Meta Seeks To Tackle Rising Content Theft On Threads With New ‘Use Media’ Feature

A new and useful feature for creators is under experimentation by Meta’s Threads platform.

The news comes as a solution for the app to work against the growing figures related to content theft incidents that have been a serious concern for many on the platform in the past.

A social media app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi was one of the first to notice this. He says the option is called Use Media and comes with other alternatives like Repost and Quote to make things more transparent on the app when sharing material.

This would give users the chance to give insights on a certain picture or media while providing credit to the original creator at the same time.

We feel it’s one of the most useful options in today’s day and age, not to mention handy. It is designed to prevent users from simply republishing content they find on the web such as memes or videos, making it appear to others that they’re the owners of the content.

So now with resharing, the original publisher gets credit for their work, and data theft is kept at a bare minimum. How’s that for a healthier and better ecosystem in terms of creator flourishing?

Credit to the actual content creator is rarely seen these days. It’s hard for many to not get ripped off of their own content and material seen online. This has been a major demotivating factor for creators so the latest update can really boost morale and give them more incentives to return and keep on posting through Threads.

We’re seeing something similar be rolled out on Instagram recently.

In April of this year, Meta’s Instagram made it so clear that it started to get rid of aggregator accounts from recommendations on the feed. This was to discourage and remove monetization of content that was simply republished and belonged to others without any credit.

Now, the current Instagram system replaces reposts with real content on Explore with a new detection system that can determine the actual profile in many situations.

The new Use Media feature for Threads is operational on similar lines as it gives users another means to credit those who made the content and keep others informed that it’s not theirs. Also, you can no longer simply right-click to save another creator’s work.

In general, copyright laws have been very murky lately, especially concerning the trending Generative AI era. Getting actual credit or ensuring your ownership of your material is not easy and people are profiting off the hard work and efforts of others, especially the artist community.

This is why giving users the chance to use a one-click option for reusing material and sharing credit is the right step. It would serve as the most valuable addition to the whole Threads process.

For now, it’s still being experimented with but we do hope a rollout comes soon.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World