Plagiarism Is Rampant On Instagram And Nobody Seems to Care

Bad enough that platforms get rich off our free content — now brands do too?

Photo: GettyImages

If you feel like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and TikTok are all just places where people share screenshots of funny things other people have said on other platforms, you’re not alone. Instagram is so famous for this that the official Twitter Instagram account posted a joke about it.

The problem arises when you begin to follow the money.

One of the cat accounts I follow, @pawsomecouture, posted a screenshot of a funny cat tweet on their account. In the caption, they’d credited the Twitter account that had originally posted it. But they hadn’t linked to her account, or tagged her Instagram account. My first thought was that it was hard to find, but when I spent 5 seconds checking, I learned it was the exact same handle as her Twitter account.

Screenshot of Monica Heisey’s Instagram account

Screenshot of Pawsome Couture’s liberal use of Heisey’s tweet, no linking.