Platform plagiarism plagues social media developers

In today’s cutthroat world of trends and innovation, originality seems a mythical unicorn of the past. Like a broken copier, companies spit out new features left and right, to a point where identifying original creators can be as confusing as the chicken-egg paradox. “TikTok now” is eerily similar to BeReal, an app that asks users to post unfiltered photos each day to promote authenticity throughout social media. Instagram has “Reels” and YouTube has “Shorts” that both “pay homage” to TikTok. Tiktok and Instagram are also guilty of stealing Snapchat’s lucrative 24-hour stories. But why are all these companies playing into the copying game, despite endless criticism? 

The simple answer: it’s all a marketing strategy. All social media basically plays the modern-day twist on Darwin’s survival of the fittest. The winning strategy seems to entail stealing popular platform features and assimilating them into generic versions of their own. This sort of academic theft is nothing new.

Philip Storey, founder and CEO of the email marketing agency Enchant, believes the copy game is a result of a “heightened consumer market.” Consumer expectations have skyrocketed and expectations run high. This means a “game-changer,” like Amazon or Uber, drives expectations of that level of capability everywhere. This fact is seen within social media as well and the overwhelming need for increased engagement to stay afloat as a company.

Even though the strategy creates more engagement, there’s an astounding amount of dissatisfaction and criticism from users. Like a student nervously turning in a plagiarized paper, there’s no doubt that there will be a wave of consequences awaiting these companies. Despite the blowback of shame, the strategy works. In 2016, when Instagram stole the “story” feature from Snapchat, there were articles of accusatory plagiarism. Fast forward to 2022, and virtually every social media app has some sort of story feature. To a certain extent, this action taken by Instagram increased engagement of the app; Instagram stories are now more popular than Snapchat stories because it allowed for a new form of influencer-fan engagement and interaction. All of that being said, what of creativity?

Social media, of any type, already makes creativity and authenticity difficult. The “objective” of social media is to gain the most followers and likes, so it’s hard to be different and create new content that isn’t just regurgitating what has already been done. Social media stealing each other’s layouts, designs, and features only intensifies this aspect of repetitiveness that even its content shares; in other words, it makes sense that these companies would do this as it mirrors the tendencies of users. 

Fearing the sad downfall of Vine and MySpace, content producers strive not to be left behind, trying to learn from their predecessors' mistakes. They find what works for other apps, adopt it, and give it a new name. Although it works as a form of increased engagement for the company, it only reinforces the lack of authenticity that social media already inherently creates.

by Anika Flores

Published October 31, 2022

Oshkosh West Index Volume 119 Issue II