Wil's point about companies using information about you that you did not provide, and in fact have no relationship with, business or otherwise, is a more interesting one. For some people, contact information is a very sensitive matter, and celebrities are the uninteresting case, compared to those being stalked, witness protection, etc. How are we going to deal with this?
Especially in light of the fact that the data is essentially unprotectable. It is not often observed that "DRM in general is impossible" doesn't just apply to media conglomerates, but to people as well; there's no way to DRM your phone number or address, either. So that's pretty much out. What's next?
EU law deals with it. It's illegal (and has been for decades) to store personal information about someone unless you have a legitimate, proportionate reasons etc. etc.
Maybe not DRM as DRM, but sure you can protect such things. Just not necessarily with systems in place currently. Conceptually simple solution: unique tokens for your phone / address that a routing system directs to you. Your info is never even in the hands of e.g. someone you buy from, and you can simply revoke the token to prevent any and all spam from now until forever, regardless of what they do with it.
The problem here is not that "DRM in general is impossible" and I fail to see how DRM could solve the issue with Instagram, even if DRM wasn't totally broken. Facebook can access your phone contacts and Instagram can access your photos only with your consent. You're willingly giving them that data.
The far bigger issue here is that services like Instagram can take and use your data without your consent indirectly. If I give your photo or your phone number or your location to some service and that action brings you harm, who's to blame and whom can you sue?
I'm not a lawyer, but I bet it's not going to be Instagram or Facebook or the other offenders out there ;-) And DRM here is meaningless.
You don't own somebody's phone number because you have it in your contact DB. You are willingly giving them the phone numbers of everyone in your phone book... your contacts are not giving their consent to having their data sent wherever.
DRM would, hypothetically, solve the problem of giving your phone number to somebody but not allowing them to share it further without your consent. Except, of course, it doesn't.
By the way, because after years on the net I can see this coming from miles away, let me draw a distinction in advance between "I personally don't care about my number being shared without my knowledge out of other people's contact book to arbitrary third parties", and "I don't think anybody else should ever care about having their number shared out of somebody else's contact list with arbitrary other third parties." They aren't the same thing, and if you want to argue the latter point, that can be done without trying to argue that there isn't any consent issue at all, which is simply false. Whether you consider it right or wrong, some things are happening that some people don't want to occur.
I wasn't trying to defend these services. Instead I believe that such EULAs should be against the law, as the fine print is too subtle to be understood by a majority.
> Axiom 3: Company has no other visible means of income
This is not true.
There are plenty of other ways for social sites to make money. If Twitter is doing billions off promoted Tweets, then surely a company like Facebook which has even more data on you can make a similar amount selling standard targeted advertising.
What we are seeing here is crossing the line. The worst thing is, this data was acquired under completely different terms and conditions. I never agreed to this when I signed up, and there is the faint scent of bullshit now that the company is trying to turn around years after that fact and retrospectively acquire my data. 'Opt out by deleting' doesn't cut it - we had a contract!
That "contract" you had with all those sites specifically stated that the business could change the terms of the contract at any time in the future. If you don't like that stipulation, then don't agree to those terms and don't use those services.
You can't just unilaterally change a contract and expect it to be valid. My understanding of things like this is so that if things do change, the company can offer up a new TOS/contract which would supersede the previous.
The problem is that it's a service and they never promised they would keep providing it under the same terms forever. So when they change the terms, you can stop using it, but you can't (if the new terms are enforceable) demand to keep using it under the old terms, any more than you could demand they keep offering the service if they decided to shut it down.
On the other hand, we've all now all got always-on always-connected computers in our pockets that already have more computing power than typical web servers a decade ago, so maybe somebody will write some software and that whole personal server thing will finally take off soon.
"The problem is that it's a service and they never promised they would keep providing it under the same terms forever. So when they change the terms, you can stop using it, but you can't (if the new terms are enforceable) demand to keep using it under the old terms, any more than you could demand they keep offering the service if they decided to shut it down."
