Twitch streamer MontanaBlack has announced that he will take action against people who steal his content. He himself uses other people’s content to make money from it. But he is concerned about videos on TikTok, because plagiarism prevents him from earning money himself.
This is the announcement from MontanaBlack:
MontanaBlack announced in a stream on Twitch at the end of August 2024 that he would hire his own employee to delete channels on TikTok that use MontanaBlack’s content. The 36-year-old says:
I’m going to hire someone again who will spend all day doing nothing but deleting TikTok accounts that upload content from me. Unfortunately, I’ll have to take everything down again. Because in the end, business comes first.
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MontanaBlack is himself part of the “Reaction Meta”
Why does this seem ironic? At first glance, this seems strange because MontanaBlack himself is part of the “reaction meta” on Twitch and YouTube. He reacts to other people’s video content during his Twitch streams, uploads his reactions to YouTube and earns a lot of money himself. According to his own statements, he earned 4.2 million euros in 2023.
A significant portion of the revenue came from the YouTube channels “Die Crew” and “Richtiger Kevin,” which often upload MontanaBlack’s reaction videos to videos by other content creators. In July 2023, for example, he boasted that he had already earned $10,000 reacting to videos about the controversial streamer Shurjoka.
With “Reactions” you let other people’s videos run, but you fade yourself into the picture with your face camera and pause the video to react to the video and comment on it.
Especially when “reactions” add little added value to the original videos, they too – like clips – are criticized for “stealing” the content of other content creators and making money from their content without giving them a share.
Because he often reacts to other people’s videos, MontanaBlack could be accused of “stealing content” himself. In a recent stream on Twitch, he spends the first few hours just watching other people’s videos and eating something.
At first glance, it therefore seems hypocritical when he accuses other people of “making money from my content” when he does the same thing himself.
But MontanaBlack has good reasons for his decision.
Instead of €4,000, MontanaBlack earns only €200 with viral clip
Why does he do this? MontanaBlack explains: Because his content on TikTok is copied by other TikTok channels without his consent, his own original videos are also considered copies and are therefore monetized much less.
On Tuesday, August 27, he uploaded a clip to TikTok showing him being stopped by the police:
The fact that he is losing cash here annoys the streamer so much that he now wants to hire his own employee.
MontanaBlack was able to solve the same problem elegantly years ago – not this time
This is what lies behind it: MontanaBlack faced the same problem years ago on YouTube, where people were “stealing” his content and making money from it, but he wasn’t getting anything. Back then, teenagers regularly cut clips from his several-hour-long Twitch streams and uploaded them to YouTube as standalone, easily consumable videos.
MontanaBlack solved the problem by writing to the teenagers and offering them that they could make it official if they gave him a 50:50 share of the revenue. It was clear: If they didn’t agree to the deal, he would have the videos deleted.
This agreement gave rise to the reaction channels “Real Kevin” and “The Crew” on YouTube, as he explained in December 2019. But such a win-win solution is apparently not possible on TikTok.
The difference here is the platform. Making money with other people’s content, which “works” on Twitch and YouTube and which makes a lot of money, probably doesn’t work on TikTok. There are apparently measures in place here that penalize the copying of content, not just for the copier himself, but also for the person who is copied.
In the past, MontanaBlack has shown himself to be someone for whom business always comes first. Because when the teenagers’ YouTube channels were doing so well that their income was increasing, he reduced the percentage: MontanaBlack earns so much money on YouTube that he no longer wants to split it 50:50: “It didn’t go down so well at first”