#46: Rebirth of Creators From The Ashes of Aggregators
Leveraging Redirected Attention Through New Network Effects
Creator Economy News Update 🗞️
In the last week and a half, there have been two announcements that may change the course of social media as we know it.
The first is that the US government passed a bill that will ban TikTok from the USA if it is not sold within a year.
The second is that Instagram announced one of the biggest changes to their algorithm since the introduction of short video.
Coincidence? 🤔 I think not 👀
This summer, the paradigm of web2 social media may be changing, favouring small accounts for perhaps the first time since network effects became a thing in social media.
If you have ever had an idea for turning a hobby into a side hustle, something you've had the back of your mind or the front of your dreams, now may be the time to start 💭
Let's dive in ✨
Recalibrating Recap
Welcome to Recalibrating! My name is Callum (@_wanderloots)
Join me each week as I learn to better life in every way possible, reflecting and recalibrating along the way to keep from getting too lost.
Thanks for sharing the journey with me ✨
Last week was a philosophically mindful week. As I pondered the concepts of duality and non-duality, I shared some insights of why "mindfulness" goes a lot deeper than what most people think of as meditation or yoga.
Mindfulness is a fundamental shift to the perception of reality. A way of living.
I also published the third episode of the Recalibrating Podcast, which can be listened to on any podcast platform. It is also available to collect on Pods Media 🎙️
This week, I'm taking things back to a more practical plane in the Creator Economy, discussing the latest updates to Instagram, the banning of TikTok in the USA, and how these two updates are perhaps good news for new/small creators.
If you were ever looking to get your dreams going, now may be the time 👀
Note: while I speak of specific elements of Instagram and TikTok, a lot of this commentary applies to social media as a whole (or at least web2 social media that is run on algorithms, which is... all of them).
In my opinion, many of these issues are solved by blockchain, which I'll explain more after discussing the updates 🫡
The Bigger Picture (Why you should care) 🧩
Instagram is not the same as it used to be.
I know people complain about the "algorithm changing" as the reason why their posts perform poorly. There's talk of shadowbanning (blocking the reach of posts by Instagram), unfavourable times of day to post, not getting the posts shown to their audience... etc. etc.
So many rules...
People burn themselves out trying to keep up with the algorithm, modifying their own behaviour, content, and art to try and make this inhuman entity happy. As I discuss in Entry #15: Anti-Flow, playing the algorithm game is not the way to build online.
The truth is that Instagram has changed A LOT since it first came out in 2010 and even more since it was bought by Facebook (now Meta) in 2012.
The algorithm has continuously evolved as literally billions of users joined the platform and gave away their data (for free... remember, if the product is free, YOU are the product).
People who got into the platform and built an audience in the early days (around 2014-2016) received what is known as a "network effect" by the platform. A network effect is when the value of a network increases as more people use the platform.
Early creators building their brands on Instagram received a boost from the billions of new people coming onto the platform, which launched many accounts into 100,000+ followers that could subsequently be leveraged for brand deals and sales.
Welcome to the Creator Economy.
Now, to be clear, I don't want to minimize the work of these creators. They did a TON of work to build up their brands, often posting new daily content for years. If you've ever tried to even post daily for a month, you know how difficult this is.
That said, competition on Instagram is through the roof now, making it incredibly hard for new creators to be seen by the algorithm (or even their own followers).
Furthermore, aggregator accounts (reposting accounts) siphon a lot of the goodwill generated by creators' original posts. Reposting accounts take much of the traffic that should be directed to the original creators instead, often infringing the copyright of creators on Instagram with no repercussions.
New and small creators don't experience the network effect, in part because the aggregator accounts get it instead.
This lack of network effect boost is also why many people turned to TikTok, due to their algorithmic difference compared to Instagram (more on this below).
Instagram's announcement may change the game back to the early days 👀
Instagram's Latest Algorithm Update 📺
There are three major elements of Instagram's update this week:
New algorithmic ranking levelling the playing field;
"Original content" labels and replacing reposted content with originals;
Deprioritizing aggregator accounts
Let's look at each of these features and why I'm excited for them ✨
1) New Algorithmic Ranking... TikTok Style
One of the reasons TikTok is so popular is that it enables creators to break through the algorithm and go viral (or at least, previously enabled, there's more competition now).
Small accounts with very few posts/followings had the potential to get millions of views by making one viral video. These viral posts led to people getting hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers.
