Everything You Need to Know About Cara, the AI-Free Social Media Platform for Artists Have you heard about Cara? This app has taken the art community by storm in the past week. It skyrocketed from 40,000 to 700,000 users in just seven days, mainly thanks to Instagram's controversy over using images to train AI. With its recent surge, the numbers are likely even higher now. The app also cracked the top 5...

If you are looking for information on how to deny consent to AI at Meta and exercise your right to object, this is it. This morning, I received an email from Meta (the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and several other services). It looked like a regular notification that privacy policies were updated, which is normal practice. When new features are released, the need to update policies and include these new...

You can now find my AI content at fabienb.ai on Instagram . I have had my Instagram account @fabienb since the platform launch in 2010, and I always refused to create and manage a separate account. Mainly because it would have been too much work. Even if I was publishing diverse content like travel, portrait or street photography, my main account still represented my work as a photographer. So it made sense...

Tonight we will witness the last Supermoon of the year, so what is it and how to photograph the Supermoon? This was the topic of a conversation on Clubhouse last Monday as part of our Astrophotography Club . I was asked to talk about my experience and give some tips on getting these photos right as, coincidentally, I am running a moon series on my Instagram @fabienb. Plenty of moon shots there,...

Once again, I found that I had used one of the Instagram banned hashtag. Now, this has nothing to do with the infamous “shadowban” practice controversy. I noticed a slight decrease in engagement compared to previous posts, so I decided to investigate a little. It turns out that the hashtag #sunriselovers had been flagged for inappropriate content. Which meant that it was not generating any engagement because Instagram hidden my post. This...

That's right: I created 4 weeks' worth of Instagram content walking in Central London for less than 30 minutes. It could even be more than 4 weeks, considering I'm a bit of a slow uploader on my main IG feed at @fabienb . But here are 20 photos I find worth sharing. At 5 a week, that's 4 weeks of Instagram content. All taken on a short 30-minute walk. A little of...

My friend Dot Lung asked me to go live with her and talk about smartphone photography tips and how to take better photos with your phone. We both use iPhones, but all we talked about applies to Android as well. We did not talk about specific apps only available for one platform but actually discussed real examples of taking photos with a phone. Dot Lung is a fantastic Digital Media Strategist who...

What is the Instagram box, you may ask? Well, Instagram has changed how we think about photography more than we can imagine. I'll just give you some quick stats about the platform: (stats come from several sources: Digital & Social Marketing Conference London, Omnicore, Pew Research Center, Statista) Instagram was not the first online photography platform, but it was the first 100% mobile (even only on Apple iPhone in the beginning). And...

Despite being a fiery Italian (at least half of me is), I rarely publish rants on Instagram. It might happen on Facebook, where I still keep my private life and my friends separated from the rest of the world. But not on other platforms. Today, though, I woke up to fellow Instagrammers from London promoting an app they are featured in (also hiding their involvement). And what I saw made me run...

As of this month, I started offering free photo critiques through my Instagram account @fabienb . The concept is really simple. I always try to find ways to give back and help the community and this is one more way for me to do so. I ask my followers to send me their pictures to review and critique. It's the same kind of work an editor of a magazine could do, for...

After the story about my shadowban and how it happened, I'm back to talking about Instagram account issues. Yes, again. How Positive… One thing I try to do every time I post on Instagram is reply to all who leave comments on my photos. Even if it's just to say thanks. Instagram is a social media, so nurturing its social component is very important to me. And I like to talk with...

You might have heard of this thing called “shadowban”. Allegedly, Instagram has ways to punish spammy content and counter the rise of bots, fake accounts, etc. What Instagram does is flag suspicious accounts and consequently slash the reach and engagement that these accounts receive. And that would obviously be a good thing. You see this shadowban term surfacing in discussions because perfectly legit accounts get caught in Instagram security's net. I'm sure...