plagiarism problem:

Facebook’s report details the top 20 most widely viewed posts on the network over the past three months. One of the posts was deleted before Facebook published it. Of the remaining 19, though, only four appear to have been original. The remaining 15 had been published in at least one other place first, and were then re-uploaded to Facebook, sometimes with small changes.

It’s interesting to think about where people post things and in what order. Instagram Reels is clearly full of TikTok made videos that are redistributed. Which doesn’t seem to matter because they can monetise it anyway, and the same can be said for Facebook itself.

When the odd breakout personality does exist on Facebook, sure they can make money, but the content has to be very niche. The biggest touted success such as ‘Ladbaby’. Content is typical of the people that still use Facebook. Just take a scroll down the most viewed pages report, and you will see pages such as “Do You Remember When” and “That ain't right”. Which tells you all you need to know about the people spending the most time using Facebook.

Communities and groups are one of the biggest drivers of serious Facebook traffic. That same report shows pages such as “The Typical Mom” and “All Things Mamma” raking in 96m and 92m views per quarter. So, clearly there are people using Facebook, and loads of them, but they are not creating content for the site. They are interacting with others, forming groups and seeking advice.

I have always considered Facebook a bit of a distribution space anyway. Words go on a blog first, videos always got to YouTube first and photos go on Instagram. The fact that the Newsfeed is filled with plagiarism is not really a surprise to anyone.