YouTube appears to be against the idea of sharing to other apps, in contrast to tech giants like Meta who want you to repost Reels across Facebook and Instagram for better engagement.
For Youtube shorts, the platform has introduced an automated watermark system. Consequently, whether you like it or not, YouTube will be adding a label to prevent users from reposting Shorts on various apps.
A public blog post that was published by the company provided an explanation for the choice. According to YouTube, watermarks will now be visible on any Shorts that creators obtain through the YouTube Studio app for the purpose of resharing.
Which, I suppose, may be beneficial for cross-promotion. The true purpose of these restrictions on short video sharing across apps appears to be to make it more difficult for creators to simply re-post their Shorts to Reels or TikTok in order to increase their presence in each app. However, other apps are also penalizing clips that contain visible watermarks.
It’s important to note that TikTok and Reels also watermark downloaded videos in an effort to prevent the same, so it’s not surprising that YouTube would follow suit. The current system makes it so simple to simply re-post your short video throughout each app, a type of low-effort baiting technique, to see what results you can achieve, so it is still another strategic issue for creators.
With an expansion to mobile coming shortly, YouTube says it would start attaching watermarks to Shorts downloaded on desktop starting today.
