Notwithstanding its relatively recent development, TikTok, a popular short-form, video-sharing app, is currently the fastest-growing social networking platform on the internet. Whether used as a medium for expression, a source of entertainment, or a means of connecting, the app has evolved among our social media favorites, now leading Twitter and Reddit. Notably, TikTok runs on an artificial intelligence algorithm that has seemingly perfected the personalized user experience through its trifocal model. Specifically, the trifocal model reflects a user-centric design, which centers on machine learning, content, and the user. In fact, thanks to this magic algorithm, you now have a reason for why you cannot seem to break your TikTok obsession. Clearly, our so-called TikTok culture is shaping more than just our online lives as we now live in a TikTok-saturated society. But as these apps battle for our hearts (and of course our eyeballs), the self-interested motives behind these apps are running afoul of both law and ethics.

Imagine this scenario: you are watching YouTube Shorts and suddenly you see your content in the Short, and it has been viewed by millions. Such a scenario would seem to call for a celebration, as one of your videos has finally gone viral, right? Wrong. You, unknowingly, licensed this content to other users. In fact, this is just what YouTube has done in creating a tool called “YouTube Shorts.”

Put simply, YouTube Shorts enables other creators to use a different creator’s videos in their own shorts. Shockingly, each and every video ever posted on YouTube has automatically been opted into the shorts system. This auto opt-in system requires one to manually opt out of the setting, which of course assumes that creators know of such a feature that YouTube has added. Further, YouTube ambiguously writes “not all videos can opt out,” which leaves open the question of which videos cannot opt out. At the same time this provision guarantees that some creators will be forced to share their content.

At the present moment, this system is restricted to audio content only. However, since creators license their videos to YouTube and YouTube owns the content, only time will tell whether YouTube decides to open this to visuals as well (and you may not even be notified). And while YouTubers must follow YouTube’s policies, YouTube itself seems to be passing over the constitutional founding of copyright law. But because there is nothing stopping a creator from turning to TikTok, YouTube will have to rethink just how far it can go before it loses its own loyal creators, as YouTubers become TikTokers.