Instagram might be thinking about charging an fee to add links to photograph captions, a patent application suggests. Mike Murphy found it as a feature of his (fascinating!) week by week roundup of tech patents over at Protocol.

The patent application, which Instagram parent company Facebook first submitted back in quite a while, a spring up showing up when the client adds a URL to a subtitle, inquiring as to whether the client needs to pay $2 to make the link live.

The patent application (named “adding paid links to media captions in a social networking system”) depicts how the framework would work: “If the online system detects the text content of the caption includes a string of link text identifying an address, the online system prompts the posting user to pay a fee in exchange for generating a link.”

This, obviously, has for quite some time been perhaps the greatest objection about Instagram: that in the event that you need to incorporate a link to a story, item, or whatever else in your post you can’t add URLs to subtitles of photographs.

A great many people go the “link in bio” course, and confirmed Insta clients can add links to Stories. The inquiry here will be whether Instagram influencers, brands, and different clients will pay a for every connection charge. Be that as it may, it appears to be an easy decision to create income for Instagram if this becomes effective.

In any case, likewise with any patent, note that companies apply for licenses constantly for items and administrations that never work out as intended, so it’s impossible to tell if or when this feature may really occur. Possibly don’t overdo it on that new selfie stick presently.