YouTube adds watermarks to stem stealing of short videos

Steps have been taken by YouTube to prevent users from reposting YouTube Shorts videos to other apps by putting new watermarks on those videos. YouTube says: "A watermark has been placed to the content of any creators who download their Shorts from YouTube Studio to share them on other platforms. In order for the viewers to know that the video one is sharing across platforms is from YouTube Shorts, we added a watermark to the Shorts that they download”.
Given that other apps also penalise clips with watermarks that are visible, the real goal seems to be restricting short video sharing between platforms. This will make it more difficult for creators to simply repost their Shorts to Reels or TikTok in order to increase their visibility in each app.
It's important to note that in an effort to prevent the same, Reels and Tiktok also adds watermark to downloaded videos. So it's not surprising that YouTube is following suit.