Can a Facebook Post be an NFT?

NFTs or non-fungible tokens are digital media that can be bought and sold as digital assets on the Ethereum blockchain and others like Polygon. Ownership of said digital assets is irrefutable and cannot be counterfeited according to the ledger, which acts as a permanent record of sorts.

There are a great number of things that fall under the category of digital media, including art, games, memes, music, experiences, and so on. Even social media posts like “tweets” have stepped into the world of NFTs.

A Facebook post can be an NFT. The same goes for a tweet, YouTube Video, or Instagram post. It’s not a matter of if it can be considered an NFT, but rather how to make it a tangible NFT that can be created and sold on the blockchain.

So, when it comes to Facebook posts, is it possible to turn them into NFTs? It is; otherwise, Mark Zuckerburg would not have been able to auction off his first-ever Facebook post in April 2021. Lily Dolin of Medium joked about selling her catalog of angsty middle school posts as NFTs in the same year, but the question that still requires answering is, how?

How Do Facebook Posts Become NFTs?

Following in the footsteps of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who received 2.9 million dollars for his first tweet from March 2006, many are wondering if they can profit off their own social media history.

As platforms were catching on to the rising demand for NFTs, they devised ways to turn posts into sellable NFTs.

A simple search on the internet will yield results for just about any social media platform and the step-by-step process for turning posts into NFTs, most of them except for Facebook.

Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube have all jumped on the bandwagon or at the very least have permitted applications to assist creators. There are a plethora of platforms that turn social media posts and blogs into NFTs.

Melon
iNFTsta
BlogtoNFT
GitGallery
CocoNFT

Each platform will have its own step-by-step process for taking social media posts and turning them into NFTs. Many of them entail signing into the social media platforms they have designated on them, so if Facebook is not on there, it is not usable on that platform.

Once signed into the platform you can then mint your NFT and most will show you how to list it for sale on NFT megastore OpenSea.

None of the ones listed connect to Facebook as of writing this article. The majority of them are for Instagram or Twitter. There were even a couple, not listed, that allowed you to mint code, turn an autograph into an NFT, and so on.

One could speculate as to why Facebook is being left out of the party, but it may be purposeful.

The Future of Facebook with NFTs

There are quite a number of predictions as to what Facebook may or may not be doing in the realm of NFTs. Some of these would certainly make it understandable as to why Facebook is not featured on these platforms that convert social media into NFTs.

Some of these predictions include Facebook possibly acquiring an NFT platform of their own through purchase. If this is the case, then I’m sure Facebook would want you to use their platform exclusively to host your Facebook post NFTs, though I’m not sure they could prevent creators from going elsewhere.

Facebook could also add NFTs to Instagram and make it accessible with Facebook posts as well. In fact, in October 2021, Facebook announced that their Metaverse will support non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Now, there is no timetable for when this will occur, but the push for the Metaverse has been ongoing since its announcement, and steps have been taken to reintroduce the brand. So, it’s only a matter of time until we see just how the Metaverse plans on introducing NFTs.

Social Media NFT — Example of social media NFTs created with Melon

What About Copyright?

Essentially you could take a screenshot of any Facebook post, upload it to an NFT platform, connect your NFT wallet, mint your screenshotted post, and list it for sale…but is that legal?

Lawsuits have already been filed for creators allegedly breaking copyright laws with NFTs. Can you get in trouble for selling a Facebook Post? What about the logo? Can you sell someone else’s Facebook post?

These are all valid questions. I’m not an attorney, and this is definitely not legal advice. Yet I was able to find some information from an entertainment attorney that works out of New York.

Attorney Anita K. Sharma, Esq. was asked by Jackson Weimer of Forbes on June 18th, 2021, “What if I minted an NFT of someone else’s work and sold it? If this becomes a bigger issue, what laws are in place (or need to be) to ensure that proper attribution is given to the actual creator of an NFT?

Ms. Sharma responded by saying, (edited) “…the basics are that the holder of a copyright has the exclusive right to copy, distribute, modify, publicly perform and publicly display the work…One can’t necessarily just alter/destroy/edit/add to a piece of artwork without permission to do so from the original creator. Unless specifically granted to someone else, copyrights remain with the creator.”

“….I think people think regular laws don’t apply to blockchain, but they do. Just giving attribution to an actual owner of the underlying IP of an NFT doesn’t automatically give the creator of an NFT the right to use it.

You can read the full article on Forbes here.

This most likely means that you will probably get in trouble if you steal someone else’s Facebook post, mint it into an NFT and sell it for a profit.

If you are serious about minting Facebook posts, it would be best to consult with an attorney. But unless you are super famous, it might not even be worth all the trouble to create and mint a Facebook post which I’ll talk about next.

Also, you can also check out this article which quickly sums up copyright and NFTs: Is NFT Art Protected by Copyright Law? (How To Get Sued)

Are Facebook Posts Valuable Enough?

Though there may not be platforms that can turn a Facebook post into a minted NFT directly, there are workaround options that might help.

As I mentioned above, you could take a screenshot of the post and create the NFT that way. Now, the image quality is not reduced when you take a screenshot, but the screen display is lower in quality in comparison to the original.

Adding to this issue is the debate over whether a post is valuable enough to turn into an NFT, especially with high gas prices to create NFTs.

I mean, it can take anywhere from $70 to $700 to mint an NFT. It is not cheap, and many more creators lose money by minting NFTs and not being able to sell their creations. But if you want to still create an NFT, these posts will show you how to do it for less:

The chances are that unless the post is coming from a celebrity or public figure, it may not be considered worth the price you would have to place on it to make a profit or break even.

Most of the examples we use for social media posts that have sold for millions of dollars have been from CEOs, athletes, or other public figures whose names alone drudge up enough interest.

Then there is the novelty of those tweets or posts being the first of their kind sold as NFTs. Will the same level of interest continue to be strong for John Doe’s Facebook post about going to Disney World? Only time will tell, but it may be worth holding back and seeing how other average joe’s fair before turning your screenshot into an expensive mistake.

And of course, when we were looking at copyright issues above, I would not advise going to a public figure’s Facebook page, screenshotting a post, and trying to profit off of it.

There is such a thing as intellectual property, and whoever originally wrote the post may not look too kindly on you taking their property and trying to sell it.

Conclusion

So while a Facebook post can be turned into an NFT by way of the screenshot, it remains to be seen how to go about doing this in a way other social media platforms have already done so, with apps and online software.

It could be something we will see very soon in the Metaverse, or perhaps an NFT platform will gain access to Facebook to make posts into NFTs.

Either way, we are still left with some debate over social media posts and their value on the blockchain with potential buyers. Just like with NFTs in general, time will tell where the successes and failures lie. As well as what buyers will have an interest in and what will sell and make a profit.

Want to get even more excited about NFTs? Read these three viral articles: