Ok, so you rarely, if ever, hear cranky Cyn because quite frankly, I rarely am cranky. And if I am, I try to keep it to myself but this issue has been driving me crazy the past few weeks and I can’t keep quiet anymore.
When you copy and paste a full and complete recipe onto Facebook from someone’s blog or website, you are hurting someone’s business. (This applies to things other than recipes too – I see it done most often with recipes but sometimes with craft tutorials too.) You see, even if you give a link back to that site or provide their photo (which is a different issue) that is watermarked with their website information on it, let’s be honest here. How many people are going to click on that link or use the information on the photo to actually go to that site? VERY FEW if any. After all, they already have the recipe right there at their fingertips!
I see a very popular (over 160,000 fans on Facebook) page doing this all the time. In essence, they are stealing content from others. And you, if you then share their post – you are perpetuating the issue. I realize that many people may not realizing what they’re doing. They may be perfectly innocent about what it means and I’m not blaming them. But some of you…..well in all honesty, some of you are fellow bloggers and my first reaction is that you should know better. The thing is, I see it done in my Facebook feed all time….by friends….by people I like. So, I can only assume that you just don’t understand the ramifications of what you’re doing.
We are able to keep our blogs going because we get traffic back to our blogs. If you are copying and pasting someone’s full recipe and sharing it on Facebook – especially on a page of over 160,000 people – you are affecting someone’s business negatively. If you then, share the post that they shared, you are allowing the problem to grow.
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