Instagram has introduced few changes to ensure content creators are recognised for their work.
According to Instagram Head, Adam Mosseri, the updates are meant to “make sure that credit is going to those who deserve it.”
The first change is through product tags. The feature allows users to tag products in the post. Creators can assign themselves a category such as ‘photographer’ ‘make-up artist’ E.T.C, and that category will appear every time they are tagged in a post. In addition to this, the Meta-owned app promises to promote original content on the platform heavily.
Explaining these new features in a video posted on Twitter, Mosseri said, “You create something from scratch; you should get more credit than if you are re-sharing something that you found from someone else. We are going to try and do more to try and value original content more, particularly compared to reposted content.”
Mosseri explained further that original contents edited outside of Instagram and uploaded to the app would not be penalised as long as there’s no watermark on the content.
“The idea is if you made it, it is original. It is okay if you edited it outside of Instagram and then bring it in via the gallery,” he said.
The change is likely to be a significant problem for aggregator accounts, which are often accused of stealing content and credit from authors despite being immensely popular sources of memes and trends. Mosseri emphasised that if the account is an aggregator, they will more likely be able to detect that it’s not original.
“As we lean more into recommendations, it’s becoming increasingly important that we don’t overvalue aggregators,” Mosseri tweeted, “as that would be bad for creators and therefore bad for Instagram long term.