This Black Duo Pushed Instagram To Launch A New Feature To Make Sure Black Creators Are Credited For Their Work
Ahead of international women’s day – Instagram announced that it will be introducing a special tag for professional accounts and influencers that ensures they receive credit for their content.
The enhanced tagging feature lets Instagram users show additional information on “People Tags” on their posts.
Beyond just a profile’s username, the tags will highlight the creators’ self-designated profile category (titles are chosen from Instagram’s list of categories, like “rapper” or “fashion stylist” or “photographer”) as well as their account’s full name or title.
The information is shown when users tap on posts to see tags and in the expanded “In This Photo” screen.
“For many Black and underrepresented creators, crediting is an entryway to building a sustainable career as a creator, while combating cultural appropriation and ensuring the world knows who is driving culture,” Instagram explained in a press release on Monday.
The feature was created by three women of color — Metadata analysts Alexandra Zaoui and Alexis Michelle Adjei, and Meta engineer Cameryn Boyd.
Zaoui and Boyd envisioned and created the label with Black creators in mind, particularly the creators that make a living off producing social media content.
Black creators and influencers are routinely overshadowed, or outrightly stolen from, as their content gains popularity. It limits their ability to profit from their own content, as white creators often get paid more than Black originators for the same content.
“We want to ensure that as Black creators’ content is being distributed as it already is, they are getting the proper attribution so that they have the opportunity to get all of that growth and monetization and career-starting opportunities like their contemporaries are,” Boyd, a Spelman College graduate told NBC.
“It’s really critical, as we’re moving towards this new age where creators are so important and creators are really able to use their craft to support themselves in their lives, that Black creators are getting the same opportunity, as they’re already creating the content.”
Adjei and Boyd joined Meta in August 2020 before landing on the idea the following February.
They worked on it with colleague Alexandra Zaoui, building it out together and pitching it across different teams at Instagram’s parent company, Meta, until eventually getting their own team, which prepared the feature to launch this week under the pair’s leadership.
