Just as I was finishing up a nice little blog post about all the fun social connections and playful experiments that can happen on Instagram, they go and change their Terms of Service and piss everyone off. I saw people dropping like flies yesterday, announcing their departure from instagram before the new year. We’re talkin heavy hitters: an art gallery owner (who posts artists’ work and updates about the gallery), an anthropologist at Intel who has written extensively on technology, design consultancy founders, startup founders, people whom I respect. Without the people, Instagram is nothing. The reason I loved it is that so many people were using it openly. I could be in a design firm in Berlin one moment and a design school in Tokyo the next.
And then this…
Damn it.
As someone who wrote about technology trends and privacy at her previous job, I know the importance of taking a stand. Users have to quit services to protest unfair data usage. The company benefiting from user data is rarely the user’s advocate unfortunately. I get it.
And luckily, I think most of the people I’m following are going back to Flickr (which I thought was done for sure because last time I was there pulling images for a presentation, all the photos I picked were from 2009.) It’s back baby! Part of the appeal is that they let people choose their own copyrights.
For expert takes on the Instagram fail see: NYT’s What Instagram’s New Terms of Service Means for You and Mashable’s less subtly titled Instagram signs your life away.