Instagram
dropped this little nugget of garbage on us earlier this week. The ToS
were insane. So people left in droves, quite literally overnight
Instagram lost thousands of users. Then in the afternoon they released
this nugget of double speak and whatnot.

Let
me translate that for you, Instagram and Facebook Legalese to real
English, “Dude we thought you wouldn’t notice that we’re taking your
pics and we’re going to turn a profit. How could YOU not know we were
planning on making money on this? Nothing in life is free forever.
Basically we thought we’d send out an update give you some good new
filters plus the ToS and you wouldn’t notice. We didn’t plan for Flickr
to release their app this week.”

I’ve
been expecting something like this since the day they were purchased by
Facebook. These ToS are not so different from the ToS on facebook. The
big difference- not being able to opt out.

The
reality is that things like Instagram need to turn a profit to stay
viable. How do they stay viable- think facebook’s ad system. How many
ads do you see on the sidebar of your facebook feed featuring your
friends? I see plenty of them. I opted out of them.

As
of right now, I can’t opt out of Instagram’s ToS, unless I delete all
my pics and leave. Which is kinda crazy. I don’t plan on deleting
everything yet, I’ll wait until the new ToS come out to see if I still
want to leave them entirely. frankly I’m already using the new updated
flickr app and I’m content with that, it’s a service I’ve used for
years, trust and will continue to use.

You can find me on flickr.