Viral trees, never planted?
The new “Add Yours” feature has people trading pet pics for trees.
While I can’t guarantee I’ll plant a tree, you can send pictures of your pets to me for one “that’s a good boy/girl.” —Kate
Too often, my weekend social media breaks mean I’m returning on Monday in media res of something truly bizarre. This time, it was Instagram Story after Instagram Story of friends, strangers, and loved ones using Instagram’s new “Add Yours” feature to share photos of their pets.
The feature itself is simple enough: for those in eligible countries, once you take a picture on your Instagram Story, you can add the “Add Yours” sticker and prompt people to share photos of their own. Let’s say I post a picture of my breakfast. Using the “Add Yours” feature, I can ask people to share photos of their breakfasts. By clicking the button, users can participate on their Instagram Story, building up a crowdsourced album of breakfast pictures in a public folder that links back to my account.
However, the one that’s gone viral on Instagram these past few days comes with a promise: post a picture of your pet, and we’ll plant a tree! As of last night, the public album contained over four million pictures. That means Plant A Tree Co, the creator of the viral sticker, now has to find a place to plant an entirely new forest. But, like the other projects promised by Plant A Tree Co, there’s no proof this is going to happen.
Plant A Tree Co has been accused over and over of being a scam. The organization sells jewelry that they claim funds the planting of trees, and says on their website they’ve planted 6,500 trees to date. But there’s no evidence of these trees being planted, and even if they were, that number is far below the million trees that would have been planted based on past campaigns and sales, according to the Instagram account Exposing Instagram Scams. The account has also reportedly falsely claimed to be affiliated with legitimate organizations like One Tree Planted, and most notably was called out in this 2020 Huffington Post article about Instagram accounts exploiting the bushfires in Australia for followers and money.
Nevertheless, Plant A Tree Co has over one million Instagram followers, and yesterday, the account came to them with a message: Oops.
While the account says they did post the original sticker, they removed it once they saw how quickly it was spreading—and just how many trees people would expect them to plant. However, it was still usable thanks to, I assume, the people who had already shared it, so it continued to spread far and wide. But the greatest concern in the post seems to be that the sticker no longer links back to them.
“Though we don’t have the ability to plant four million trees, we can use this awareness to make a lasting impact,” they wrote. “Which is why we started this fundraiser.”
The post implores people to repost their message and “also, tell @Instagram to give us credit.” It should go without saying that I would not donate to this fundraiser, which has so far raised $6,000 out of its $1,000,000. Plant A Tree Co has done fundraisers before, according to Exposing Instagram Scams, without any accountability for where that money goes.
While no one who used the sticker to share a picture of their pet can be expected to have known any of this, it’s another reminder to be skeptical of viral trends promoting ... anything. Like I said during Venmo’s first giveaway, the only guarantee with any of these viral schemes is that the organization behind it gets free advertising. Once that free advertising was stripped away, Plant A Tree Co had to find another route. For what it's worth, I checked back in on the sticker this morning, and it appears you can no longer participate. But since it sounds like this is something a lot of people need to hear: you can just post a picture of your pet anyways!