Right, but terms need to be agreed upon by both parties. They can change the terms all they want but that doesn't mean that I have to abide by them if they don't ask for another agreement. The simple solution is to provide another agreement and make me agree again. If I don't agree, then the service is cancelled and we both go on our merry way.
Is that issue settled? Right now most entities we're talking about have a "TOS can be changed at any time" clause and seem to operate under the assumption that if they changed them and you keep using the site you have agreed.
Do you have to click an "I agree" for the new terms? Do they have to notify you or can they just change them and everyone has silently agreed to the changes?
I've seen all of the above and have never been clear on the current legal precedents on this.
I'm not sure. I do know that games like World of Warcraft would make you agree to the terms each time you had a patch or they changed. It seems like Instagram is doing what you are describing. I would definitely be interested in hearing a lawyer's opinion of it, since just changing it at any time without any specific action required on the part of the user seems to not be a valid contract in my eyes.
I can't remember specifics, but I do remember reading either some corporate lawyer opinions or maybe a low court decision that this was valid (or maybe they had to notify, in some way, that the TOS had changed by email or with a flash message on login).
I have certainly read plenty of lawyer opinions that it's blatantly invalid to have "this contract can change at any time with no notice" clauses in a contract but I'm not sure what precedent is out there.
Axiom 1: Company is collecting and storing personal data that you voluntarily provide.
Wil's entire point stemmed from the involuntary nature inherent in much of public photography today. There's a reason that TV shows blur out the faces of people who don't sign commercial usage waivers.
That sounds like the kind of gray area lawyers love. In the years it takes for the court dust to settle, though, you may want to avoid having your picture taken.
You don't really have any rights to your image taken in a public place.
Gets a little dicey when your image is used in a way that could be viewed as you endorsing something, like an ad or a service. For that I use a pretty blanket model release form, but it's a grey area. Unless you are rich and famous. They have their own set of rules.
Depends on the jurisdiction I suppose. In Austria, and I believe also Germany and maybe Switzerland, I do have a "right to my own image". That means I'm allowed to control the publication and use of an image if me, with some exceptions (i.e., if I'm not the main motive of the image but just a member of a crowd).
Germany and Austria have some of the most strict privacy laws in the world so they are a good example of the extreme case. In Germany, you do not control the use of the image, only its publication. That is I can take your photo in public and hang it on my own wall. Publication of public figures is pretty much universally allowed. Use of your image taken in public for data purposes (not published) remains controversial.
If I take your photograph and you cannot be identified in it, I can publish it without your permission, (say in a crowd or in front of a building as you note, etc)
Another possible solution is to do without said service, and realize that there are other alternatives that won't sell your personal information. I've dumped Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google (with the exception of Reader, and occasional searches when DDG doesn't work right).
I can share pictures (Group MMS & Shared Photostreams) and find out what people are doing (texting, phone calls & email) without giving up that information.
These companies do all of the above deliberately until there is no viable competition left. This is a situation they competely created over several years.
It's not surprising people are upset when the mass trial period ends and there are no competitors left to move to.
Axiom 5: Company X's only chance of monetization is
by IPO or acquisition by Company Y.
If Company X is acquired by Company Y,
goto Axiom 1 through 5 for Company Y.
Independence is also important, when it comes to privacy.
I don't know how Tumblr is doing - it seems like it's under some pressure to do a better job of monetization - but there's been this idea of a bubble in social media for years, and it we are beginning realize that in some way we were right. It's just that we didn't consider that companies would pursue the sinister solutions to their fiscal quandaries.
Makes you wonder how this makes the investors look.
Yep, we all recognize that companies actually have to cover operating expenses (and I suspect that most people here are capitalistic enough to say a company should ideally make a profit).
But if you're going to change the rules once you have millions of users, a prominent notification as opposed to inserting language into the middle of a terms of use policy would seem to make sense. I think Instagram users would be much more willing to listen if the reason and justification for this policy shift were clearly explained and users clearly notified.
There's a big difference between being surprised by behavior and simply not liking it. Being surprised by Instagram's intent to monetize is unreasonable, but it's fine to dislike it.
