8 ms·

Instagram Reverts To Original Ad Terms After Outcry

41 points by PedroCandeias 14y ago

toyg 14y ago
Obligatory XKCD (and fresh!): http://xkcd.com/1150/ http://xkcd.com/1150/
- spinchange 14y ago
  I know it's humor, and suspect Randall is generally far brighter than I, but comparing a photo sharing social network to a friend's garage is fallacious. In point of fact, people feeling like they were being sold out and getting vocal about it -from Zuck's wedding photographer to National Geographic and regular users in between- did make a difference, did it not?
  - mpyne 14y ago
    You're right that it's not a 1:1 analogy, as for example the National Geographic photos probably brought enough traffic by themselves to be useful for Instagram, if they could figure out how to benefit from traffic alone. But for most people Randall is spot-on, Instagram holds their photos and gets... ? However the way Instagram went about these TOS changes, and their initial response are both comical examples of how not to handle stuff like this. I honestly think most understand the idea that Instagram can't host their photos forever without some way of making money from that, but the solution for Instagram can't be to expand the TOS to encompass every conceivable act and then try out solutions while saying "Oh, we pinky promise we won't do that vile thing". Figure out the plan (or plans) first, then make the TOS fit the plan. And communicate with everyone involved during the process instead of presenting a fait accompli.
    - spinchange 14y ago
      I know it is redundant to make a "well said" type comment, but "well said!" The sense that users are just pawns waiting to be monetized once scale is reached and the proprietors figure it out is what I think unsettles more informed users. Some might say PR is meaningless window dressing but I think it's critically important -even for start-ups- if they're operating or intending to operate at scale.
  - toyg 14y ago
    You're missing the point. Whether a garage owner is "sensible" or not, or whether he is a friend or a professional, the fact is that he is still the owner, not you. That's actually a deeper truth of cloud computing in general, something that mainstream people (like Louis C.K. did recently) seem to actually grasp better than us geeks... probably because many of us have a vested interested in the public trusting us with (and being absolutely irresponsible with) their personal data, so we'd rather ignore some inconvenient truths.
    - spinchange 14y ago
      Look, obviously Instagram's servers, infrastructure and software are their own. I think that's so obvious on the face of things that it's trite to labor the point. They are in fact a company, serving users, and need those users' trust to do what they want to do. I am totally fine with Instagram or any free service making money and experimenting with ways of doing that. I have no issues with contextual advertising or trying to sell me something. The issue people complaining about is one of trust and a feeling/fear of broken faith. (e.g. "Hey, use our cool site for photo sharing! Oh by the way, now all your photos are belong to us.")
      - toyg 14y ago
        > I think that's so obvious on the face of things that it's trite to labor the point. No, it's not. It's the dirty little secret of "free" cloud services: you're using somebody else's resources to store your own (intellectual) property, relying on vague TOS clauses that can change from one minute to the next. This is exactly why this brouhaha took off: all of a sudden people "felt" those clauses were now abusive; they realised they were relying purely on Instagram's benevolence, and they "felt" that benevolence was now gone. This is the case for any cloud service, including Dropbox, iCloud etc; there are probably a few exceptions (I'd expect Salesforce to have tighter TOS), but the overwhelming majority of consumer-oriented cloud services are in the same boat. Last I checked, Dropbox reserved the right to go through your files -- for troubleshooting purposes only, no doubt, but again we have to take their word for it. How many times did you actually read those TOS? For what I know, they might now state that Dropbox can sell your data to China. The hard truth is that the garage is not yours and it will never be yours; in the best scenario, you are renting it with a tight contract , but in most cases you just had a chat with the owner once and he sorta promised not to resell your boxes full of comic books. Sooner or later you'll find a less honourable owner, and shit will fly.
  - bdcravens 14y ago
    people feeling like they were being sold out Of course they're being sold out. They are the product - product gets sold. Anyone who thinks they aren't the product is delusional. Facebook didn't pay $1B to sell users filters, or hope they login to Instagram.com and click ads. No, they were purchased for their network value.
    - spinchange 14y ago
      I don't think Facebook's master plan is for us to log-in and click ads, I think their plan is for us to log-in and be ads. This is an important distinction from most ad-supported free web services. I do not mind being "targeted" and shown relevant advertising based on my interests of behavior patterns on the site or group of sites. I very much mind being used as an someone else's endorsement or having my actions and relationships themselves be monetized. I think most everyone does. Just pointing this out because it's a nuance of the "you are the product" philosophy that differs from most other free services.
notimetorelax 14y ago