The way the TikTok algorithm works is that the video is shown to a small number of people in a given niche (e.g., astrophotography). If the video performs well, it is shown to a larger audience, and so on and so forth. Each iteration of the test audience increases until it reaches a critical mass and "goes viral" across all of TikTok.
Instagram's algorithm for Reels operated a bit differently. Insta would show a mix of your followers and random people your video, and depending on the performance, it would scale.
This format meant that larger accounts (and aggregator accounts) with bigger followings would get a bigger boost to their reels. Not always of course, but there was a disproportionate amount of big accounts "going viral".
These viral posts often include reposts by aggregator accounts that took the content from smaller creators (without permission).
Now, Instagram has announced that they are modifying the Reels algorithm to operate more like TikTok's.
This format means that small accounts can make videos that get shown to their niche audience (not to their followers) and have the video ranked iteratively from there.
It's a better sample set to test the video on, though it still of course requires the Instagram algorithm to understand what your niche is so that it knows who to show the video to. Note - this is where tags come in handy.
For smaller creators, you will be able use Reels to reach new people (build your following) and posts to deepen the connection with your existing following (in theory).
Best of both worlds ✨
Siphoning TikTok Traffic
TikTok became popular because of its addicting algorithm and the ability for small accounts to break through the noise and "make it".
Instagram's announcement comes hot on the heels of the US Government's bill to ban TikTok within a year, if it is not bought out.
My guess is that Instagram (Meta) recognizes the opportunity to take some market share in the world of short video content, while TikTok earns more and more of a bad rap (including the horrible attention span decrease and mental health issues, but that's a topic for another day.. or here).
If Instagram can provide a way for small creators to grow their brands by distributing their content/art on the wave of Instagram's new network effect, it will be a huge win for the platform and for creators.
I know many people refuse to use TikTok due to the espionage, attention span, and mental health issues (myself included). If Instagram can actually produce an algorithm that operates to distribute creator content with a similar opportunity for virality as TikTok without all of the negatives, I can see many more people getting into the content creation and monetization game.
Personally, I have barely posted on Instagram for the last ~2 years due to its horrible algorithm and suppression of small accounts. It was not possible for me to post there without burning out, so I put my energy into far more fruitful platforms (such as farcaster 👀 ) that have enabled me to monetize my content almost instantaneously and at much greater levels.
That said, when looking for brand/accommodation partnership for my photography, many companies around the world value the credibility of an Instagram following.
This announcement by Instagram makes me actually interested in trying the platform again, since I see a way for high quality original content to be properly recognized.
Speaking of which, the next feature update is:
2) Original Content Tags
Recommendation Swapping
Instagram is rolling out a feature that enables "original content tagging".
What does that mean?
It means that when you post something original (specifically on Instagram) and it is the first time that content appears, it will receive an "original" tag.
When repurposed content is shared that makes use of the original content, instead of the repurposed content getting an algorithmic boost, the repurposed content is swapped with the original content in the recommendation algorithm so that any algorithmic boost favours the original creator.
In other words, the Instagram algorithm will recommend the original content instead of the reposted content.
About time!
People have been stealing my photos for years and getting thousands of followers and who knows how much ad revenue from MY work. I don't use the term stealing lightly.
I'm an intellectual property lawyer and have put a lot of thought and research into the theft of digital assets.
It is theft. It is copyright infringement. It is a violation of my intellectual property rights.
These thief accounts are often "aggregator" accounts, which consistently post non-original content taken from other creators on the platform. Instead of building up their own brand, they take a niche (e.g., astrophotography) and find all of the best astro photos on Instagram, screenshot the photos, post them as their own content.
Sometimes they give credit to the original creator, but most often, in my experience, they do not. Even if they do... the average person does not click into the original creator's account, they just keep scrolling. No value flows to the original creator.
Since the account is so niche and has incredibly high quality photos, many people follow the account and the account gets an algorithmic boost.
Almost 0 boost is attributed back to the original creator, in any way.
By swapping the original content in the recommendation algorithm, the original creator has the opportunity to ride the virality wave associated with their content, even though it has been reposted 🌊
I'm very excited for this feature, as I think it has the opportunity to change the way creators grow their brands on Instagram, and perhaps other platforms if they follow Instagram's lead.
Reposted Content Labels
Another benefit of the original content label is that reposted content also gets a label. This repost label also notifies the original content creator that their original work has been reposted and that their original content is being recommended instad.
The original creator then has the opportunity to remove the "repost" label if they want to.
