ARTICLE | |
BY
ALIA PAPAGEORGIOU
Instagram says its intention was not to sell private photos
It only took 12 hours of online fury to provoke the Instagram Co-founder to release a statement claiming that the online sharing application which creates various versions of pictures shot on mobile phones or application supported technology is not goign to sell users photos.
"Thank you and we're listening" was the title of Kevin Systrom's blog post uploaded 19 hours ago outlining what their new terms of service mean in fact, and how they shouldn't be construed as Instagram wanting to sell private pictures to advertisers.
"Privacy Settings Nothing has changed about the control you have over who can see your photos. 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.Instagram's proposed change to its terms and conditions has outraged users, with some vowing to quit the service. Meanwhile, rival photosharing services have taken the chance to reiterate their stance on user privacy."
He went on to thank all the interested users, appreciate the community they have built aroudn their application and say how he understands that legal jargon can sometimes be misconstrued "Legal documents are easy to misinterpret. So I’d like to address specific concerns we’ve heard from everyone: Advertising on Instagram From the start, Instagram was created to become a business. Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business, but not the only one. Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear."
On Tuesday, Instagram posted its new terms of service which will be enforced on Jan. 16, 2013. The changes were interpreted as a right for the company to use user photos in ads or sublicense them to third parties.
