Last year was the era of Instagram deciding that enough was enough.
From combating “fake news” to hiding like counts, Facebook’s biggest and most prominent media-oriented division is taking a proactive stance when it comes to how its users interact with what they see.
And now it’s taking another stance that could prove controversial with photographers of all stripes: Banning “Photoshopped” pictures entirely.
What do we mean by that? Is Instagram blocking any edited pic whatsoever?
Read on and learn more.
San Francisco photographer Toby Harriman noticed the “fake news” warning overlaid on top of a photograph in his feed.
Curious, he decided to find out what picture had drawn the ire of Instagram’s robot overlords. He found that it was an edited picture of a man overlooking a mountain range edited to look like the colors of the rainbow.
PetaPixel quotes Harriman, “Looks like Instagram x Facebook will start tagging false photos/digital art…Interesting to see this and curious if it’s a bit too far,” Harriman continues. “As much as I do love it to help better associate real vs Photoshop. I also have a huge respect for digital art and don’t want to have to click through barriers to see it.”
If you will recall, digital art is a somewhat touchy subject on Instagram. One recent article we wrote about a man stealing others’ work for his “art” went viral – you can read that right here. Needless to say, for photography purists this might be a positive move.
What do you think? Should Instagram come down hard on “edited” pictures or is all of this a bit much? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Also, don’t forget to check out our other photography news articles on Light Stalking by clicking here.
4 Comments
It’s going to be interesting to see how much edit is going to be deemed “fake”
What would happen to double exposure photography or artistic composites?
Instagram is going to walk a very fine line here and it can backfire on itself if it’s not careful. Shameful for a platform that was once so great
I’d be interested to see where Instagram draws the line between edited and photoshopped images. On the whole though I think that marking photos that have been altered in a substantial or substantive way is a great idea. I don’t think fake news is the right way to characterize or label an altered photo but I think it’s OK for us to be honest about the work we put into our images
As in Brazil, only news from Republicans will be censored. The creators of fake news tried to take down Trump and Bolsonaro(Brazil’s President), and failed, now chase everyone and everything using social networks for this purpose: Everything is fake news. Thank George Soros for that.
I think most people understand all images they see in media circles are edited. Insta seems to be looking for some other reason to be proactive where Facebook isn’t. Leave our images alone. It’s not your business to police what edits I or any other artist put on an image. This is classic censorship.