Instagram users threatened to Insta-leave the free photo-sharing platform, after the Facebook-owned company announced that changes to its privacy policy and terms of service would go into effect in January 2013. How dare a social media network that provides users a free service for tailoring our personal brand via strategically posted pics of Aah best coffee in Melbourne! and vaguely familiar Australian personalities, start putting rules and policies in place?? More like InstaSCAM, right!?
Following a social media freak out of mass proportions, Instagram put on a pair of kid gloves and released a statement requesting for its hysterical user base to please calm down, darlings. The statement by co-founder Kevin Systrom, titled “Thank you, and we’re listening”, said the proposed changes would be reviewed, after the threats [and public acts] of mutiny clearly made Instagram shit its billion dollar pants:
“Yesterday we introduced a new version of our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service that will take effect in thirty days. These two documents help communicate as clearly as possible our relationship with the users of Instagram so you understand how your data will be used, and the rules that govern the thriving and active Instagram community. Since making these changes, we’ve heard loud and clear that many users are confused and upset about what the changes mean.”
“I’m writing this today to let you know we’re listening and to commit to you that we will be doing more to answer your questions, fix any mistakes, and eliminate the confusion. As we review your feedback and stories in the press, we’re going to modify specific parts of the terms to make it more clear what will happen with your photos.”
In its initial announcement of the new privacy policy, Instagram declared that it will now share user data with its parent organisation, Facebook; meaning that the terms of service and security settings pertaining to Facebook, will now also apply to Instagram. That includes a stipulation – one which arguably drew the most criticism from users – that states: “[Instagram users] hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the content that you post on or through the service.”
In other words: any pictures you post to an Instagram account with a public setting can be used BY Instagram for advertising purposes, free of charge.
As with any privacy-related social media update of this nature – legitimate or otherwise, users of the service subsequently freaked out and threatened to jump ship, so it’s interesting that the company was so quick to jump into damage control and suggest changes to the proposed update could potentially be made based on customer feedback.
The fact is, there is an easy way to protect the content you post to Instagram and that is to set your photos to private. In his statement, Kevin Systrom also noted that “if you set your photos to private, Instagram only shares your photos with the people you’ve approved to follow you. We hope that this simple control makes it easy for everyone to decide what level of privacy makes sense.”
Well der. And we should be careful not to forget that, like any other app, Instagram is not an obligation-free gift from the creators to the users. It’s a service that was conceived and produced with the intention of being a financially viable business. Just because a service or application is available to use, free-of-charge, via the Internet, doesn’t mean that there will be no peripheral costs (financial or otherwise, i.e. user data collection or exposure to advertising, etc) whatsoever. Would you rather have one of your random images used for Instagram marketing purposes or pay a monthly users fee to have access to the service? Good question. Let’s take it to the polls!
Another option: Get a camera.
