Facebook Money, False Copyrights, and Shadow Bans

Welcome back everyone. It is time to catch up on my Facebook page and see where I am financially on that. If you remember a couple of months ago, I think in June, I put effort into my Facebook page and actually got monetized within a couple of weeks, which was good. I mean, I had always had it. It'd been there and I occasionally upload videos and really was just an afterthought. I wasn't monetized. I didn't put much effort into it. But then with the turmoil that's going on in YouTube, I decided that I would put some effort into it. And so far it's worked out pretty good. I mean, I got monetized within a couple of weeks, like I'd said. The first month was okay, but I mean, I'd started about the mid month. You know, it's like I got monetized in mid June of this year and by the end of the month, I think I'd made a couple hundred bucks. Nothing to write home about. I mean, it's decent. If you're working at Taco Bell, you know, part-time, yeah, 200 bucks sounds pretty good. But in the grand scheme of what's going on with World According to Briggs as a whole, it wasn't much. But it was nice to see some money from Facebook. And in reality, all I was doing was taking videos I've already uploaded on YouTube and just uploading them on Facebook. The whole process takes me like five minutes per video. So it wasn't a bad deal. Well, then July comes around and it got considerably better. I mean, in July alone, I made $2,000. Well, 1990, 1,990 something. Almost 2,000, let's just call it 2,000. So that was nice to get $2,000 for stuff I really wasn't putting too much effort into. I wasn't, you know, spending 10 hours a day working on it like I work on my YouTube channel. I was just, you know, maybe an hour every other day I'd put into Facebook, made 2,000 bucks out of it. Not bad. Now, that's not setting the world on fire and I'm not making 20 grand off of Facebook yet, but it is growing and older videos, the longer they're up, they're gonna start paying you. So that's a plus. Now, when I was telling you about getting on Facebook and the reasons I was doing it in a previous video, prior video, I mentioned that Facebook just changes their ways a little too often. You know, they've had different monetization policies and new things. And I said, so that kinda just seems a little sketchy to me because they're always changing. They haven't really settled on anything, it seemed like. And then I'd said, but the new program seems to be stuck and they're gonna go with it. Well, not always. This is what I was right about. I said that about how they're kind of wishy-washy. In June and July, I'd collected bonuses, which were nice. July's bonus was, I believe, 500 bucks total. 489. So $489 I made in bonuses. These are things like, you know, they'll give you these rewards if you hit these marks, like upload six Facebook posts. You know, it doesn't have to be a video, just text posts. So I just upload six of them and they'll give me like $15. Sometimes it was upload 12 shorts and you get $65. So it made it fun. I mean, again, that's not life-changing money, but it was kind of something that motivated me. I was getting up in the morning, excited to see what the bonus was of the day, and I'd start working on it. You know, I'd do my YouTube stuff and then I'd spend a good portion of the day working on these Facebook bonuses, which, you know, in the end, in July, it paid off. Well, 400 bucks. So that's almost 500 bucks. So that's nice. So really, I made $1,500 just for my reels and about $500 from my bonuses that I got. Now, I don't have many followers or subscribers on Facebook. I think I have two or three and they net me $5.28 last month. That was my subscription. So again, not life-changing, but it's nice. So here's the deal. Here's the problem. Since about late July, towards the end of July, I guess you could say, they haven't posted any more bonuses. It's like the whole program's over. And I, you know, I've kind of done a little research to find out what happened. There's nothing out there. They just stopped doing bonuses. It sucks, but I mean, I'm still making money. I hate to see that 500 bucks go away, but it is what it is. And that's not the worst part about it. It was motivating. And it was almost like playing a game, like playing a video game. I had to achieve certain things to get a little extra money. So, I mean, sure. I feel like that chicken at Knott's Berry Farm where you put a quarter in, the light goes on, he starts playing the piano and then food drops out. That's kind of what I felt like, but it was fun. You know, I was the chicken and I played that fricking piano and I collected my treat. And, you know, I miss being the chicken a little bit. I want to be that chicken. I want to see my bonus. I want to go for it, see if I can accomplish it for the day and, you know, have fun. It was fun. And now it just poof. So, I mean, Facebook, if you're watching this, bring back the bonuses. They don't have to be huge. They don't have to be, you know, a lot of money, but they were fun. Maybe we can get back to doing that. I don't know why. I mean, they have achievements and stuff, but that's nice. There's no incentive other than do this achievement and get this little badge. I don't want a badge. I want to see some cash. Doesn't have to be a lot of cash, but a little cash would be nice. So, that was the whole thing that Facebook will give you something in their monetization program, then pull it away without warning. It's like they have a meeting. They're