If you have been on Instagram or Facebook lately, you might have seen a new shareable Add Yours Sticker format that lets users take part in a challenge on Insta Stories. Popular themes include sharing sunset photos, photos that didn’t make it to the gram and now the “We’ll Plant 1 Tree for Every Pet Picture” sticker that was created on November 8th.
A ton of people shared pictures of their pets – including dogs, cats, fish and more in the hopes that a tree would be planted.
At the time of publishing, the sticker and been used over four million times.
Nobody knew who created the Sticker and who was actually going to plant those trees.
PlantATreeCo soon claimed credit for the sticker saying that the sticker was a genuine campaign. The company later realised that the sticker was trending and that they wouldn’t be able to actually plant the trees.
PlantATreeCo later deleted the sticker but doing so just removes your name from the sticker and other people can still share photos using that sticker.
Netizens have even started suggesting that Instagram take the responsibility of planting the millions of trees.
The meta-owned platform has come forward and distanced itself from the campaign.
“The ‘we’ll plant one tree for every pet picture’ trend shows the power of the Instagram community to raise awareness on important topics. Like all other ‘Add Yours’ sticker threads, it was started by an independent Instagram account – not Instagram,” an Instagram spokesperson said.
However, Instagram assured its users that they will come up with ways to make trending campaigns like these more transparent for users.
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