Back in 2016, Instagram introduced “Stories” as its latest feature where users could post photos and videos on their profile for 24 hours. Sound familiar? It’s probably because this was originally Snapchat’s claim to fame. Then its competitor caught grief for stealing its concept. However, it wasn’t long before everyone began converting over to Instagram in favor of their new feature — which seemed to offer better perks over time like stickers, swipe-up links and the ability to mention others in posts. In this case, it looks like the followers came out on top over the originators, and unfortunately this wasn’t the end of the clone wars by any means.

Though Instagram is infamous for borrowing other platforms’ concepts (i.e. Reels inspired by TikTok), they’re not the only culprits capitalizing on someone else’s brainchild. Just take a look at The Cookout — the first-ever invitation-only social media app “created BY Black people, FOR Black people.”

The post-based app found itself entangled in a scandal earlier this year after another app calling itself the same name was caught stealing concepts from the aforementioned as well as the well-known audio app Clubhouse.

The original app explained in great detail the conspiracy behind the events in a two-part blog post, calling it in short a case of plagiarism.

“The willfulness to blatantly attempt to step over our intellectual property rights and outright STEAL from us is part of a larger pattern of disrespect for the ideas and hard work that Black women pour into literally every industry, only to have someone (usually a man) pretend that they thought of the concept the entire time,” they wrote.

This pattern of copying — though unfortunately happening in our own Black tech community as well — is a part of a system today that trickles down to the design and functionality of many apps we use on a daily basis.

Today’s social media apps are playing a game of “follow the leader” and it clearly shows if you look at how these platforms are relaunching previously-introduced concepts. Though each platform attempts to add their own flair, none of these features lead to original innovations down the line — only replicas that are repurposed and reused to breathe new life into aged creations.

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