Awful

Selling My Photos & I Don’t Get a Dime? Thanks A Lot, Instagram

Instagram is treading the same dangerous lines that Facebook once did, morphing from a cool forum for sharing photos, memories, and ideas to a greedy content-miner itching to share other people’s information without their consent. MySpace was never this cruel! Remember a few years back when there were rumors of Facebook using your personal pics from birthday parties and trips for ads? Well, Instagram is now gearing up to actually do it. Starting on January 16th (which is also the last day to delete your account), Instagram will have the “perpetual right” to license any photo uploaded unto the site. So both you and Rihanna (aka @badgalriri) should be very concerned.

Instagram users now have to ask themselves: is having an account that makes it easy to share photos really worth it? It’s a bitter reminder that social media users put a lot of trust in sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram not to abuse their position or misuse their information. New “rules” like this are definitely enough to make many reconsider using the internet as a photo album or to keep their accounts but share less and less information to the point that they become invisible online aside from a 3-month-old default pic.

As Instagram starts to transition from a photo-sharing website to a pseudo stock photo agency, maybe we should think hard about the next photos we choose to upload. Although this is certainly unfair and uncalled for, the most damaging side effect may be that Instagram has lost a great deal of its “cool factor” along with the announcement. You can head over to WIRED to get tips on how to effectively get rid of your account if you so choose. Otherwise, you might get to see yourself on a billboard someday — but good luck getting paid for it.

TAGS: Instagram | social media | terms of use

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