To prevent the spread of fake news and misinformation on social media, Instagram has recently rolled out a new feature that flags fake photos. However, this has not gone down too well with a few photographers who feel that Instagram is making it hard to share and view certain types of photography.
(Source: Instagram)
Toby Harriman, San Francisco based photographer was the first to discover this feature. As he was scrolling through his main Instagram feed a few days back he saw “ False Information” warning pop-up for the first time.
Upon clicking the overlay hiding the post, Harriman found that it was simply an image of a man standing on rainbow-colored mountains.
According to Instagram, its system uses a combination of feedback from its community and technology to identify the photos to be sent to third-party independent fact-checkers. If the checkers feel that a photo is fake, it will be hidden behind a warning before anyone can view it.
Furthermore, “fake” photos will be removed from Explore and Hashtag pages and automatically be flagged in future posts.
Harriman adds, “It will be interesting to see how far this new feature that flags fake photos will go. As much as I love to differentiate between real and photoshop, I have also immense respect for digital art and don’t want to click through pop-ups to view it.”