all, yeah, this isn't working. Let's just kill it. Boom. So, the guy hits a button, it's gone, and no real explanation. But I like the bonuses, Facebook. Bring them back. Make Briggs happy again. So, onto a YouTube subject for the day. Penguin Zero did a response video to another channel called Real Engineering. Real Engineering brought up what's going on with Kirsten's dad. I hope I pronounced that right. I don't know what it is. But anyway, they're a faceless channel, and they've got 25 million subscribers. And they put up a video recently, and the video was just not doing good. You know, there's high click-through rate, and all the things that should be hitting were hitting except its reach and its views were bottom of the barrel. I mean, dropped through the floor, and it didn't make sense to them. So, they're big enough that they still have a rep. All the people around a million, like me, we don't have reps. We gotta use this AI BS now. Kirk has said, 25 million subscribers. They reached out to their rep, and their rep's all, oh, wow. We have you down as an AI channel. So, basically, they were shadowbanning him. You know, they say shadowbanning's not a thing on YouTube, and okay, I don't think it is. I don't think they do things like that, but I do think they favor certain types of content these days for traffic, okay? So, if you're doing something they don't like, we're not gonna give you that much traffic. I don't know if that's shadowbanning. I mean, to me, shadowbanning is you get no views. They're just not giving you preferential treatment, I think, if they don't like what you're doing. And this guy, who's got this huge channel and has been around a while, they get nailed with this AI thing, and they're not getting the traffic on the video. So, that all got fixed. But Penguin Zero's conclusion, and real engineering, it's a very interesting thing. He was able to deal with that, and he got the information. What about all the smaller channels, like, you know, me? I got a million to a lot of you. That's a big channel, but in the grand scheme of things with, you know, Kurzgesagt and Penguin Zero, I'm small potatoes. So, what happens to us? I mean, my channel, World According to Briggs, our views dropped through the floor in late 2025. I mean, like we're shadowbanned, like they think I'm an AI channel, that is about the same time I get the email, the kiss-off email from a rep I didn't know I had, long story, that telling me that I'm now on the AI rep program. So, any questions I have, I go to AI, and it answers it for me, and it's been okay, but I really did like having the rep before. So, it makes me wonder if I've been put on that list. For the most part, I am a faceless channel. And are they lumping me in with AI now? Is it because I use some AI pictures occasionally? Maybe my thumbnails have been AI? Have they put me on this shadowban list? Is that why World According to Briggs views are half of what they were in early 2025 or mid 2025? This time in 2025, we're doing pretty good. Little did I know, we are about 60 days away from just everything getting slashed in half. So, I wonder, am I on that list? Am I considered an AI channel? Have they labeled me that? Because I don't always show my face on World According to Briggs. Now, I was showing my face for a while there, just because I thought maybe there was a problem as they started banning AI channels. I'm all, I better put my face on here. Videos weren't doing that good. Nothing really changed. So now, at the end of my videos, I've decided to put my face there. I don't know. I wish I had a legit rep to actually look at my account and see if anything like that is happening, or can they see it and they're just not gonna tell me? You know, I've reached out when I had a rep and I'm all, hey, my channel's just going downhill. What's going on? Oh, seasonality, and they give me all the same BS, but I want someone to look at my channel and tell me, oh yeah, we got you down as an AI channel and we're not giving you a bunch of traffic like we used to. I'm not an AI channel. I write my own scripts. I use my own voice. I use AI thumbnails and I'll occasionally, if it fits and I wanna make something humorous, I'll put an AI picture in there, like Doug talked about recently. You know, that's about it. I'm not using 11 labs, I'm not letting AI write my script. I just don't show my face all the time. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One, I'm an older gentleman. I use the word gentleman very loosely. I'm kind of a pig most of the time, but I'm older. And you know, most of my audience is a little older, but to younger audience, it's kind of a turnoff. I mean, and the mystery, they like the mystery of a faceless channel. They wanna hear my voice, they're used to my voice. And then a lot of people, when they finally seen my face, they've been like, I had you totally pictured different. And you know, I can tell it's a negative response. So I mean, some people it doesn't matter, but to some it does. And I try and appeal to as many people as I can to get as many followers as I can, subscribers, and then get as many views. So I don't know, caught in a tough spot. I'm older, so I don't wanna show my face as much, but is that hurting the channel? I mean, I wish I knew. And that's something YouTube would never explain to me. Oh yeah, well, you know, you're a little bit older, so showing your face is kind of hurting your channel. Who knows? Anyway, just my random thoughts for the day. I hope I could figure it out with