Someone is using my pictures on Instagram or Facebook

Make sure the photos are yours to report

A copyright report says, under penalty of perjury, that you own the work or are authorized to act for whoever does. The photographer owns a photograph (17 U.S.C. § 201(a)). A picture of you taken by a friend belongs to the friend; a photo from a paid shoot belongs to the photographer unless your contract transferred the copyright. If you did not take it, ask the person who did to report it, or authorize an agent, or use the privacy or impersonation route instead.

Collect the posts before reporting

A copyright report has to point at specific content. For each post, copy the post’s own link (from the post’s menu, not the profile address), take a screenshot showing the account name, the photo and the date, and note whether the photo also appears in stories, reels or the profile picture. One account can be reported for several posts in a single report; list them all.

Keep your originals and the link to your own earlier post of each photo. Your post, older than theirs, is useful evidence of who published first.

Filing the copyright report

Both platforms take copyright reports through their own forms in their help centers rather than by email. The form asks for the same things the statute does: who you are, the work, where the copy is, a good-faith statement and a statement of accuracy and authority. Fill in every field; a report missing the post links or the description of your original is the most common reason for a request for more information.

• Describe your photograph plainly, and link to where you published it if you did.
• Paste the link of every reported post, one per line.
• Use the name you are prepared to have shared (see below).
• If you are an agent, say who you act for.

After the report

The platform reviews the report and may remove the post, ask you for more information, or decline. It tells the account holder, who can appeal or send a counter-notice. Under § 512(g) a counter-notice can lead to the post being restored after 10 to 14 business days unless the rights holder starts a court action. No report comes with a date or a promised outcome.

Platforms are required to have a policy for terminating repeat infringers (§ 512(i)). An account that keeps reposting your work after removals may eventually lose access, but how and when is the platform’s decision.

Other platforms work the same way

Pinterest, X, TikTok, Reddit and Tumblr each run their own copyright forms, and each has its own rules about what it shares and how it handles repeat posts. Pinterest is a special case worth knowing: a pin usually links back to a source page, so the image may need reporting both on Pinterest and at the site the pin came from.

Where a copy also shows up in Google Images, a separate request to Google can stop it appearing in results. See removing an image from Google.

Asking first, and when not to

Plenty of reposts come from fans, small accounts and businesses that did not stop to think. A short message asking them to remove the post, or to license it, sometimes resolves things faster than a report and leaves no record against anyone. If you write, be factual: which photo, where you published it, and what you would like them to do.

Skip the message and go straight to the report when the account is anonymous, when it is passing your work off as its own to sell something, when it has ignored a previous request, or when contact with it makes you uneasy. A report does not depend on the account’s cooperation, and the platform does not need your permission to tell the account who complained.