A scenario where this might be beneficial to the original creator is when they have partnered with another account (or brand/company, which at this point in the creator economy is synonymous) to post their content that has already been shared on Instagram.
The goal of such a partnership is to increase the reach of the creator through the particular audience of the partnered account, which means it might be in the best interest of the original creator to let the network effect be attributed to the repost account.
Another scenario is when I tag specific accounts in my posts, giving them implicit permission to repost my content. If one of these accounts decides to reshare my work, it might be in our joint interest for me to remove the repost tag.
But, there is another problem with reposting, addressed by the final update: the death of aggregator accounts.
3) The Death Of Aggregators
The final update to the Instagram algorithm relates again to reposting accounts, aka aggregator accounts.
Instagram will be removing aggregator accounts from its recommendation algorithm 🎉 🎊
Again, ABOUT TIME.
These accounts are parasitic, draining the network effect traffic (attention) on social media so that it cannot flow to original creators.
These accounts are currently up in arms against their deprioritization, claiming that they have been "helping" creators "make it" with their parasitic power.
To be fair, in some cases this is true. But in my experience (and that of hundreds, if not thousands, of other artists/creators/builders I've talked to) this is a net negative for creators.
The best way to grow on social media is to build an audience that resonates with YOU as an individual. Introducing middle-people via aggregator reposting accounts merely adds a veil between you and the audience.
It might be different if the audience was savvy enough to notice this and go follow the original account (now tagged with the repost tag), but tbh, they probably won't.
By removing aggregator accounts from the recommendation algorithm, a TON of traffic opens up for small accounts, especially paired with the new equanimous way that Reels will be operating.
For aggregator accounts that genuinely want to keep supporting creators and building their brands as a curator (not a parasitic reposter), Instagram has clear guidelines:
less than 10 reposts in the last 30 days... that's it
In other words... just make some original content. It's not that hard. The creators these aggregators have been stealing from for years have been doing it almost every day. Now it's their turn.
Or better yet, instead of having creators pay aggregators to get "exposure", have aggregators pay creators to make original content 🤷♂️
Or, use the collaborative posting function to partner with creators instead of extracting from them.
Regardless, this is a huge win for one of the most popular creator platforms out there, but...
There is a major problem with the way that Instagram is dealing with copyright infringement... it's only applicable to Instagram itself.
MAJOR PROBLEM: Cross-Platform "Originality" Failure
My most viral stolen photos happened when people stole my Instagram content and posted on Twitter (X).
How can we protect creators and enable a global algorithmic boost to original content online, rather than allowing thieves to prosper from the hard work of creators?
To be honest, social media as it currently stands (web2) is not built to solve this problem.
Web2 social media is built on the paradigm of free posting to build a network effect for the platform. I, as a creator, post my content online (write) so you can view it (read) online.
Read + Write = web2
Web3 social media is built on a new paradigm of tokenizing media to build a network effect for a directly connected network of individuals (rather than the media platform itself).
In other words, the basic "post" on web3 social media is not a post, but a customized token.
This token is tied to a digital identity and cryptographic signature on a blockchain ledger. Onchain, not online.
I create a token tied to my identity (I own it), post it to the internet (write), where it can be viewed (read).
Read. Write. Own.
More on tokenization and digital ownership can be found in Entry #33, related to spatial computing, blockchain, and digital identity.
The difference between a token and an Instagram post is that the token does not reside on the Instagram platform itself, but on a public blockchain that is readable by any platform.
The token is outside of the walled garden of Meta entirely.
Tokenization takes Instagram's "original content tag" to a whole new level (it is literally a new layer on the Internet).
What does this mean in practice?
Originality Protocol: Mint Token THEN Post
Blockchain provides a solution to the originality problem, but only if we can authentically verify true originality.
In other words, if I post a photo to Instagram and then mint it later, the first instance of the photo is on a platform that cannot verify originality across other platforms.
In practice, this posting-first flow (rather than token-first) requires the platforms to do the work to check if content is original on their platform, which, in my experience, they don't do. You can file a copyright infringement claim or sue the account that stole your content. Both take a long time and can be quite expensive (if you can even figure out who the person is).
Instagram potentially solves this problem with their new original content tag, but this solution is localized to Instagram itself.
On the other hand, if I create a token of my art or media (mint on blockchain), I cryptographically sign the token associated with the art/media on a public ledger. Aka it is onchain, readable by anyone or any platform.
The original piece of art/media is now on a chain that is linked to my identity.