YouTube someday. I'm glad Facebook is still paying. It's paying pretty good. I'm hoping to get it up to 10,000 a month here by the end of the year. So we'll see, we'll see how it all works out. And the next video I'm gonna do is talk about false copyright claims on Facebook. Yeah, it's the Wild West. These companies just, you know what? Let's talk about it right now. Make this a longer video. So almost every single time I put up a video on Facebook, I get a copyright claim, okay? And it's, and you look and they list what part of the video were they claiming. It's always these music companies. Like, I don't know what this one is, what it's called. Got one today. S-A-C-E-M. I'm sure it stands for something. It's a French company, but they put a claim on almost everything I do. And what it is, you look and they're claiming music where there is no music. It's just my voice. They're trying to claim my voice. Now what it is is they're using AI software to scrape everything. And they've got the threshold very low because I think Facebook isn't giving them as hard a time as YouTube does because they won't pull that crap on YouTube. If you do that too much, the false claims, YouTube's gonna get involved. I don't know if Facebook's doing that, but there's a whole buttload of companies like this S-A-C-E-M company and TuneCore where they just throw out claims. And I look at the timestamps and they're trying to claim my frickin' voice. I mean, what is up with that? You also have these other little ones that are just, you can just tell there's some company that are just, they're gaming the system. They're trying to get claims. Collect a few pennies here, there, here, there. When you got a couple thousand channels giving you a couple bucks a day, that money looks pretty good in Africa at the end of the month. So I think I've told you guys before, don't be afraid to dispute these things. Unless you're using their music, you might wanna not dispute it. But if they're doing crap like they're doing to me where it's just my voice, dispute it. The other one that comes up a lot is WWE, the wrestling people. They always have these promos before their videos. Let's say they're doing, or their shows, let's say they're doing a show in Salt Lake City. They'll go to Storyblocks or Adobe, whatever, or iStock, and they'll get an aerial view of Salt Lake City as they're doing the intro. And if I use the same one from Storyblocks, they give me a copyright claim. Now, they don't have exclusive rights to that. I got it the same fricking place they did. But their AI system just picks it up and gives me a copyright claim, and they start collecting my money. I don't like that, so I dispute it. If the dispute doesn't go through, I delete the video. I'm not giving anyone money on my work. And now they just wanna claim it because their AI system isn't smart enough to figure out that they got it from Storyblocks, the same fricking place I did. So that gets me heated a little bit, because right now, today alone, I tried to upload two videos for Facebook, and both videos got a claim by this SACEM people. I've reached out to them on Twitter, never responded to me. I've emailed them a couple times, they never responded to me. I'm getting ready to make a video about them, and my next step is I'm probably gonna have my attorney, I'm gonna talk to him and see what I should do. Should I send them a cease and desist letter, or is there a class action suit here, whatever? Because how many creators are just getting pilfered by companies that do false claims? Whether it's on purpose or not, their AI system is basically claiming our hard work. Again, if you're using their music, you deserve it, pay up, or don't use their music, and I totally get that. But when it's total false claim, like on my channel, that's where I have a problem with it. There's been people out there, totally bad actors through the history of Facebook and YouTube and everyone else, that that was their whole business model. Just claim everything and hope that some person they're too scared to dispute it, and they just, okay, and they forget about the video. So your video's generating this company in the Philippines 20 bucks a day, and that's not right, that's not right. Now, I understand the need for the copyright infringement stuff, but it needs to be fixed a little bit. It used to be really bad on YouTube, and YouTube's kind of, I don't know what they did, but it's not nearly as bad as it was before. Facebook, it's every single time I wanna upload a video, I get a claim, and I can dispute it, or I just delete it and try again later. Now, here's the downside of that. Let's say they claim it, right, and then I dispute it. They take a week or two to respond. Well, on YouTube, if you dispute something, they still run ads and they hold that money in escrow, basically, and when the dispute is settled, they disperse that money. So I didn't worry about it too much on YouTube. I just, okay, go ahead, I'll get my money back when the dispute comes through, and that's fine. Facebook doesn't do that. I've had some claims in the last few months where when it gets disputed, my video's made nothing. So it's been up two or three weeks getting views, and I got no money from it, and that kind of sucks. So in a way, they're disrupting my income, and they may not be receiving the money, but I'm not getting money. They're taking money out of my mouth, or they're taking food out of my mouth, basically. So yeah, I've ranted enough for one day. I'll see you guys in the next video.