• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Extending its rights coverage, Meta’s new “Content Protection” mobile feature aims to cut back on the unauthorized duplication of eligible creators’ original Reels content across Facebook and Instagram by sending in-app alerts.

“Once you enroll in content protection, every original reel that you post to Facebook will get automatically protected,” the company writes in a blog post. “You can also protect eligible reels you posted prior to enrolling by manually selecting ones you wish to protect at any time.”

Meta’s announcement states that its content-protection technology continuously scans both Facebook and Instagram for Reels that match at least part of the creator’s original Facebook post. Creators will be notified regarding any matches, along with stats about the matching content, including views and the account’s follower count. 

To take action against the unauthorized use of original content, alerted creators can block the copied Reel from being seen, track the copied Reel’s performance, add attribution links to the Reel (i.e. an “original by” label), or allow the Reel to stay visible while removing the post from the match dashboard. 

Through the "Professional" dashboard, creators can also grant certain accounts access to replicating their original content.  

Meta warns users that trying to claim Reels that did not create the content in question could result in restriction from the use of attribution links and autoprotection, as well as the ability to block duplicated Reels.

Notably, Meta names reaction videos and compilations as common examples of Reels featuring duplicated material that are not typically eligible to be blocked or taken down.

The decision to launch Content Protection for creators in Facebook’s Content Monetization program comes after YouTube announced its deepfake protection tool and the expansion of its deepfake protection program, which aim to cut down on the AI-recreation of original video content using creator and celebrity likenesses.   

With AI models rapidly advancing, it’s unclear whether Meta’s Content Protection tool is capable of automatically flagging artificially duplicated Reels as well.