is features writer with five years of experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people who use their tools.
In late February, Puck reported on a strange case: An influencer with more than a million followers was inadvertently promoting products on Instagram. On some of Julia Berolzheimer’s posts, a “Shop the look” button hovered in the corner. When followers clicked it, they were fed similar items to what Berolzheimer was wearing.
Her job is to promote clothing, accessories, and other products to her followers, so having links to specific items isn’t strange. What was odd was that she hadn’t placed the links there herself — Instagram added them without her consent. The product links led followers not to the actual items Berolzheimer was promoting (and earning commission from), but to lookalikes.
“My followers were being shown cheap knockoffs and random items from brands I’ve never heard of, attached to my image, under my name,” Berolzheimer wrote on Substack. She said she had no idea the “Shop the look” button appeared on her posts until someone else notified her.
”This is a limited test intended to help people explore products that match their interests when they’re viewing posts or reels,” Matthew T Torres, a Meta spokesperson, said in an email. “We’re exploring various changes as we continue to test this experience and gather feedback, including exploring different labels. Meta does not take a commission on these items, and we will continue to refine the experience based on feedback.”
Though Meta claims it is just testing the feature, the ramifications are obvious. From a business perspective, it is damaging to influencers if their name, face, and content are associated with promoting products they have not vetted — followers buy things their favorite creators recommend because they trust their judgment and taste. It also has the potential to disrupt an influencer’s income stream: Suddenly, instead of Berolzheimer earning commission through her own affiliate links, another platform is cutting in.
But the 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. Perhaps it’s already happened to you.
We think of social-first commerce as the playground of influencers, with their affiliate links, #partner content, and midroll ads. But these days, anything can be usurped to push products — and for many social media users, their feed has become mostly just a shopping recommendation engine.
Back in September, I reported that TikTok was testing a new feature very similar to what Instagram is now under fire for. The TikTok version worked much the same: If a viewer paused a video, a “Find similar” button popped up automatically. TikTok uses AI to scan the content and then recommends products for sale on TikTok Shop that look like whatever was in the original video. It used strangers’ sunglasses to recommend me cheap lookalikes; a Ms. Rachel video served as a way to push me toward similar dresses. More disturbingly, I found that the feature was being applied to videos coming out of Gaza, effectively turning the mass killings of Palestinians into TikTok Shop promotions. Users had no idea the links were being added to their videos, and the opt-out option was buried deep in the settings menu.
At the time, TikTok said it was working to correct the issue — but the feature appears here to stay. Last week while scrolling the platform, the same “Find similar” button popped up on a video about clothing. The account had just over 400 followers.
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