Why don't online businesses start offering privacy-conscious customers the option to pay for their services? This seems like a pretty obvious alternative to paying with privacy. I doubt they would even have to charge much for it to be profitable.
The problem is that the people willing to pay are exactly the people the advertisers most want to reach. The whole point of all this privacy invasion is to target the people with money who are willing to spend it. You take those people out of the pool and offering a free service no longer makes any sense, because nobody wants to pay to reach the people too cheap to buy stuff.
Which leaves you with a pay-only service, competing with a free-only service that consequently has ten times as many users (and therefore much stronger network effects), and the pay service goes out of business.
The true problem with all of this is that we're using services for things we should be using products for. You want to share photos with friends? We could do that in 1999 with AOL Instant Messenger. But now Facebook and Instagram have a better UX -- and it has nothing to do with whether they're services.
What we need is an open source P2P Instagram. No ads, no paying anybody anything, just photo sharing.
> The problem is that the people willing to pay are exactly the people the advertisers most want to reach.
So charge more. Instagram et al are trying to make money, not serve advertisers. If privacy-conscious people are willing to pay more than advertisers that's great.
The trouble is that the users (including the privacy conscious users) have to go where their friends are to interact with their friends. And the majority of users are not willing to pay money for more privacy, so the advertising-funded service gets the majority of the users, and the privacy conscious users can then either give up their privacy or lose the ability to interact with their not so privacy conscious friends. And they choose the first option in droves (or there just aren't enough privacy conscious people left), so there is no real market for the alternative.
I mean think about it: It's not like offering a paid service is rocket science. If there was money to be made there, why isn't anyone making a billion dollars offering it? Why aren't you?
Maybe it's an untapped market and no one else has had the vision to serve it. But this is kind of one of those money where your mouth is situations. If you think that market is lucrative enough to be worth chasing, do it. If not, well, apparently no one else does either, so here we are.
Axiom 5: It is possible to monetize free services in numerous ways without violating the privacy of your users, reneging on a TOS they signed earlier, and generally destroying their trust or expectations of fairness.
In the long run, this is not a viable business model. Servers might get cheaper every day, but you're still going to have to pay for them every month your service is up and running.
Facebook makes $36/user per year, on average. They are mostly about photos. Instagram knows this. $0.99 will be cutting it way too short.
I don't understand why companies like this don't just offer an ad-free pay option with a stronger privacy policy as an alternative to their free option and make everyone happy, except the total freeloaders who want free and their privacy protected. Seems to work fine for Flickr.
Were you logged into a google account? I was logged in and got the above screen. I was not trying to reply--kind of hard to when you can't even read the post.
11.2 you agree that this license includes a right for google to make such content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such content in connection with the provision of those services.
11.3 you understand that google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your content as are necessary to conform and adapt that content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. you agree that this license shall permit google to take these actions.
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
IANAL, but I don't think that includes a right to sell (sub-license) your content.
Yup, this came up during the uproar when Google changed their privacy policy earlier this year. IIRC this language is needed to let them share your data across services. e.g. showing your profile photo as part of their social search results might quality as "publicly display".
Google's current privacy policy includes the statement:
"We believe personal information should not be held hostage and we are committed to building products that let users export their personal information to other services. We don’t sell users’ personal information."
While he's very much on the right track here, his mention of celebrities muddles the point somewhat.
In most states (perhaps all), it is illegal to use someone's likeness for advertising without their consent. This is regardless of their status as a celebrity or not.
This is why photographers who think their photos might be used commercially should get model releases from any identifiable persons in their photos. They should also give copies of those releases to any company that wants to use the photo commercially, so that company can defend themselves if the model tries to sue.
>In most states (perhaps all), it is illegal to use someone's likeness for advertising without their consent. This is regardless of their status as a celebrity or not.
It's not all states, and it's not entirely clear cut in many states (it depends on how the likeness is used), and their TOS does give permission to use your likeness (which means that if the person in the photo is also an Instagram user, they have a tougher case).
But Instagram would certainly be playing with fire if they tried that with a celebrity, and I don't think they would. It's your ordinary folks who can't afford to lawyer up against a huge corporation that are more likely to be affected by this.
