Instagram lawsuit button

In the early days of my unhinged UI practice, I had many people straight up stealing my work. They’d screenshot it, crop me out of the post, and then upload it to a few hundred thousand people. I’m not petty enough to name names, but it got annoying after a while.

Multiple people have told me to watermark my content, but I refuse. I take pride in what I do, but watermarking it feels too self-important for my liking. These are humorous interfaces and I’m not making money off of them. Also, my online following does a pretty good job of defending my work for me and notifying me when people steal my stuff. I just call people out which usually stops them in their tracks.

I’m not the only person who’s had my work copied. Instagram is rampant with people reposting stuff verbatim without proper attribution. What if we put the power back in the hands of the original artist? You could envision a feature where as someone scrolls through their feed and sees a similar photo, they could instantly file a lawsuit with the tap of a button.

This might singlehandedly dismantle the amateur photography market. I’m not a lawyer, but I’d venture to guess litigating these lawsuits is very subjective. However, it’d make a lot of lawyers (or one AI lawyer) a lot of money if this did exist.

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