Viral Image Makes Fake Claims About Instagram Owning Your Content

Another week, another Instagram trend that is questionable creeps to the fore.

Some variation of this viral fake news story gets coughed up on Facebook every once in a while but now it has made its way over to Instagram, forcing the platform to debunk its information as well as reassure creators that their content is their own. The claims in this post are somewhat unique in that it claims the service is going to make private content public – including private messages somehow – and that “the company” (we’re assuming Facebook?) can use all of this against the users in court for “reasons.”

Again, it is nothing new on the Internet but it is sad that we still have to deal with it. As for why this post took off so much when others barely cause a ripple, well, we have influencers and celebrities to thank for that. Because a lot of accounts with huge followings shared the fake message, it became a real thing. At this point, you can’t really blame some Instagram users – after all, you would expect the social media teams behind some celebrities would be more sophisticated than this.

Brand communications manager for Instagram, Susan Otway, said of the post, “There's no truth to this post.”

If the misspellings and nonsense language didn’t clue those users in, well, there they have it. Instagram isn’t going to make sweeping changes to its content policies starting “tomorrow.”

If you’d like to see an example of the image in question, you can do that by clicking here.

As always, we’d love to know your thoughts on this – is fake news a real problem on social media? Let us know in the comments below.

Also, don’t forget to check out our other photography news articles by clicking here.

[DPReview]