I think the point you're making here is separate from the original article. It's always been a bit of a grey area that you can take a picture of someone and post it on InstaFlickaFacebookOGram without their consent.
However Will's point is that Instagram's new agreement may compromise a user's ability to manage their personal brand, because their photos are no longer their own. If I'm Will Wheaton and I post a photo of myself having a good time at Disney Land, I don't want Disney Land taking that photo and using it in their ads. Since it's a photo of myself the photo release issue isn't the problem, since I've forfeited that right to sue by agreeing to Instagram's new agreement.
The celebrity angle is an interesting one, because based on previous contracts a celebrity may not be able to grant Instagram the rights it outlines in its TOS - they may already be granted to another entity.
The celebrity angle is interesting here. I eventually killed a little product because it was too hard to legally acquire face shots of celebrities and it just didn't have enough zing without pictures by names.
If enough celebrities used Instagram, and Instagram could figure out their accounts, they could open autopaparazzi.com.
What? There are plenty of photo services that will license you photos of celebrities. Getty Images for one. We're not talking about publicity shy people here.
It depends on the use. If you are using the photos for news purposes, then yes, this works. But if you are using it for commercial purposes, then you would also need a release showing that the person (celebrity or not) received sufficient compensation for the use of their likeness. Without that, you can be sued very easily.
I think that's less the issue here than CBS likely holding the commercial rights to Kaley Cuoco and Melissa Rauch being used together in anything that would look like an ad.
Presumably it will be in violation of Instagram's TOS to post the kind of pic that he talks about. (See Rights 4.(ii) )
But as he alludes to, it should make it interesting when someone does.
There is a HUGE difference between a company using personal data about you to target marketing to you, and company taking data (photos in this case) provided by you (or by a third party about you) and using it to market products to others.
If I see an ad about (insert product name) in my (insert Google product) stream, it is something that only I can see. If you see a picture of me (perhaps uploaded by a "friend" to a site like instagram) used to advertised products to you, then my privacy has been severely breached.
Google has an ad network. I know they are collecting data about me and using it to deliver targeted advertising to me. I also know that the information google collects on me is their competitive advantage, and it's in their best interests not to sell it to a 3rd party.
You should only be afraid of services that have to apparent revenue model, because you've got no idea what they're doing with your data. When the use of your data is clear and well known, you can make an informed decision on whether or not to use the service.
It seems that the vast majority users are 100% OK with giving up some level of privacy for free service. I consider myself fully within that group and do not mind targeted ads for example.
I believe where users draw the line is when a service uses their content to distribute to others for a fee. Using images, essentially intellectual property, is not OK with me. Nor am I a fan of Facebook using my name in sponsored likes. The later bothers me less, but it still annoys me that it is happening. Part of this is the fact that when you first logged on to facebook, you viewed it as a way to share in a fairly private network with your friends. Now your habits must change to protect yourself, but you have no alternative (yet).
I don’t have an answer to the problem with how free networks should grow, but personally, I am opposed to any use of my content as a distribution or free use of images. Now I feel that I have to protect myself by not posting photos to facebook in case they one day change their policy.
Just as we have a "do not track" option for our webbrowsing habits, we're going to need to have something similar for other aspects of our increasingly-digital lives:
Sounds like the EU's Data Protection law. Making it illegal to store personal information about people unless they have opted in, etc.
The question of whether they can use someone's likeness is an interesting one, and the answer to that apparently varies from state to state. Instagram could probably get you to sign away the right to use your own likeness in their ads, but that wouldn't apply to people who don't use their service.
I'm not sure how jurisdictions of other states apply (any actual lawyers want to weigh in?) but Instagram is based in California where (if you can believe it), publicity rights are quite strong (even dead celebrities get protection there). There's a little gray area that Instagram could exploit there, but I think the example Wheaton described there would be a pretty easy meal for Rauch's lawyers. At the very least, Instagram's legal team would almost certainly say "fuck no" if the marketing department showed them an ad like that without getting permission to use her likeness.
