I strongly believe that social media’s demise started when you can make money for your content. Much of social media was designed to bring people together and expose people to different kinds of thinking. Much of that went out he window when conspiracy theorists starting monetizing the content and turned it into a business. YouTube is the worst offense of this, especially when dealing with fake trailers. Which, thanks to Deadline, YouTube has stopped monetizing two major pushers of fake trailers.
These particular videos that are pushed out by Screen Culture and KH Studios blend actual trailer footage with AI generated content for clicks. They almost seem legit when you see versions of The Fantastic Four: First Steps and the upcoming DC property, Superman.
However, according to the piece, KH Studio makes completely fabricated trailers featuring “a James Bond movie starring Henry Cavill and Margot Robbie, and a Squid Game season with Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Fake Trailers Make Lots of Money on YouTube
It is important to keep in mind that YouTube only demonetized them after Deadline started poking around in the legitimacy of the content, which sometimes gets more views than the original trailer put out by the actual studio.
Now, anyone that has uploaded content to YouTube to discuss copyright protected property get dinged with a flag from YouTube. According to the piece, “a handful of Hollywood studios, including Warner Bros. Discovery and Sony, are secretly asking YouTube to ensure the ad revenue from the AI-heavy videos flows in their direction. The studios declined to comment.”
As a user of YouTube, it is truly annoying when you see your feed full of trailers. Especially, of movies that were never announced. On other platforms like Instagram, many creators post “fake” stories about an entire X-Men cast as announced. But with no source provided. Even when users post comments if it is real or not, the original poster never replies.
Screen Culture founder Nikhil P. Chaudhari said, in regards to misleading the public with their altered trailers, “What’s the harm?”
People can easily make them lose money by blocking creators that use “source: trust me bro” as their news. Or simply not engage. The problem is that people can’t just walk by without saying something. Like anything else, “if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…”