Web3 social media platforms (blockchain reader functionality) can read this chain and trace the ownership of where the media originated.
Effectively, creating a token of your content/art is like creating a cross-platform post that can be read by any platform with blockchain functionality and can determine who the original author is.
Blockchain provides cross-platform data verification of originality.
You can then share this token as a post on any platform, far more secure in your ability to assert your copyright (though copyright law is complicated and depends on your jurisdiction, this is not legal advice).
You can think of it as going "onchain" and then going "online" when you promote the token by posting on social media.
For example, I put these two animations onchain before I put them online:
If they appear ANYWHERE on the Internet without my digital signature, I will be able to detect instantly that my copyright has been infringed.
In the future, it is possible (I think likely) that every single post we ever create on social media will be tokenized at the time of posting so that all platforms can instantly verify ownership of the content.
It's the logical next step to digital economies 🤷♂️ we can own property in real life, why not own our data online?
Instagram actually launched NFTs as "digital collectibles" before removing them (likely because they weren't able to monetize blockchain without taking their usual 70%+ cut). I wrote a full article on digital collectibles here.
Piecing It Together
Instagram's new originality model has the potential to resuscitate the network effect of its algorithm, potentially bringing back the creator economy they helped boost a decade ago.
Aggregator accounts have skewed our perception of value online as they parasitically extract value from creators, making us think we need hundreds of thousands of followers to "make it".
We do, if they are siphoning all of the attention of Instagram's user base.
As creators, builders, knowledge workers, we do not need audiences of 1 million+ to make a living online. We only need 1000 true fans, or 100,000 superfans.
In other words, 1000 people who pay us $100 a year ($100,000 yearly income) or 100,000 people who pay us $1 a year ($100,000 yearly income).
The goal is to build an audience that values the media output of the individual creator/brands.
Without aggregator accounts in the mix, it will be much easier for creators and fans to directly connect on Instagram, potentially boosting the livelihood of many part-time creators, funding their ability to go full time and add value to the Internet economy. Expected to be worth over $5 Trillion in the next few years, that's a massive economy to tap into.
But this update applies only to Instagram itself, not to all of the other who knows how many social media platforms there are.
Blockchain solves that problem by taking originality one step further: onchain.
The future of creation and monetization of originality (ideas, art, media, knowledge, writing, etc.) is not just online, it is onchain.
As the internet becomes more copyright secure with the ability to use AI copyright detector systems, those that leverage onchain media will be at an advantage in being able to prove their originality over the years (provenance).
Blockchain 🤝 AI
Future-Proofing & Looking Ahead (predictions)
Originality is one of the most complicated concepts we've ever thought about as humans.
Copyright law is one of the most complicated areas of law. For context, my IP law course was about 70% copyright, 20% patents, 10% trademarks.
Blockchain is not a solution to copyright as a whole because there are always opportunities for nefarious parties to steal and mint other's work. That said, it is MUCH better than the current system, and that's what we're going for here. Not perfect, just better 🫡
My guess is that we see social media getting more onchain in the next 5 years. The innovation I've seen in Farcaster is unparalleled. I have literally never seen so much impressive change happen so quickly. More details on the Farcaster Protocol and social media system here.
The traditional model of giving away content for free is going to end at some point, unless platforms like Instagram find a way to share profits with the people that support their platform.
The middle-people online are going to be edged out, paving the way for creators and knowledge workers to step in and ride the new wave.
Attention is a finite resource, making content creation a zero-sum game in web2. With the removal of attention going to aggregators and towards originality, I think we're about to see an interesting summer for creators and builders that take advantage of the new space being made for them ✨
Next week
I specifically avoided a lot of conversation on copyright and originality here, talking more about how to trace originality, rather than how to detect it.
Next week, I'm away in the Rockies for another wedding, so I'll continue this originality discussion when I get back ⛰️
For context, originality is the topic I put on hold back at the beginning of the year when analyzing Maslow's Hierarchy, so I have a lot of thoughts 👀
Stay tuned ✨
P.S. I also launched my Hypersub, which is a web3 version of Patreon. If you're interested in supporting me further, please consider subscribing. I'm happy to answer any questions 🫡
Fascinating article, Callum! I hadn't heard about the Insta changes but this sounds like a good thing. I have a legal background, too (not in IP law, though) so I appreciated reading your thoughts on copyright. There's such a discrepancy between law and reality on Social Media at the moment, it feels like the Wild West.
Super interesting download on the changes to the insta algorithm... how do you split your time between here and there?