Robert Anhalt Writes in comments: ... They [users that left] bought the CNET article that misreported on the proposed changes and thought that Instagram would all of a sudden have the ability to use their content for the purposes of advertising, hence quitting like Manny down there. The proposed changes were actually better for users, as they would have limited the existing advertising ability to be "about or around" the user content, but now we're sticking with the ability to modify user content for advert purposes. The media misreported it, the people bought it, and Instagram got to stick with their original TOS that will benefit their advertisers. Anyone who left Instagram because of this never read the TOS in the first place and gets their legal advice from people with no background in IP law. For the record, this is exactly why I get my IP/patent/copyright news from The Verge, who have Nilay Patel and Matt Macari on staff, former IP/patent/copyright lawyers, on staff. That's about as credible as you're going to get. --- Could anyone with knowledge on the matter explain if it's true?
- smegel 14y ago
  Instagram gets to stick with whatever TOS it likes. Users get to delete their accounts and use a service that isn't an obnoxious content thief. Everyone wins!
- sp332 14y ago
  Well, here's Nilay Patel's take, for comparison. http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-terms-of-service-what-they-really-mean http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-te...
- unavoidable 14y ago
  The Verge had a great summary (as posted above) so I won't go into the actual 'law'. I don't even think the issue is really about what they can or cannot do in the license - Instagram is entitled to write whatever they want in the license agreement, and the original TOS was drafted in a very lawyerly way to basically allow them to do almost anything (advertising-wise) they wanted with your photos anyway. The real interesting part is that users are willing to make a lot of noise about these license agreements without reading them. I think there's a lot of pent up FUD about license agreements because there are so many of them out there that nobody ever reads any of them, and there's a big appetite out there for somebody, anybody, to clarify these terms for them. The consumer group-think goes kind of like: "What can Facebook do with my data? I don't know, but I'm sure their lawyers put something in the license agreement that I'm never going to read or understand. Oh, this blog says it's really bad, time to complain loudly!" I think the result is that there really needs to be an effort on the part of these online service providers to clarify their terms and make human-readable summaries of users' rights/licenses so that everyone understands where they stand contractually.
tyrelb 14y ago
Already uninstalled :( I wish sometimes startups were as loyal to their users as they expect their users to be...
gregPC 14y ago
What if I want them to use my pictures in ads... I don't mind! I take a really good picture, and I'm sure Sam Adams would love some of the jolly good times I have with the product in my hand.
jschuur 14y ago
So the plan now is to still experiment with new business models, but instead of just letting people guess what the heck they are, they're going to be more explicit in a future blog post, before, presumably, rolling out TOS changes to go with them. And that actually sounds like a much better approach than when they did this week.
robgrady 14y ago
This event was nice to prompt me to remove one more rarely used app from my phone. Seriously who cares. It is an app, pick another.
pretoriusB 14y ago
Does that make me a prophet for thinking that this is exactly what will happen and that the whole thing is a non issue? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4937548 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4937548 No, I've just seen the same story play another 10 times for different companies. As we all did -- but some behave like they just came on the interwebs yesterday. Makes all those downvotes look silly in hindsight...
- jahewson 14y ago
  Just because the u-turn was inevitable doesn't make it a non-issue. Without kicking up a fuss there would not have been a u-turn.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    See the contradiction? You first call the u-turn "inevitable" and then go on to say that "without kicking up a fuss there would not have been a u-turn". You can't have it both ways. My case is simply: the u-turn was inevitable and the fuss was also inevitable. What could have been different though is people not responding to this with awe, shock and vows of "abandoning Instagram" and such, as if the situation would not have changed in a week. Especially internet-savvy people who have seen this tons of times. Some regular Instagram user shocked with the license change and thinking his photos will be sold without his consent? Well, that's OK. But a-list tech bloggers writing the same thing? WTF. That's what a call faux-rage.
    - jahewson 14y ago
      Right, but no uproar = no u-turn, you can't have one without the other.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cormullion 14y ago
Going off on a tangent, I confess that the phrase "going forward" always reminds me of David Mitchell's rant on this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRr7H3woFn4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRr7H3woFn4 It's sometimes hard to take corporate announcements seriously, even if they're genuine.
ianstallings 14y ago
I'm really happy about this because now I won't have to hear about it anymore crossing fingers.
ryguytilidie 14y ago
But I thought the new terms didn't change anything and we shouldnt be worried about them. What changed with that made up point?
f4stjack 14y ago
The genie is already out of the bottle. People have already lost their trust with Instagram, I did at any rate. Problem is if you try high handed strategy like they did, as in we will sell your pictures without giving you a single dime, people will react. And they did. What they should do was to follow deviantart's model. Grab a percentage from the sold, printed out photos. Or put in a premium package. Or both. This is my two cents anyway.
skipper86 14y ago
Copyright laws are archaic and backward, because only the photographer have right and the person in the picture don't have any, We can't even make a copy of our own picture.. instead of a shared rights and responsibilities....

