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South Africans can now start making YouTube Shorts

By Wednesday, anybody in South Africa should be able to make YouTube Shorts. This is because starting today, YouTube is rolling the functionality out to local users.

While some users have been able to upload Shorts for sometime now, some of us here in the Hypertext offices still aren’t able to, even after this official announcement from YouTube.

The rollout should be complete by 14th July (that’s this week Wednesday) the platform said in a press release.

So what are Shorts? Essentially it’s YouTube’s TikTok play where users can record and upload 60 second videos in portrait orientation. It seems YouTube is hoping that by being able to use any of the billions of videos uploaded to the platform, it will lure users to it rather than competitors.

With that having been said, Content ID does appear to be active on the platform as per a Support article.

“If you upload a short video you’ve created elsewhere, make sure that any copyright-protected material you’ve used is approved for your use on YouTube. Using copyright-protected material without getting appropriate rights could lead to you getting a Content ID claim. Also if a copyright owner sends us a valid and complete copyright takedown notice against your short video, it may be removed, and you could get a copyright strike,” reads the article.

We wonder whether Content ID will prove to be more of a hinderance than a help here. Of course, YouTube could negotiate changes to Content ID for Shorts but as of right now, maybe steer clear of copyrighted content you don’t have the rights to use.

Creators also won’t be able to earn revenue on ads that appear on Shorts. Instead, creators can get paid from the YouTube Shorts Fund which amounts to $100 million. To get paid creators simply need to make Shorts “that resonate with the YouTube community”, whatever that vague statement means.

Whether you like them or not, Shorts are now available in South Africa.

 

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