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Glendon Ranting about Proper Image Use Again

Oh here we go again. The Internet Image Cop is astride his high horse and galloping through the online festival while popping everyone's balloons

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Oh here we go again. The Internet Image Cop is astride his high horse and galloping through the online festival while popping everyone's balloons. 

When I see images shared online without any links or names back to the creator, I can't help myself. I try to find the image using Tineye.com or Google Reverse Image Searching, but I also want to know why someone skipped the credit. 


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The sentiments I tweeted yesterday are ones I have said in various online nooks and crevices before, including from on top of the Symbiartic blog mountain.  

Why repeat myself? 

Ever-astute Rebecca Cohen, creator of The Adventures of Gyno-Star added: 

It's hard for me to see how sharing an uncredited, cool image you "found in the depths of Reddit" across Twitter and Facebook is anything less than self-aggrandizement for a personal brand. It's done to enhance the value of your own social media persona by silently saying "I find and share cool stuff so I am cool" to your followers.. It's bad curation, since we're all using that word to annoy librarians and museumologists now.

Throw the barest meat on the smallest bone back to the creator: keep their name and link with images you share. Tag their Twitter account. 

For what it's worth, I dislike myself when I start charging in on that horse as the Internet Image Cop. I feel trollish. But calling out bad behaviour online - in public, so others can see and hopefully learn - is one of the best defenses artists have against bad sharing. And if other people can fill comment threads by pointing out typos and grammer errors, hot damn, I'm gonna call out poor image use. Yes, there is a spelling mistake in that last sentence and it's bugging you isn't it. Welcome to my world.

Clearly, I will need to do an updated "how to reverse image search and give proper credit"-type post. In the meantime, memorize this post on Compound Eye. And here's a quick tip to ensure someone like me doesn't come along the next time you share some interesting image and pop your balloon: