Instagram and the Internet

Instagram scares me.  I am going to put that out there and give you a thought to ponder today.

Every once in awhile on Facebook I will see someone looking for a “Social Media Influencer”.  That is a pretty snazzy title hey?  I see photographers literally throwing themselves to test new actions, be featured on a website, yadda, yadda, yadda.  To be selected you need to have an enormous fan base on your account – like 5K and up…though most that are selected are between 8K-13K and up.  That is 8,000 – 13,000 followers MINIMUM.

I also have photography friends that have taken the route with their Instagram accounts and post MANY images of their children in day to day situations, as well as more vulnerable images – I would classify them as the day to day images without shirts, more of a snapshot style.  This is a method some photographers and other artists take in order to make their account more likable to the public.  I love following Instagram accounts where I feel like the persons new BFF.  No kidding.  We all want to feel important and have a certain air of exclusivity and accounts that let you into the front door of someone’s life makes you feel appreciated.

WHOA NELLY!!!

Let’s stop though.  Right there.

Instagram is one of those mediums that is very veiled.  You have your account, you have a “followers” list and you have the hope that humanity isn’t all bad.  I used to hate Instagram because I didn’t understand it well and now I seemingly spend more time on it than I do Facebook these days.  I love that all the extra is taken away on Instagram and all you are left to enjoy are pictures.  There is not a lot of discussions, not a lot of anything else.

There is not a lot of discussions, not a lot of anything else.  This is magical but also fairly alarming when you consider that the images of your children are being published to accounts where up to 20,000 followers could view the images.  So…who are the followers who follow your photographer?

For myself, I am not a terribly popular photographer on Instagram.  As of the time of this post, I currently have 1,265 followers and I would like to share with you who theses folks are.  While it is clearly impossible to screen every follower on Instagram, I would say on a weekly basis I block and report at least 1-5 new followers who are clearly sharing spam or are ‘suspicious’ accounts with no friends, but they are following an absurd amount of people.  In my experience, some of these people are there to steal pictures (happens every day on the internet – likely hundreds of thousands of times – not just on Instagram), to follow images of children that are not theirs, to rip said pictures for unsavory purposes, etc.  If you are catching my gist, some of the followers on ANYONE’s list may be following for the wrong reasons that can create an environment where you will see your child on an account that you never authorized.  Not ALL people on Instagram are terrible – I hate to think anyone is actually, but that is nieve and frankly stupid to assume that.  Statistically, the more people you have following you, the chances increase for weirdo’s to follow anyone’s account.

Stolen Images of your Child on Instagram

I remember seeing a post on Facebook (sadly more than once) in my large photography groups where photographers – often women – are pleading their story to anyone that will listen because some creeper has stolen a shirtless picture of their child off of Instagram and has posted it on a random account like “welikeboys” or “shirtlessboys” (both of which I just made up).  What do you do as a parent, photographer, etc. who just saw their child on an account like that?  Instagram has some safety guards around Intellectual Property and if you can find the extremely hidden form to fill out in the “Help” section of Instagram, you may be able to have it removed – no guarantees though.

How does Suzanne Taylor Photography protect images from Instagram predators?

The point of this blog post was to not scare you away from amazing photographers with huge followings.  Rather it was to bring attention to the fact that once your account gets over 2-3K, chances are the photographer is no longer checking and doing a bit of homework as to who is following them online.  For each new follower, Suzanne Taylor Photography gets, I ALWAYS check the account and make a call based on the information I see.  All of those years as a Child Welfare worker and Investigator taught me a lot of good assessment skills that I use each day to cull the potential trouble accounts and keep the ones that really are interested in images of the art, beauty and technical skills used to achieve them.  On the internet – not just Instagram, there is never a guarantee that the images that are uploaded will be safe, but Suzanne Taylor Photography does everything within her power to ensure that the handful of people that view your images online have the very best intentions.

Warmly,
Suzanne
XO

www.suzannetaylorphotography.com
hello@suzannetaylorphotography.com

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