Creating content online and then having stolen sucks. Some people will do anything, no matter how underhanded, to get the most page views and eyeballs on their ads. Not getting any recognition for your cool montage or picture that took hours to make can be devastating. Why bother spending hours or days creating something you're incredibly proud of, only to have it ripped by a social media page or YouTube channel?
Two years ago, a Facebook page called “ReportAt20xD” was caught stealing content from the League Of Legends subreddit . All the original poster wanted was some credit for his work, so the “CEO” of the Facebook page did the only logical thing: threaten to call his local police department. The post quickly grew to be one of the highest upvoted posts in the entire history of LoL on reddit, causing a giant shitsorm. The page was taken down and everyone seemed to forget about the controversy, until today.
On Tuesday morning, reddit user hensomm noticed the page was back up and still stealing content. Even worse, the people running the page had watermarked a few of the posts in an attempt to remove the original names of the creators. The community went back to being outraged, focusing all of their bottled up internet rage at this one page.
Vandiril, a famous League Of Legends YouTuber, stepped in to say: “I've seen countless of my videos being stolen on Facebook, YouTube and other social media, without ANY credit, very often with these guys adding their own watermarks. Since my vids are short ones that like to go viral, it's on a such a big scale there is pretty much nothing I can do.”
Caution: Everything past here is reddit speculation, these claims have yet to be verified. The “ReportAt20xD” Facebook page was taken down, so there’s no way to corroborate these claims. We will update the post when we know more information.
After the reddit post started to gain some traction, a user claimed to be the current admin of the “ReportAt20xD” page. Reportat20admin said that two years ago the page was owned by “someone who was unbelievably aggressive” and that he had somehow acquired the page from him. This admin says he’s been busy studying for his college exams over the last two months and hasn’t been working on the page. One of his editors posted the stolen content and they have since been removed from their position.
Reportat20admin has taken down all the stolen content and the “ReportAt20xD” page, saying if they: “had known about the reputation of this page and the shitstorm caused a long time ago, (he) would have never acquired it.” There’s no proof yet that Reportat20admin isn’t just somebody lying about who they are, but if it isn’t a hoax, I’m glad they’re owning up to their mistakes.
If you’re a content creator online who makes a living off of your work, content vultures can be a death sentence. In the day of Facebook video, where anyone who creates a social page needs to fuel the beast multiple times a day, it’s hard to keep up with demand. Followers of your pages will unsubscribe or unfollow if you don’t make them happy, which can lead to some real recklessness. Stealing content and repurposing it as your own is never okay; it’s important to give credit to the people who worked so hard to make it. These channels thrive on the underbelly of the web, avoiding detection by Facebook admins in an attempt to gather up as many followers as possible.
