
FuckJerry’s Success Is Instagram’s Failure - danso
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/how-instagram-enables-fuckjerrys-success.html
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joemi
Maybe it's because I'm not trying to market anything myself, but I have no
respect at all for reposters. Further, I think reposters should never be
called "curators" and to confuse the two is just giving power/legitimacy to
the reposters.

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overcast
I dream of the day where there is an original content only Instagram. It will
never happen in reality, but I spend a small percentage of my week submitting
copyright requests to Instagram. They are surprisingly responsive, but the
monstrous aggregation accounts are a plague that I shouldn't have to waste
time with.

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vuln
Could you theoretically automate this process?

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mavaddat
Internet comedian Vic Berger made a parody video clowning on FuckJerry and
exposing their theft of comedian's material. These guys dismiss requests or
pleas from content creators to (at least) please put creators' names on the
material that they re-post. So predictably, one of the FuckJerry team (their
chief content officer James Ryan Ohliger aka “Krispyshorts”) filed a false
DMCA on the video and had it pulled from YouTube. Here is that video:
[https://vimeo.com/315339461](https://vimeo.com/315339461)

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joshuawright11
Genuinely curious, are there any sort of legal rights or entitlements for
people who share memes/funny pictures on social media?

I don't disagree that FuckJerry's behavior is pretty shady, but cmon... the
entire meme community is pretty much built on reposts. Isn't that the whole
point of sharing stuff on social media. Why are people acting so entitled?
Seems to me they just saw the huge revenue pie and want a piece.

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nickthegreek
There is no stopping meme accounts and I do see 'original creators' getting
upset at the lack of credit in the reposts. The most common answer is, if you
care, watermark your work.

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seanwalker08
I've got buddies on Instagram that watermark their work and when it gets
stolen do you think people are going to look at the watermark and go follow
them? It doesn't do anything for the original creator on Instagram.

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jessaustin
Perhaps the problem is that the watermark itself does not function as a link?
If the platform wanted to, it could treat any "registered" watermark as a link
to the original poster on that same platform. This wouldn't help when the
watermark gets cropped or scrambled, but that's more work... maybe there is
room in the jpeg file for an "invisible" canonical link to be encoded? If not
then future image formats should totally do this.

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smacktoward
The problem is that "curators" like FJ will just crop out the watermark.

That's what makes these accounts so uniquely infuriating. They're not
accidentally omitting credit out of laziness or ignorance. They _do extra
work_ to make sure the original creator gets cut out of the loop.

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zimpenfish
Similar view from someone who had content stolen -
[https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/vic-
be...](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/vic-berger-
opinion-cancel-fuck-jerry-media-789699/)

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eltoozero
That’s good to see Vic writing for RS, like to see him busy.

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jelliclesfarm
I was under the impression that the whole point of a meme was to be copied and
distributed.

Aren’t those who are offended kinda missing the point?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme)

[..]A meme (/miːm/ MEEM[1][2][3]) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads
from person to person within a culture—often with the aim of conveying a
particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme.[4] A meme
acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be
transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures,
rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the
concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-
replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.[5]

Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by
natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes
do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and
inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success. Memes
spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that
propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive,
spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most
effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when
they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.[6][..]

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joshu
You are conflating two different things. Originally memes (the notion of idea
+ transmissibility) with analogy to genes. And image macros and other internet
frippery.

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jelliclesfarm
I understand. I know memes as in Dawkins’ ‘meme’..but isn’t it the same
principle..if it isn’t viral, then it doesn’t live it’s purpose? Hence, Not A
Meme.

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miker64
Instagram's lack of a re-post feature is specifically because their platform
was meant for original works, not memes or reposts.

It's dismaying that they aren't standing behind that.

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hnzix
Joke stealing is not a new phenomenon [0]. See Joe Rogan calling out Carlos
Mencia [1], or the recent Amy Schumer accusations.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke_theft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke_theft)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdugSUFbzws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdugSUFbzws)

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ykevinator
We spend too much money trying to protect things that don't take much time or
effort to make.

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rkho
Instagram's IP guidelines are a complete joke. Go deep enough down the rabbit
hole and you're going to find a bunch of accounts doing nothing but reposting
memes, images from video games, and video clips from TV shows.

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kevindong
You really don't need to go deep at all. Much like Facebook and Twitter, a
very large chunk of the most popular accounts just shamelessly steal other
people's content.

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visionsxxl
Giphy built their business scrubbing tumblr for gifs and reposting on their
servers. Stolen from countless gif artists with zero repercussions.

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prklmn
I wonder how viable a class action lawsuit by the content owners against him
would be.

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rchaud
It'd be hard for them to prove that they were the originator of the meme,
simply because there is no 'reverse image search' for a meme template; they're
designed to be as generic as possible, so that you can mark it up with text
that's relatable to your audience.

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qgsrw3fd
As an end user, I'm happy that curators exist. Not talking about this "Fuck
Jerry" individual in particular, but I follow many meme accounts that just
repost stuff, and they are great value for me, because I don't want to,
instead, follow thousands of creators and have to scroll through thousands of
posts that aren't really that good.

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seanwalker08
As a user with a decent amount of followers(almost 28k), all of these accounts
make me angry. I spend so much time filming and editing posts only for some
T-shirt woodworking account to steal it and gain more followers than me. I
don't care what size the account is that is sharing it. I report them and
block them. These accounts are stealing content and making money from stolen
content. It makes me sick seeing these accounts have #ad in posts because I
know they didn't work hard to get where they are.

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kelnos
I would expect that reporting them doesn't do all that much, since Instagram
doesn't really have an incentive to make that right for you (unless, of
course, you're a large content creator with a ton of followers; in that case,
I'm sure Instagram does want to keep you happy).

Instead, file a DMCA takedown notice with Instagram referencing the stolen
work. They're required by law to comply and take it down. I expect that most
content thieves won't see it as worth it to contest the takedown and open
themselves up to legal liability.

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overcast
Not true at all, I've reported MANY of my unauthorized posts and all have been
swiftly dealt with by Instagram. In my experience, they take it seriously when
you provide proof of your post, and theirs.

