How Much Money Does Silicon Valley Make from Stolen Video?

TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook are making billions on scrolling video feeds, and they all recycle the same (apparently pirated) video clips. Is this really legal?

A few months ago, I uploaded a short video of my son Thomas playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations on social media.

My wife filmed him (for just 48 seconds) without his knowledge. Thomas is a bit camera shy, and plays music for his own enjoyment, not an audience. So he doesn’t perform in public, and has never shared any of his music online.

But we got his permission before putting this on Facebook.

I assumed that I had received all the necessary clearances.

So imagine my surprise when Facebook told me that I was violating copyright law by posting this online.

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Within a few minutes of uploading the video, I got this warning.

I’m violating music rights? This claim is ridiculous and obviously so.

Bach was born in 1685, and the Goldberg Variations were published in 1741. Any copyright—if it ever existed—expired centuries ago.

Of course, a recording can also be protected by copyright. But this is clearly an original video made at home.

The only possible explanation is that Facebook thinks Thomas is actually Glenn Gould (or some other established Bach recording artist), and that this is a copyrighted track. I told him he should be flattered that Facebook can’t tell the difference between his performance and a commercial recording by a concert pianist.

But there’s a much deeper level of irony here.

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That’s because Facebook cracks down on my son, the Bach lover, but seems to allow rampant copyright violations on their reels.

These endlessly scrolling videos earn billions of dollars for Silicon Valley—because of their addictive interface. But the apps need an equally endless source of video clips. This forces them to recycle copyrighted material.

I’m referring to movie clips, extracts from old TV series, sports highlights, comedy routines, bits of talk show interviews, filmed music performances, and other snippets culled from various entertainment sources.

Instagram (also controlled by Mark Zuckerberg) is even worse than Facebook. The rip-offs are so extreme that journalists joke about Instagram Reels being “leftovers lounge” and “the place where TikTok trends went to die.”

The platforms don’t want to get their hands dirty—so they let various meme accounts churn this stuff out. But billions of dirty dollars still end up in Silicon Valley.

You might even say the money has been successfully laundered, because Meta’s money comes via advertisers, and not from the pirates themselves.

But everybody knows how this game actually works.