41 points by PedroCandeias 14y ago

toyg 14y ago

Obligatory XKCD (and fresh!): http://xkcd.com/1150/ http://xkcd.com/1150/

spinchange 14y ago
I know it's humor, and suspect Randall is generally far brighter than I, but comparing a photo sharing social network to a friend's garage is fallacious. In point of fact, people feeling like they were being sold out and getting vocal about it -from Zuck's wedding photographer to National Geographic and regular users in between- did make a difference, did it not?
- mpyne 14y ago
  You're right that it's not a 1:1 analogy, as for example the National Geographic photos probably brought enough traffic by themselves to be useful for Instagram, if they could figure out how to benefit from traffic alone. But for most people Randall is spot-on, Instagram holds their photos and gets... ? However the way Instagram went about these TOS changes, and their initial response are both comical examples of how not to handle stuff like this. I honestly think most understand the idea that Instagram can't host their photos forever without some way of making money from that, but the solution for Instagram can't be to expand the TOS to encompass every conceivable act and then try out solutions while saying "Oh, we pinky promise we won't do that vile thing". Figure out the plan (or plans) first, then make the TOS fit the plan. And communicate with everyone involved during the process instead of presenting a fait accompli.
  - spinchange 14y ago
    I know it is redundant to make a "well said" type comment, but "well said!" The sense that users are just pawns waiting to be monetized once scale is reached and the proprietors figure it out is what I think unsettles more informed users. Some might say PR is meaningless window dressing but I think it's critically important -even for start-ups- if they're operating or intending to operate at scale.
- toyg 14y ago
  You're missing the point. Whether a garage owner is "sensible" or not, or whether he is a friend or a professional, the fact is that he is still the owner, not you. That's actually a deeper truth of cloud computing in general, something that mainstream people (like Louis C.K. did recently) seem to actually grasp better than us geeks... probably because many of us have a vested interested in the public trusting us with (and being absolutely irresponsible with) their personal data, so we'd rather ignore some inconvenient truths.
  - spinchange 14y ago
    Look, obviously Instagram's servers, infrastructure and software are their own. I think that's so obvious on the face of things that it's trite to labor the point. They are in fact a company, serving users, and need those users' trust to do what they want to do. I am totally fine with Instagram or any free service making money and experimenting with ways of doing that. I have no issues with contextual advertising or trying to sell me something. The issue people complaining about is one of trust and a feeling/fear of broken faith. (e.g. "Hey, use our cool site for photo sharing! Oh by the way, now all your photos are belong to us.")
    - toyg 14y ago
      > I think that's so obvious on the face of things that it's trite to labor the point. No, it's not. It's the dirty little secret of "free" cloud services: you're using somebody else's resources to store your own (intellectual) property, relying on vague TOS clauses that can change from one minute to the next. This is exactly why this brouhaha took off: all of a sudden people "felt" those clauses were now abusive; they realised they were relying purely on Instagram's benevolence, and they "felt" that benevolence was now gone. This is the case for any cloud service, including Dropbox, iCloud etc; there are probably a few exceptions (I'd expect Salesforce to have tighter TOS), but the overwhelming majority of consumer-oriented cloud services are in the same boat. Last I checked, Dropbox reserved the right to go through your files -- for troubleshooting purposes only, no doubt, but again we have to take their word for it. How many times did you actually read those TOS? For what I know, they might now state that Dropbox can sell your data to China. The hard truth is that the garage is not yours and it will never be yours; in the best scenario, you are renting it with a tight contract , but in most cases you just had a chat with the owner once and he sorta promised not to resell your boxes full of comic books. Sooner or later you'll find a less honourable owner, and shit will fly.
- bdcravens 14y ago
  people feeling like they were being sold out Of course they're being sold out. They are the product - product gets sold. Anyone who thinks they aren't the product is delusional. Facebook didn't pay $1B to sell users filters, or hope they login to Instagram.com and click ads. No, they were purchased for their network value.
  - spinchange 14y ago
    I don't think Facebook's master plan is for us to log-in and click ads, I think their plan is for us to log-in and be ads. This is an important distinction from most ad-supported free web services. I do not mind being "targeted" and shown relevant advertising based on my interests of behavior patterns on the site or group of sites. I very much mind being used as an someone else's endorsement or having my actions and relationships themselves be monetized. I think most everyone does. Just pointing this out because it's a nuance of the "you are the product" philosophy that differs from most other free services.

