Meta’s Threads platform is preparing to introduce a new feature to give content owners more control. Users will soon be able to share photos or videos from someone else’s post in their own posts, but this can be done without the original post.
Those who want to use the new feature will be able to select the “use media” option by long pressing on a photo or video. Following this step, a new post can be created with the selected media content and the content will be shared with a watermark showing the name of the original sharer. Adam Mosseri, head of Threads, stated that this feature is an easy way to add a personal comment to popular images and videos.
This feature aims to make it easier for users to give due credit to the content creator when sharing someone else’s content. This step was taken following complaints from many users on the Threads platform who said their content was being used without permission. In recent months, Mosseri stated that Meta wanted to provide support to creators on both Instagram and Threads, rather than shifting distribution from content creators to content aggregators. However, he pointed out the difficulties of this process if the original content does not belong to Meta platforms.
New Threads feature sparks some controversy
Meta aims to make content creators stand out more by making some changes to the Instagram algorithm to combat such problems. However, this new feature in Threads has sparked controversy among some users. Photographers and other content creators, in particular, viewed this feature as an open door to content theft. Some users argued that quoting the post could provide more effective credit to the original content creator.
Meta offers additional privacy settings so that this new feature can be managed by users. Users can disable media usage and prevent others from sharing their content in this way by changing their settings. There’s also the option to completely block other users from quoting their posts.
However, these features cannot prevent accounts with less ethical behavior from using content without permission by taking screenshots. This shows that there is still a gap in protecting the work of content creators.