The poster also suggested it was as a result of a particular “Instagram bug” that the post itself had gone uncredited – but urged Instagram to add a credit.
Is it for real?
This is open to challenge. For a start, the account @plantatreeco claims in its bio to have raised $500,000 for different charities and to have planted 6,500 trees – yet it doesn’t link back to a website.
According to Newsweek, who did a deep dive investigation into the story, @plantareeco has been accused in the past of using myriad social causes to increase its followers include Black Lives Matters and the Australian bushfires.
Plus it’s associated – by a matching URL and logo – with a website that appears to sell jewellery, but has priced everything at $0.
We also find it interesting that a new Instagram function no one really knew about has gone viral out of nowhere, educating us all in the process. Which brings us on to the question…
What is the Instagram “Add Yours” function?
For the uninitiated, the social sharing platform has a new function where you can create a chain of content around a particular subject or challenge, for instance the most-recent photo on your phone camera roll, or what you had for lunch.
It was trialled in Indonesia and Japan last October before being rolled out to global users this month. Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, posted on Twitter last week with examples of some of the “fun prompts out there” that he’d seen.
It’s known that Instagram will often give an extra “boost” to users using their new functions to increase reach, so perhaps the use of a brand new feature is in part behind the “We’ll plant 1 tree for every pet picture” trend.
Don’t buy it? There are a number of alternative tree planting organisations you can donate to if you’re unconvinced by @plantatreeco, including donating directly to Trees For The Future (the organisation referred to in the former’s fundraising post, which supports farmers through training Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia).
Alternatively, there’s Trees For Cities, which – surprise, surprise – works to plant trees in cities both in the UK and internationally, and Manchester-based City of Trees, which according to its website, aims to plant a tree for each citizen in five years.