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Comment by joemi | Hacker News Reader

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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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.

Could you theoretically automate this process?

Just follow people you personally know.

A r9k of sorts?

In my view, a "curator" will link to the original source (possibly including commentary), not just shamelessly repost it, with or without credit.

Agreed. BrainPickings is a great example of a curator. These Instagram accounts are not anything like that.

Seems to me that disgust for the practice grows exponentially with reposter's audience size. If I see something worth resharing with friends, I'd never consider Instagram as an outlet to do so. Instead, I opt for a personal sharing channel like a DM or iMessage thread.

I think intent and circumstances matter. If you have a private account and only allow people you know to follow you, and you repost something, that's a lot different from having a public account where your purpose is to amass followers and try to monetize.

Eric Bauman is a great case study as eBaumsWorld has lived its full life cycle and he was one of the first 3rd party aggregation pirates that reached international success.

Fuck that guy too.

Although that was initially my feelings (when an account steals my content, I would view their account size and get pissed when they had more followers than me) but now I feel equally pissed at every account that steals my content. If it's a legitimate account that's sharing it i'm fine, but if it's an account that only shares other peoples posts, I report and block them. They shouldn't be able to make money from other peoples posts.

Instagram should at least attempt to do something about this issue other than relying on users to report them. All of these accounts have similar patterns on how they operate. They shouldn't be too difficult to find.

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