Social media platforms systematically strip EXIF, IPTC, and XMP metadata from uploaded photos, severing the cryptographic provenance chain that C2PA Content Credentials was designed to establish, making photographer attribution unenforceable at scale

Every major social media platform -- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and most messaging apps -- strips embedded metadata from uploaded photos, including copyright management information (creator name, licensing terms, contact info), GPS coordinates, camera settings, and critically, C2PA Content Credentials provenance data. Even as the photography industry invests in Content Credentials through cameras like the Leica M11-P (2023) and Leica SL3-S, and Sony's PXW-Z300, the provenance chain breaks the moment a photo is shared on any social platform. Why it matters: photographers embed copyright and attribution metadata in every exported image, so platforms strip that metadata upon upload while retaining it internally for ad targeting, so downstream users who encounter the image have no way to identify the creator, so the image goes viral without attribution or licensing, so the photographer cannot enforce copyright or collect licensing fees because the evidence of ownership was removed by the platform that distributed it. The structural root cause is that platforms strip metadata primarily to reduce file sizes and mitigate privacy risks from GPS data exposure, but they have no economic incentive to preserve photographer attribution because doing so would make it easier for rights holders to identify unauthorized uses and demand payment, and the C2PA standard requires every link in the distribution chain to preserve cryptographic manifests, which no major social platform currently does.