Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms out there. According to a report from July 2022, Instagram has upwards of 1.44 billion users globally, making it one of the most sought-after places for creators to make their mark; and it’s not an easy task — believe us, we know. However, once you’re a creator on the platform and everything seems rosy, things can get so much worse.

For starters, becoming a creator is, in itself, an uphill battle. Not only does Instagram work in unknown ways, when it comes to the reach and engagement your posts and Reels receive, it’s even more difficult to convert viewers into followers.

From there, it took us just four months to reach 1 million followers on our page. A major milestone, and a point where we could call ourselves a legit “Instagram creator”.

However, as glad as we are to have a platform so large to share content on, and an audience so receptive and engaging, there are inherent issues in the way Instagram works for creators.

First is monetization on the Instagram platform. Instagram’s monetization tools and options are nowhere near those offered by YouTube. On Instagram, your monetization options are:

On the other hand, YouTube offers creators income via ads on long-form videos, and the company is even bringing ad-revenue to YouTube Shorts in 2023 (source), which is Google’s direct competitor to Instagram Reels.

These Reels have to abide by certain rules, including copyright rules, and the fact that you get to select which Reels to include in the bonus, almost seems like if you post copied content, it’s okay because you can simply choose to not include it for payouts. Weird, isn’t it?

Another thing that comes with being a creator is inevitably having your content stolen and reposted by other accounts. Though many might consider this purely a “normal” thing, this is, in fact, copyright infringement.

YouTube is very proactive when it comes to copyright strikes and infringement. Any person who has uploaded a decent number of videos to the platform would know about the company’s strict stand against using copyrighted content, be it music, clips, or another creator’s videos.

Instagram, however, is a different story.

That means, we first have to spend hours finding content that has been copied from our account. Once we do find such content, we have to head over to a dedicated webpage to report such infringements. Next, we have to copy the links to all of these copied posts and Reels, and provide links to our original content in the report as well, so that Instagram can check and remove content that violates copyright laws.

As I said, we’ve had countless of our Reels downloaded and reposted by other accounts. As such, we have filed innumerable copyright reports over the years. One thing that stands out, is that when the system works, it works well, but when it doesn’t, there’s simply no way out.

Up until a few months ago, when we would receive such an email, we could reply to it, asking for a manual check. In such a case, an Instagram employee would manually look at the copied post/Reel and our original content, and obviously, realize that it’s the same post or video. They would then take the necessary steps, and remove the infringing content from Instagram.

However, this seems to have stopped working in recent times. As recently as last week, we filed copyright reports against an account, and requesting manual verification resulted in the same automated response being sent back to us; every single time we tried.

See, in cases where a creator needs help, platforms should have a point of contact for the creator. YouTube does exactly this. Once a creator crosses a particular threshold of subscribers on YouTube, the platform assigns them an account manager who is their point of contact if something goes wrong.

Instagram, on the other hand, has no such thing. At least, it hasn’t been available for us, and we have over 1.3 million followers on Instagram, a massive audience that watches our content on the platform, and yes, we’ve been featured at #9 on Forbes list of India’s Top 100 Digital Stars.

So, if a creator’s account gets hacked, to whom are they expected to reach out?

Imagine that, from a platform that’s allegedly pushing really hard to compete against the likes of TikTok and YouTube (and now, possibly, even Twitter).

I’m not absolving platforms like YouTube from the faults that exist there. However, as far as creators go, Instagram seems to be lacking in the basics as well.

Copyright infringement is a core issue with almost every single platform out there. But, at least competitors like YouTube seem to be trying to cope with the problem. Similarly, a support system for users, and more importantly, one that consistently works, is again missing from Instagram. So is a dedicated support or PoC for creators. Forget monetization, as creators you seem to have to jump through hoops even to get your problems heard and fixed.