This is dubious at best. He doesn't use it, he's not a lawyer, and his grasp on what they are doing is plain wrong. I'm not saying that privacy concerns are moot. I'm saying Wil Wheaton is your typical self-proclaimed geek these days. He shoots from the hip at anything that might trounce his sense of entitlement.
I feel like most people complaining about the whole 'Instagram will use photos in advertisements' make it seem like the advertisements are going to be on television or newspapers, etc. Or that said advertisements will say "Celebrity X uses IG, you should too".
To me is seems like the ads are going to be more along the lines of promoted restaurants and/or venues using photos the people you follow have taken. IG basically knows where everyone goes based on people voluntarily tagging images, and can now serve ads based on that in the same way FB serves ads from pages you like.
An ad that says, 'Your friend recently went to X (with a photo they took at said venue)', is a pretty engaging advertisement in my mind.
I think I interpreted Wheaton's post in a different way than you did. To me, the author didn't seem to make any bold claims about effects this would have, and he also did not give me the impression that he was an authority on the subject.
To the contrary, I thought the theme of his post was specifically that he didn't know how Instagram's new policies would effect personal privacy, and that lack of understanding concerns him. When pondering the implications, he even goes as far as to ask whether a worrisome, fictional scenario was even a possibility rather than insisting that it would happen.
Where do you think he expressed a sense of entitlement? He's not a user of Instagram, so I didn't get the impression that he thought Instagram owed him something.
I think his whole post is a lead in to an excellent point: in the "social web" in which we all interact daily, we are seeing more and more that you don't have to use a service in any way in order to be affected by the decisions that services make about its own users' privacy. All entitlements aside, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain control over your own privacy when the details of your life are extracted not as a result of your own deliberate decisions but by the decisions of others.
Opinions about whether Wil Wheaton is a self entitled geek aside, I hope we can all agree that that is a point worthy of consideration.
So what, in his grasp, was wrong? I'm curious. He says "Instagram is now going to use photos taken by its users in advertising, and they may or may not disclose to viewers when the advertising is happening" -- is that incorrect? That's pretty much the only assertion he makes that could be factually wrong. Everything else in there is his opinion, which isn't "plain wrong"; it's just his opinion, just as it is yours that he's "your typical self-proclaimed geek these days" and "shoots from the hip at anything that might trounce his sense of entitlement."
Entitlement is using a free service and then complaining about the rules. Especially funny considering the rant was written on Google+, which has similar terms of use.
Sure they will, they live and die by users using the service. If enough users decided to start using one of the many competing services instead they will.
In my reading, the plain language of the new ToS states that Instagram can use your photos in advertising without even labeling it as such. IMO this is absolutely at odds with the normal expectations of both people who use social media and people who simply view advertising.
The direction Instagram is going is similar to what Facebook does already with what I'll call "endorsement advertising".
I've noticed ads where it says something like "your friend Dave likes Verizon", with a clear link to an ad. I then ask Dave if he recently "Liked" verizon and he says "No, but maybe a year ago or something for a contest". So they are selling our likes as endorsements to brands already.
Instagram wants to do this with photos, I expect. A photo of you driving a Prius might link to a Toyota brand page after you follow the Toyota instagram profile, for example.
Does paying for a service help keep my data private? For example, if I'm a paid user at Linkedin - does that mean they would treat my data differently than that of the free users?
No. It used to be that you didn't get ads on cable TV because you already paid for the channels. Then the ads came anyway. Just because you pay for an internet service doesn't mean you avoided the privacy concerns that plague free services. At best you just postponed them.
if I'm in someone's address book, and they use an app that grants the developer full, unfettered access to their address book, I've now had my information given without my consultation or consent to a developer, and I never even knew it was happening.
== It used to be "pick your friends wisely"
But now, that's before the meaning of the term was of a different sort.
While tech related sites like hacker news get concerned about these matters, I'm pretty sure most Instagram users don't care about these privacy policies just like most Facebook user's haven't cared. They get to use a fun cool product for free and everything else happens behind the scenes (out of sight out of mind).
