YouTube is now making sure everyone can see that the videos you post to TikTok or Instagram Reels are actually from Shorts. In a community help center update, a Team YouTube member said that the website has begun adding watermarks to Shorts uploaded from the Studio creator portal. YouTube will begin adding watermarks to shorts created on PCs in the coming weeks, and then expand the practice to mobile devices over the next few months.
Once TikTok began to gain momentum, other companies realized that short videos were winning over the younger generation and quickly developed new products to compete with this platform. However, if you spend time watching videos on multiple apps and websites, you can easily notice that creators tend to repost the same videos on multiple services – for example, you might see clips from Instagram on TikTok and vice versa.
YouTube said it is putting watermarks on Shorts so that “viewers can see that the content [the user is] sharing across platforms can be found on YouTube Shorts.” The company seems to hope that the new feature will raise awareness that it also posts short videos and get you to try and use it instead of competitors.
