YouTube does not want you to share Shorts on competing social media platforms without giving them credit, as evidenced by a recent update.
To discourage cross-platform sharing on TikTok or Instagram, the video-sharing app has now added watermarks to its short videos.
YouTube, unlike TikTok or Instagram, has not previously added watermarks to its videos, but that is changing today.
YouTube has announced in a support thread that once downloaded for sharing on other platforms, it will add watermarks to its Shorts.
The change is already live on YouTube’s desktop version, and it will be available on mobile phones in a few months. To maximize engagement, social media creators prefer to share their content across multiple platforms.
It makes more sense to share the same video on multiple platforms rather than starting from scratch each time. However, YouTube’s new update aims to return users to the source of their favorite content.
TikTok already does it with its own watermarks, which also display the creator’s username, making it easy to locate the original version on TikTok.
Watermarks on YouTube may function similarly, though the specifics are unknown. If you want to avoid social media watermarks, you can simply use third-party video editors like Lama Fusion or Adobe After Effects and export the videos separately for each platform.
This way, you can gain followers across all of your platforms rather than just one. This may not be feasible for everyone, and most creators will most likely continue to create content in the same manner as before, watermarks or no watermarks.
To read our blog on “Longer YouTube videos can now be converted into Shorts,” click here