Is Reposting on Instagram Ethical? A Question for Brands Using UGC

Recently Taylor Loren, of marketing platform Later, posted an article offering guidelines to help brands stay within the law when leveraging user generated content (UGC) for advertising on Instagram. I’d urge you to read the article first, while I disagree with some of the sentiments, I can’t argue with the facts.

So let’s kick this off with a quote taken directly from the start of Taylor’s article...

“User-generated content is 76% more trustworthy than branded advertising, and it’s also a great strategy for filling your Instagram feed with beautiful content — for free. But is it legal?”

I’m sure she won’t mind me using this without her permission, after all, I’ve cited her and contributed to her exposure, albeit in a very minute way (Rule #1 – grey area).

The legalities are one thing, but I’m here to try and highlight the ethical quagmire that brands wander into when adopting strategies like this. I’ll just rip off a quote from another creative medium here…

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Everyone loves Jurassic Park right? No? Ok, that might be wasted on you but the sentiment is sound if you replace the word 'scientist' with 'marketing department'. Taylor uses Airbnb’s approach to repurposing Instagram UGC for the purpose of advertising as a means of illustrating best practice for other brands wishing to emulate their success.

It’s estimated that Airbnb’s profits are set to top $3 billion by 2020, I mean that’s pretty serious money to most of us (I’m kidding, of course, most of us can’t even comprehend that kind of sum).

According to Taylor, most of Airbnb’s Instagram feed is made up of user generated content. I’ll take her word for it, for me, voluntarily following a rent-a-room company on an imaging platform would make me reconsider what I was doing with my life, but that’s just me. Anyway, the point here is that some of the content they use is harvested from general users in exchange for a hyperlink to their (the original creator's) profile. Boom, win, win for everyone involved, Airbnb gets free images to use in the promotion of their business and the original creator gets flooded with traffic to their Instagram profile, woohoo.

Airbnb (at the time of writing) has an audience of 2.2 million followers on Instagram (seriously is it just me, why? I don't understand the appeal), so let’s dig into this a bit. Here’s a nice photo that was chosen at random from the Airbnb feed that was used to promote their business.

Now I’m not here to critique the photo’s artistic merits but props to @tinyqueen22 for taking the image (no, the irony of this situation is not wasted on me, but it’s important to illustrate the point - for the record, I'm not representing a multi billion pound business here). Airbnb’s repost of her image gets 23.8k likes, Woah that’s some decent audience engagement right there, great choice by the social media team. Now let’s look at the other side of the coin, what about all that exposure for the original creator, how many followers do they have… 317, well that sucks a bit, I guess that Instagram fame and glory is in the post.

It’s probably a good time to interject here with a bit more of an objective view than Taylor presented in her piece regarding Airbnb’s use of UGC. Scanning through their feed (yeah I know, I had to look) it appears their marketing department is much more likely to repurpose the content of Instagram influencers (content creators that have a sizeable following of their own) who often get paid to promote things, so in this case the relationship is more beneficial to them than it is to the everyday Instagram user. While Airbnb may not pay for the privilege of using the content, the influencer stands to benefit financially from their own sponsors that are providing kickbacks based on their brand exposure.

Now I’m more than sure that @tinyqueen22 was absolutely thrilled when she got a message from Airbnb asking if they could feature her photo on their account, I mean who wouldn’t, it’s hugely flattering. The question I’m asking you though is, do you believe it is ethical that a billion-dollar brand with a worldwide audience should be able to profit from content they didn’t create, in exchange for virtually nothing and certainly nothing tangible.

This is an argument that has raged within the photography community in one guise or another pretty much since the dawn of the internet. Even the always cheerful Taylor Swift has been accused of giving photographers ‘grey area’ treatment relatively recently.

When big brands, such as Airbnb, adopt the ‘free to use in exchange for exposure’ approach they are effectively telling the world that photography has little to no value. The advent of the internet has just exacerbated the problem, everything is just a click away – free to be repurposed without consequence. This notion is now so endemic amongst the general population that there probably is no going back.

 As a quasi-professional photographer myself, I have experienced it first hand – The number of times organisations have requested the use of my images for free is absolutely astounding, what’s worse is they are genuinely surprised when I send them a quote and actually act as though I have offended the very core of their being. The conversation usually goes something along these lines...

“You should be happy I bothered to ask you, do you know how many people I have asking me to use their photos on our social media accounts in exchange for exposure”

My response usually encourages them to talk to those people instead...

As an original content creator, I and others like me, work diligently to develop our craft. Many of us will have studied hard over a long period of time, just as successful professionals in any other walk of life have. I believe organisations that can afford to pay for artistic work (in any medium) have a moral and ethical obligation to remunerate the individuals that generate the work that these organisations seek to profit from.

If a brand comes to you offering exposure, congratulations, they saw money in your image – Don’t give it up without a fight.

Whether you’re a professional or not, you have created something valuable, sure they might move on to someone more interested in the promise of social media stardom. More often than not this fame is fleeting, after all, a few hundred (maybe even a few thousand) thumbs up isn't going to put food on your table or give you any lasting benefits unless you are extraordinarily lucky.

1.7 million views of my photos - I'm still struggling to afford to eat at McDonald's. It's a hard life this social media game (not at all bitter you understand right).

If you’re a brand, respect the value of what content creators help you achieve and reward them accordingly. If that sounds like an unreasonable request and you don’t think these people are really worth the money, there’s always this option. Yes, you have a legal responsibility to credit the original creator but that doesn't mean you should ignore the ethics.