Threads’ new ‘use media’ feature is its latest attempt to fight stolen memes and engagement farming

One other day, one other new Threads characteristic. Meta’s app will “” be rolling out a characteristic that enables customers to re-share images and movies to their timelines with credit score to the unique poster however with out the unique put up connected.

As soon as obtainable, customers might want to lengthy press on a photograph or video from their feed and choose “use media.” They’ll then have the ability to draft a brand new put up with the picture of the clip connected, with a watermark from the unique poster displaying within the prime left nook. “It is a fast, simple means so as to add your inventive takes to trending photographs and clips with out quote posting,” Threads chief Adam Mosseri wrote in .

The characteristic is presumably meant to make it simpler for individuals to reshare different customers’ work with some credit score for its unique creator. Mosseri has fielded plenty of complaints on Threads from pissed off customers who see their work ripped off with out credit score. In a put up final month, Mosseri mentioned that Meta was “making an attempt to shift extra distribution from aggregators to creators on each Instagram and Threads,” although he acknowledged it may be “very troublesome to take action” when the unique put up was lifted from a non Meta-owned platform. On Instagram, the corporate lately in an try to spice up creators over aggregators.

Judging by among the reactions to Threads’ newest replace, nevertheless, plenty of creators are nonetheless sad with Meta’s strategy. “It simply looks as if blatant content material theft,” one photographer . “Quoting the put up is a much more efficient means of sharing somebody’s content material with your individual feedback whereas crediting the creator,” one other person .

In a , Meta famous that particular person creators are in a position to disable media reuse of their app’s settings, so it’s doable to dam your posts from being shared this manner. (There are additionally settings to forestall others from quote posting fully.) Nevertheless, for these anxious about accounts straight up ripping off their posts within the curiosity of , there’s nonetheless little any person can do to forestall much less scrupulous accounts from copying their content material with screenshots or different means.