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Instagram announced Monday that it will introduce a special tag for professional accounts and influencers to ensure they receive credit for their created content, an attempt to address financial inequality between Black and white social media influencers.
Black social media users are routinely not credited for starting trends or shut out from profiting from them but two sisters are changing that.
Instagram remains popular after its 2010 launch.
Alexis Michelle Adjei, a data analyst, and Cameryn Boyd, an engineer, envisioned and created the label for Black creators to make a living off producing social media content while also receiving the proper credit for establishing the trend. The tag is available to Instagram business and creator accounts.
Adjei told NBC News, “Black creators and addressing that inequity in the creator ecosystem” was top-of-mind when developing the new feature.
Twice as many white influencers are making upward of $100,000 a year as are Black ones who are making similar content to similarly sized audiences, according to a study published in December by MSL, a communications company, and The Influencer League, an educational organization. The report also found a 29 percent pay gap between white creators and all creators of color.
Culture Vultures beware: It’s a new day.
Boyd stated, “the hope is that they will now get the credit and that piece of content where their contribution can be traced back to their accounts so that people have the opportunity to follow them and they can grow their influence.”
Adjei and Boyd agree the goal is to curb the problem of uncredited Black work and for Black creators to go viral with their content.
Many Black inventors of yesteryear had to fight to patent and protect their ideas but now thanks to Boyd and Ajeji, Instagram’s Black creativity will not just be trendy, but profitable.