In a game of cat and mouse, illegal video streaming platforms are generally one step ahead of rights holders. To bring the latest series and the most recent blockbusters to as many people as possible, practices are changing and pirates are adapting. For several years now, P2P file sharing has been increasingly neglected in favor of streaming, as hackers have implemented a whole host of strategies to cover their tracks and successfully keep their platforms online.
On TikTok, advertising for illegal streaming platforms
If these sites were previously known only to insiders, they are now promoted without complex on social networks, in particular on TikTok, where users meet with some success. They explain in all innocence and with great naivety how to watch the latest films and popular series for free, ignoring questions about the legality of the thing. And if everything once took place on online forums, it is now on Discord that you have to go to take advantage of the best plans. The beloved instant messaging service for gamers has private servers that are very easy to join, where you can find the latest Netflix or Amazon series, and the latest blockbusters.
Discord is not the only messenger to be used for this practice, Telegram also has a good number of channels dedicated to this office. A request launched in the search engine of the messaging system allows you to download films and series in a few minutes to watch them directly on your smartphone.
Content shared via instant messaging
On Discord, one of these servers created very recently and which we were able to join after seeing a TikTok video of it (in the name of the said server), has nearly 40,000 members at the time of writing these lines. There are obviously the classic lounges where users can post suggestions for content they want to access, and the traditional lounges dedicated to films and watchable series.
Some refer to a showcase site, hosted on Google and displaying the list of the latest accessible content. Clicking on any of them will automatically take you to a catalog site that aggregates all existing streaming links from different services.
So, if the first streaming link doesn’t work, you just have to click on the following ones to hope to watch your movie or series in your browser without spending a penny, each of these platforms showering visitors with advertisements. each more dubious than the other. Ironically, these platforms, whose main line of defense is to explain that they do not host any content, have the nerve to display a DMCA page inviting rightsholders to file their complaint if they wish have copyrighted material removed.
Other shows, no doubt created more recently, simply refer to a Google Sheet spreadsheet where the available series and the URLs for accessing them are listed.
On TikTok as on Discord, where content is shared and discussed with candor, the profile of users is generally the same: young teenagers (some of whom do not hesitate to share their selfie) who are obviously not aware of the illegal nature of their activity.