Facebook is giving more users access to its Rights Manager tool. Page admins can now claim rights for images, videos, and music, which may result in more copyright removals across Facebook and Instagram.

Jeniece Primus, a product manager at Facebook, announced that the platform is expanding access to its Rights Manager tool in an About Facebook blog post. Initially, Facebook users could only issue copyright takedowns solely for music and videos. Facebook only started protecting image rights in September 2020.

Facebook is now giving page admins access to its Rights Manager tool as well. This allows creators to copyright their content, as well as find and track matching photos, videos, or music across both Facebook and Instagram. If a match is found, the creator can choose to remove the re-uploaded content.

Facebook Expands Copyright Takedowns
Image Credit: Facebook

Now that more people have access to Facebook's copyright tool, this may mean more content removals on Facebook and Instagram. After all, a huge number of Facebook pages and Instagram accounts thrive off reposts. These types of accounts will likely suffer the most from these changes.

Is Facebook's Crackdown on Copyrights Good or Bad?

Photographers, artists, and musicians will obviously benefit from the expanded access to Facebook's Rights Manager tool, and so will popular meme-makers.

But on the downside, this also means that accounts dedicated to sharing funny memes and reposts might see more posts getting taken down.