notimetorelax 14y ago

Robert Anhalt Writes in comments: ... They [users that left] bought the CNET article that misreported on the proposed changes and thought that Instagram would all of a sudden have the ability to use their content for the purposes of advertising, hence quitting like Manny down there. The proposed changes were actually better for users, as they would have limited the existing advertising ability to be "about or around" the user content, but now we're sticking with the ability to modify user content for advert purposes. The media misreported it, the people bought it, and Instagram got to stick with their original TOS that will benefit their advertisers. Anyone who left Instagram because of this never read the TOS in the first place and gets their legal advice from people with no background in IP law. For the record, this is exactly why I get my IP/patent/copyright news from The Verge, who have Nilay Patel and Matt Macari on staff, former IP/patent/copyright lawyers, on staff. That's about as credible as you're going to get. --- Could anyone with knowledge on the matter explain if it's true?

smegel 14y ago
Instagram gets to stick with whatever TOS it likes. Users get to delete their accounts and use a service that isn't an obnoxious content thief. Everyone wins!
sp332 14y ago
Well, here's Nilay Patel's take, for comparison. http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-terms-of-service-what-they-really-mean http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-te...
unavoidable 14y ago
The Verge had a great summary (as posted above) so I won't go into the actual 'law'. I don't even think the issue is really about what they can or cannot do in the license - Instagram is entitled to write whatever they want in the license agreement, and the original TOS was drafted in a very lawyerly way to basically allow them to do almost anything (advertising-wise) they wanted with your photos anyway. The real interesting part is that users are willing to make a lot of noise about these license agreements without reading them. I think there's a lot of pent up FUD about license agreements because there are so many of them out there that nobody ever reads any of them, and there's a big appetite out there for somebody, anybody, to clarify these terms for them. The consumer group-think goes kind of like: "What can Facebook do with my data? I don't know, but I'm sure their lawyers put something in the license agreement that I'm never going to read or understand. Oh, this blog says it's really bad, time to complain loudly!" I think the result is that there really needs to be an effort on the part of these online service providers to clarify their terms and make human-readable summaries of users' rights/licenses so that everyone understands where they stand contractually.

tyrelb 14y ago

Already uninstalled :( I wish sometimes startups were as loyal to their users as they expect their users to be...

gregPC 14y ago

What if I want them to use my pictures in ads... I don't mind! I take a really good picture, and I'm sure Sam Adams would love some of the jolly good times I have with the product in my hand.

jschuur 14y ago

So the plan now is to still experiment with new business models, but instead of just letting people guess what the heck they are, they're going to be more explicit in a future blog post, before, presumably, rolling out TOS changes to go with them. And that actually sounds like a much better approach than when they did this week.

robgrady 14y ago

This event was nice to prompt me to remove one more rarely used app from my phone. Seriously who cares. It is an app, pick another.

pretoriusB 14y ago

Does that make me a prophet for thinking that this is exactly what will happen and that the whole thing is a non issue? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4937548 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4937548 No, I've just seen the same story play another 10 times for different companies. As we all did -- but some behave like they just came on the interwebs yesterday. Makes all those downvotes look silly in hindsight...

jahewson 14y ago
Just because the u-turn was inevitable doesn't make it a non-issue. Without kicking up a fuss there would not have been a u-turn.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  See the contradiction? You first call the u-turn "inevitable" and then go on to say that "without kicking up a fuss there would not have been a u-turn". You can't have it both ways. My case is simply: the u-turn was inevitable and the fuss was also inevitable. What could have been different though is people not responding to this with awe, shock and vows of "abandoning Instagram" and such, as if the situation would not have changed in a week. Especially internet-savvy people who have seen this tons of times. Some regular Instagram user shocked with the license change and thinking his photos will be sold without his consent? Well, that's OK. But a-list tech bloggers writing the same thing? WTF. That's what a call faux-rage.
  - jahewson 14y ago
    Right, but no uproar = no u-turn, you can't have one without the other.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

cormullion 14y ago

Going off on a tangent, I confess that the phrase "going forward" always reminds me of David Mitchell's rant on this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRr7H3woFn4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRr7H3woFn4 It's sometimes hard to take corporate announcements seriously, even if they're genuine.

ianstallings 14y ago

I'm really happy about this because now I won't have to hear about it anymore crossing fingers.

ryguytilidie 14y ago

But I thought the new terms didn't change anything and we shouldnt be worried about them. What changed with that made up point?

f4stjack 14y ago

The genie is already out of the bottle. People have already lost their trust with Instagram, I did at any rate. Problem is if you try high handed strategy like they did, as in we will sell your pictures without giving you a single dime, people will react. And they did. What they should do was to follow deviantart's model. Grab a percentage from the sold, printed out photos. Or put in a premium package. Or both. This is my two cents anyway.

skipper86 14y ago

Copyright laws are archaic and backward, because only the photographer have right and the person in the picture don't have any, We can't even make a copy of our own picture.. instead of a shared rights and responsibilities....