Skip to footer

Can Instagram really sell your photos?

Instagram changed its user agreement, allowing the website to use shared photos in any way it wants.

|
Reuters
Kevin Systrom, chief executive of Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app now owned by Facebook, displays his photo on a mobile phone during an interview with Reuters at the LeWeb technology conference in Aubervilliers, near Paris, on Dec.4, 2012.
  • By Associated Press

| NEW YORK

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing service that Facebook bought this year, is the target of a storm of outrage on Twitter and other sites after a change in its user agreement hinted that it might use shared photos in ads.

It's not clear that anything substantive has changed in Instagram's new terms of service, which were posted Monday and go into effect Jan. 16. As is the case before, the service reserves the right to use shared photos in any matter it likes, though the photographers keep "ownership" of the photos.

The updated terms of service say users agree that their photos could be used "in connection with paid or sponsored content." The current terms say the service can place ads "on, about or in conjunction with your Content."

The fast-growing site is a popular way to share photos from cellphones. Facebook Inc. bought Instagram in September. The cash-and-stock deal was worth $1 billion when it was announced in April, though that fell to about $740 million by the time it was completed because of Facebook's falling stock price.

The updated terms suggests that Facebook wants to integrate Instagram into its ad-serving system, which can, for instance, promote an item by telling users that their friends "Like" it. The new terms make it clearer that Instagram could use your photos to market to your friends.

Instagram announced the change in a blog post, but didn't explain its intentions. It said a concurrent change to the privacy policy, a separate document, would help Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook.

Twitter users were vowing to cancel their Instagram accounts in response to the policy change, complaining that the new terms would essentially let the service sell people's photos for ads.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Can Instagram really sell your photos?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Latest-News-Wires/2012/1218/Can-Instagram-really-sell-your-photos
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe