SherlockReposts Handy Guide To Repost Hunting on Instagram
Hi Folks. I hope you are having a great Day!
Today I am going to talk to you about a little Hobby I call Reposter Hunter. Its a great pass time when you want to let off some steam and do something methodical but also with righteous fury.
Its not a job for everyone and it takes a while to set up,but once you have done the set up and possibly dealt with searching backlog of old reposts, it is a good way to keep tracking current reposting behaviours. it is very satisfying when you start to see your hard work paying off.
1. First of all make two instagram accounts. One account is your contact account. the other is your stealth account. The reason for this is sometimes you will want to converse with reposters, and it is better to do this via a contact account. The stealth account on the other hand should be a non-descript account with a similar username to the kinds of instagrams that are reposting and not connected with you. You want this account to follow reposters, and track their posts. It is especially useful if they have blocked your contact account.
2. Make a bookmark folder on your webbrowser for repost accounts. This allows you to keep track of them even if you switch between your accounts or if you are blocked.
3. Finding Reposters: Start by searching tags related to the fandom or art you are trying to find reposters for. zero in on the reposter account. Bookmark it and follow with stealth account. Repeat for any other obvious reposting blogs.
From these ones you can find other tags reposters frequently use and other reposters who respond to these posts, as I have found reposters tend to be in little communities and share reposts with each other. Sometimes they credit each other with the reposted art so that is an excellent way to find more reposters who don’t use tags. Remember to bookmark all and follow.
There are two kinds of accounts you may discover. They are what I call the Reposting instagram and the Personal instagram with reposts. I treat these two a little differently. It might pay to seperate them in your bookmarks.
Reposting Instagrams: everything is a repost of some description. Text posts that have been screencaped, art, other peoples edits. This account has been set up particularly for reposting
Personal Instagram: A mish-mash of many different things, usually with a lot of selfies of the person and their friends and family. a few reposts. (with these I tend to take care to contact them first with my contact account and explain to them that reposting is wrong, politely, especially if the instagrammer looks young)
It is fine to not act immediately and not contact them in this process, (also important not to if you are using your stealth account) as at this point you are gathering data about your quarry. Their repost habits, tagging language etc. This will make you a more effective hunter in the future. I tend to mainly follow reposters where the accounts are specifically about reposting (see later note about accounts that look like personal accounts .
take time doing this, you can start reporting reposts at any time in this process, and continue to add on to your bookmarks/follows as you go along.
4. The Feed watcher. (recommended for casual and light Repost hunting)
Now you have a feed that is set up to watch instagram reposters. you don’t need to look for them. You can still check tags, and add people, but now you can start seeing reposting as it is happening. Occasionally check your feed and report any art which is yours and send links to artists who the art belongs if you know them. (if you don’t you can reverse image search the image see tutorial below). Don’t contact the reposters. just notify and report. (see “times to interact with reposters for more info”)
This is a great way to minimise the amount of exposure new reposts have as they can be instantly discovered. It is also less work for you because, depending on the speed of your feed it can be a 5-30 minute activity to check what posts are there, and report/notify people about them.
5. The Backlog Slog (recommended if you have a bit more spare time and feel like doing a dent to a reposters account)
you don’t have to do this step but it is pretty satisfying, even if it takes a bit of work. basically start with one Reposting instagram account, and then go through and find any art, edits etc that looks reposted. If you are the owner follow the reporting process (another post on this blog) if you know the owner of the artwork, send them the link. If you don’t know the owner but want to find them you can use reverse image search on google to do this. (see later for how).
Go through one instagrammers backlog at a time, and you don’t have to do them all at once.. I will do this occasionally. Again I dont contact the reposter during this process. It may be that I have already tried and contact has failed, or it may be that it is obvious from their posts that the account is built on reposting (all the images are reposted)
Enjoy a few days later when their posts start disappearing.
6. Reverse google image search
for images you don’t know, the easiest way to find the owner is reverse image search using google. The one tricky thing is instagram doesn’t let you copy url sources so you are googling to have to screen cap that picture using either Snip tool on Windows or Shift+ option+4 on mac. this will let you take a selective screencap of JUST the image and save it to your computer. Go to http://images/google. click on the little camera icon and upload the screencap. then you can look through the sites until you find the artist.
Contact them (if you can) and delete screencap off your computer.
7. Times to contact the reposter.
most of the time I think it is better just to silently report and not engage. But I make the exception when they obviously don’t repost a lot or its a personal account or they obviously are very young (in these cases they might not be aware what a problem reposting is_
In those cases, while I save the account in my bookmarks. I do send them a message that politely explains that a lot of artists do not like people saving images and posting them up on different sites and that by doing so they could be reported.
If they take the images down I go no further. If not, do not contact them again, but report the images and get instagram to take them down.
So there you have it. My guide to catching reposters. I hope it is useful. remember to be respectful and polite in interactions. It is useful to have a tutorial link on hand on how to report to give any artists you contact, as some might not know how. and respect the artists wishes to do as they see fit with the reposted artwork, your job is just to notify them that it exists. :).
Happy hunting.
