At the end of February, naughty child A strange case report: An influencer with over a million followers was unknowingly promoting products on Instagram. On some of Julia Berolzheimer’s posts, a “Shop the Look” button was hovering in the corner. When followers clicked it, they were fed the same items Berolzheimer wore.
Her job is to promote clothing, accessories, and other products to her followers, so it’s not strange to have links to specific items. What Was The strange thing was that she hadn’t put the links there herself – Instagram had added them without her consent. The product links did not lead followers to the actual items that Berolzheimer was promoting (and earning commission from), but to look-alikes.
“My followers were being shown cheap knockoffs and random items from brands I’d never heard of, attached to my image,” Berolzheimer wrote on Substack. She said she was unaware that a “Shop the Look” button would appear on her posts until someone else informed her.
“This is a limited test intended to help people find products that match their interests when they post or view a Reel,” Meta spokesperson Matthew T. Torres said in an email. “We’re exploring various changes as we continue to test this experience and collect feedback, including exploring different labels. Meta does not charge any commission on these items, and we will continue to refine the experience based on feedback.”
Although Meta claims it is only testing the feature, the effects are clear. From a business perspective, it is harmful for influencers if their name, face and content are associated with promoting products they have not vetted – followers tend to buy things that their favorite manufacturers recommend because they trust their judgment and taste. It also has the potential to disrupt an influencer’s income stream: Suddenly, Berolzheimer is taking another platform’s cut, instead of earning commission through his own affiliate link.
But this feature and others like it aren’t just a problem for people like Berolzheimer — all of us non-influencers are liable to become fodder for ads without our knowledge. Maybe this has already happened to you.
We think of social-first commerce as an influencer’s playground, including their affiliate links, #partner content, and midroll ads. But these days, anything can be grabbed to push products — and for many social media users, their feed has become mostly a shopping recommendation engine.
In September, I reported that TikTok was testing a new feature that was very similar to the one Instagram is now drawing criticism for. The TikTok version also worked in much the same way: if a viewer paused a video, a “Find Similar” button automatically popped up. TikTok uses AI to scan content and then recommend products for sale on the TikTok Shop that resemble those in the original video. It used sunglasses from strangers to recommend cheap lookalikes to me; The Ms. Rachel video provided a way to inspire me toward similar outfits. More disturbingly, I found that this feature was being applied to videos coming from Gaza, effectively turning mass killings of Palestinians into propaganda for the TikTok shop. Users had no idea that links were being added to their videos, and the opt-out option was hidden deep in the Settings menu.
At the time, TikTok said it was working to fix the problem — but it looks like the feature is here to stay. While scrolling through the platform last week, the same “Find Similar” button popped up on a video about clothes. This account had just over 400 followers.
The conventional wisdom is that brands hire influencers for access to their huge audiences, with whom content creators have built trust. But gradually, in some cases the role of influencer has become akin to gig work: micro- and nano-influencers with small followings work as a side job. Increasingly, marketers are using generic, non-influencer types to create content that looks organic and unpolished. An entire subcategory of advertising, called UGC (user-generated content), employs content creators not for their followers but for the work of actually creating the videos or photos. Gig work platforms like Fiverr are flooded with offers to create UGC, with some rates starting as low as $20. And then, of course, there are the downright bizarre one-off cases, like when Internet culture reporter Kate Lindsay recently wrote that a photo of her and her husband was being used to sell picture frames.
In its early days, the emerging maker economy promised something it ultimately couldn’t deliver: anyone, anywhere, had a chance at fame, money, and influence. In reality, it takes a lot of luck and privilege to make it big – but slot machine-style recommendation algorithms have enhanced this. The explosion of influencers that began in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic opened up a Pandora’s Box for contemporary advertising and marketing, and there’s an endless supply of labor to fill whatever camera, face wash, or gambling app needs promoting. Instagram’s “Shop the Look” or TikTok’s “Find Similars” are a sign that the central premise of the creator economy has come true, even under monkey-paw-like circumstances: Everyone is an influencer, whether we like it or not.
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