The IT Nerd

I deliberately waited to publish this story just so that I can see how this would play out. Earlier today, Instagram changed its terms of service effective in early January. Here’s the key thing:

Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you 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, except that you can control who can view certain of your Content and activities on the Service as described in the Service’s Privacy Policy, available here: http://instagram.com/legal/privacy/.

In English, Instagram has the perpetual right to sell users’ photographs without payment to you or any prior notification. Sucks to be an Instagram user.

This of course set off the usual firestorm of outrage online. People freaked out and rightfully so. Instagram responded this way:

Since making these changes, we’ve heard loud and clear that many users are confused and upset about what the changes mean

They then put some spin on these changes.

Here’s the bottom line. Instagram was bought by Facebook and these changes put Instagrm in line with what Facebook does when it comes to their terms of service. Users might be ticked off, but they have you by the shorthairs. You might want to kill your Instagram account, and that’s easy to do. But consider this, if you kill your Instagram account, how will your friends know what you’re doing? You’ll likely think twice and keep your Instagram account. That’s what they’re counting on. So if you really want to send a message, convince your friends to quit Instagram. IF a huge mass of people leave Instagram, they’ll get the message. But I don’t expect any mass defections. That means companies will continue to do stuff like this.

Pity.