Can I Re-gram if I Give Credit? The Definitive Guide!
Sigh. Since Instagram’s public debut, the “Can I re-gram if I give credit?” debate has only become more heated.
If you’re unfamiliar with what “re-gramming” is, the idea is this: When you see something on Instagram which you think is inspirational, clever, or informative enough to share, you take a screenshot, crop down to size, and repost, usually with the camera emoji and the handle of the original creator (e.g., “📷: @alexisthegreek”). If you’ve never noticed this before, you’re certain to start noticing it now, as it’s a fairly common practice.
Typically you would only re-gram something you feel couldn’t have done or said better yourself; instead of creating a knockoff of it, you spread the original idea by reusing what already exists.
And at its heart, this is a pure idea. Instagram was created so that people could share real-time “little moments” with loved ones—moments that bring delight, which we used to experience in isolation because we didn’t have a good way to share. If you find a heart-shaped crack in the sidewalk, or your prism windchimes cause a scatter of rainbows on your bedroom wall in the morning, with Instagram, you can show other people what put a smile on your face today.
Re-gramming is a different way to share little moments—to spread beauty or information someone shared with you that you just can’t keep to yourself.
And yet, some people (and businesses) get really hot under the collar when you do it.
BATTLE #1: MINDSET.
The initial problem most people have with anyone else using their content is, “That was my idea first!” As much as it will sting some to hear, this is an ego trip.
On other social platforms, we are able to share what other people create, exactly as it is, and the platform adds a source credit automatically. On Facebook, we can share any brand’s latest post to our own Timeslines or Pages; on Twitter, we can re-tweet an exact quote from anyone from a friend to a celebrity. Pinterest is a visual search engine where literally everything sent or stored is content created by other people. In every case, the original source is cited.
Moreover, when other people share what we create and post to these platforms, we’re delighted by it. We encourage it. We want people to do it, because it increases our social proof.
On Instagram, we can share someone else’s content to our Stories for just 24 hours, but not to our profiles or accounts permanently. Hence the trend toward re-gramming with credit. It’s rarely done with theft in mind; re-gramming is merely a workaround to an oversight on Instagram’s part that in a world where sharing is usually made not only possible, but easy, we can’t share content on Instagram.
I’m not here to tell you how to get others off the Ego Train if you share their content with credit and they combat you for it, but I can offer one illustration that might help if someone has used your content on Instagram, with or without a photo credit:
If your Instagram profile is public, then anyone can see it. Although the content may belong to you, it’s sort-of like an artist’s sculpture on display in a community park, in the sense that all people are welcomed and invited into the experience of it.
In a park, you can take a picture of a sculpture, or even stand with the sculpture and have someone take a picture of you with it. But on Instagram, the only way to capture your art is to take a screenshot and re-post. Users don’t have the option to pose with your content, take a photo from a unique angle or perspective, or wait until sunrise to get a different point of view.
If someone has shared your content and given you credit for it, they did so because you added something to their day—just like a sculpture in a public park might—and they want to spread that experience to others. It’s a good thing, and socially, it’s very on-par with what we’ve come to view as acceptable in all other areas of our lives. Try not to “go after” them because of your own ego; instead know that your content was worth spreading.
BATTLE #2: GETTING PERMISSION.
The second issue that comes up for people and companies that don’t like when you share their content is permission.
There are any number of reasons for a brand to prefer you get permission, ranging from, “We didn’t take that picture; a photographer did, and they gave us the rights to it, but they didn’t give rights to you to use it, and we don’t want to get in trouble for letting you publish it” to, “We don’t want our brand represented by a third-party unless we approve that third-party.”
Where the trend used to be that re-gramming with credit was socially acceptable, as millions of people with different backgrounds and worldviews have flooded the platform, the “as long as you get permission” preference has become more dominant.
The problem the smaller, more common users have with this is that the content they want to re-gram often comes from influencers with so much activity on their accounts that getting permission feels like a long shot.
The rule of thumb these days seems to be “ask anyway.”
If you’ve re-grammed before from this brand without any complaint, ask anyway the next time you want to re-gram.
This person is an influencer with almost half a million followers—looking like almost no chance that you’ll ever get a response if you ask permission? Ask anyway.
You know the photographer who took the image and are certain she’d love it if you shared? Ask anyway.
The worst things that can happen are that you get a “no” or you never get a response at all. Better to know you tried than to use content and cross your fingers that all will work out in your favor.
Then, when you get that “yes,” be sure to include in your re-gram that you used the photo with permission (“📷 with permission: @alexisthegreek”). This will not only cover your bases but tell others that when they re-gram, it’s best to ask permission.
BATTLE #3: CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE.
So far I’ve assumed that if you re-gram, you do so with credit.
Not offering credit is a big no-no and always has been in the Instagram community. As noted earlier, on platforms where sharing is possible and easy, a source credit is always added to repurposed content—and that’s because the content does belong to someone, somewhere. It’s intellectual property, and using it without citing where it came from is theft.
Moreover, it’s important that you offer the correct credit when you re-gram. Since re-gramming is so mainstream, it’s not an unheard-of problem that someone re-grams something they found on one account that was actually re-grammed already from another account. By giving credit to the account where you first found the image, you might be crediting the wrong source.
This can be particularly relevant when you re-gram from an account that is almost exclusively dedicated to re-gramming; for instance, the @acolorstory Instagram account belongs to a photo-editing app, and almost everything they share is images in which they’ve been tagged. If you don’t read the caption to see where @acolorstory got the image, you might credit @acolorstory when the photo isn’t really “theirs.” (NOTE: If you’ve been tagged in an image, it’s generally assumed you can re-gram—with credit—without asking permission.)
Also, if you’re re-gramming, it’s a good idea to both tag and mention. Technically these are different things; a mention is what appears in your caption, and a tag is what users can see when they tap the image. Mentioning a brand or company in your caption doesn’t automatically tag them in the image, so you’ll want to do both before hitting “post.”
Last note on credit: It’s completely acceptable to put a photo credit at the end of a caption, rather than at the top. Instagram is first and foremost a social platform, not a platform for photographers and brands to spread their ideas and offerings, and it would disrupt to user experience to lead off every photo caption with a credit.
TAKEAWAYS
Re-gramming is usually NOT done with malicious intent; it’s simply done as a work-around to share content because Instagram is a rare platform that does not allow obvious sharing
Always ask for permission, chiefly to circumvent any potential conflict down the road, but also so that you can say “📷with permission” and train others to also ask for permission
Make sure you do give credit, and furthermore, the correct credit
Was this helpful for you? What mindset shifts did you experience? We’d love for you to share this blog post on Facebook, and to hear your comments below! Why do you think re-gram protocol has never been clear? This is an ongoing conversation and we want to be a part of it! Share your ideas and you may see them in a future post!
Hello! My name is Alexis.
Coffee lover, day dreamer, foodie, and creative. I believe in doing what you can with what you have where you are. I blog to help you do more with what you have. I hope you love it here!
