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Comment by stevewodil | Hacker News Reader

Tik Tok is incredible at marketing. We've never seen anything quite at this level. Originally they were posting videos all over Reddit but eventually those submissions got blocked. They also paid a bunch of meme channels on YouTube to start posting Tik Tok compilation videos, which reach millions of views.

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Do you know anything about the legality of TikTok paying "influencers" to upload copies of user-created content, without TikTok or the influencers paying the users anything (as in the YouTube compilation example)? I would have figured users own the copyright to their content, other than the music in it, and that something like that could be considered copyright infringement if their entire clip is being uploaded and monetized by someone else without any consent or compensation. (TikTok videos are short, so compilations are composed of a large number of full videos, rather than snippets of videos.)

I also believe those YouTubers are often making additional money from the compilation videos with sponsorships and affiliate links, in addition to what TikTok pays them.

Is it just a matter of TikTok hoping most small-time creators will see it as free publicity and/or figuring they probably don't have any legal knowledge or resources, or even awareness their content is being monetized by others? Or have the users signed away all revenue-earning potential due to the music licensing, or something?

If the latter's the case, it seems unfair that random YouTubers can monetize the content a TikTok user created while the user gets nothing from it, and while the user can't even monetize their own content themselves.

I would not be surprised if the ToS permitted their behaviour. "Any content you give us, we can use freely in- and outside the platform" kind of deal is going to go past people easily. I think we would have seen people chasing Tiktok already if this wasn't the case.

TikTok's ToS maintain that they own any content posted to the platform, and this is a standard clause for most social media companies. The TikTok users get exposure, which may or may not be worth it.

Cody Ko ran into this last year, video here (relevant portion starts at 4:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdR8cue4eE

I think its a very large company and the app is solid.

I mean facebook is large and their apps/software are solid too.

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