I'll be honest. If it wasn't for Big Bang Theory, I'd have no clue who this guy was. Even with reference to Star Trek, I can't remember his character. Not sure why I'd care about his opinion on a semi-tech related topic (I know, not about me and my own opinion).
I have no idea who most of the authors of essays submitted to HN are. Sometimes I come to know more about them by reading more of their work, but usually I don't know who they are before then. Same for the vast majority of folks posting comments.
If we are interested only in the opinions of people we already know, how can a site like HN even exist?
I mean its not bad. I agree with your original statement that I too, don't know the majority of people who post stuff to HN in general, and I don't have issues with that. However, when someone submits a name in the title, I expect it to be a name that is relevant or something I would consider important. Names like Marc Andreesen or whoever makes a lot of sense. Wil Wheaton, not so much. Of course thats personal opinion.
That said, even with blog posts by Marc Andreesen, you don't see stuff like "<insert name>: title". That sorta irks me. Personal problem, I know.
I'm pretty sure this is posted because it's a fairly-well-known blogger (which Wil is, now) talking about the Instagram TOS topic and not just because it's some redshirt from Star Trek.
Wil was never a redshirt. He was the son of the ships doctor who (if I remember rightly) became the ships ensign, joined Star-Fleet and later went off to explore other planes of existence with an alien known as "The Traveller".
I only knew him from Stand By Me. He stopped being "that minor character from Star Trek" long ago. He's "internet famous" due to his blog and tech advocacy, with a boost from the occasional appearance on Big Bang Theory.
part of the problem here is that wil wheaton's price for "selling his privacy" is higher than that of many others (largely because he is a celeb and so has more earning potential there), but the current mechanism has no way to manage a range of values.
it's possible a more sophisticated "privacy market" could solve these issues.
Interesting.
There are a few things though :
- Facebook did prove it : most users dont read/care about TOS ( CGU here ), as long as they get stuff for free. You can do the most outrageous things with user data ( google ), people dont mind as long as they get value out of the service.
> Seth Green walking through an Urban Outfitters, does that mean Urban Outfitters can take that image and use it to create an implied endorsement by Seth?
- Unless walking through an Urban Outfitters requires agreeing with TOS before entering it, the exemple is irrelevant. When you sign up for facegoogram , you basically sign a binding contract. Wether the terms are fair , or even legal or not, it is another issue.
>So Instagram is now going to use photos taken by its users in advertising, and they may or may not disclose to viewers when the advertising is happening.
No, they are NOT going to do that.
It's 2012. Why are people --and especially someone like Wheaton-- behaving like it's 1994 and they are learning this "web" thing for the first time?
I've seen the same bloody story play up 10 or 20 times. They made a BS change on their license terms, they are is gonna be a small fuss from their users about it and they are gonna revert it.
It's not like Instagram-the-company even intended to do that in the first place -- most likely they screwed up the phrasing but meant something extremely more limited (like: we'd have be able to use your pics when advertising Instagram-the-app itself).
Instead, people are acting like Instagram was really going to sell their photos and not pay them, and like this thing won't be revoked in less than a month.
That is absurd.
Why?
1) The backslash from the users, especially with 2-3 active competitors against the company (Twitter, which added photo filters to its app, being the latest heavyweight).
2) The lawsuits from users their photos they did attempt to sell.
3) It's not a way to make money, anyway. Instagram is not a Getty Images like company -- and limited size pictures with cliched filters is not exactly a stock image market. Getty actually partners with Flickr, which has actual photos of ALL kinds and PAYS the photographer if it uses the pictures, but it's not like anything lucrative came out of it, for either Flickr, Getty or the users.
Yes, this backlash from users is exactly what's happening. You can't simultaneously try to dissuade the backlash from happening and depend on it to prevent the undesirable events from taking place.
>Yes, this backlash from users is exactly what's happening. You can't simultaneously try to dissuade the backlash from happening and depend on it to prevent the undesirable events from taking place.
No, but I CAN and AM expecting people participating in the backlash:
a) NOT to behave like it's the first time they are seeing this
b) NOT to behave like this move was intended as perceived, and
c) NOT to behave like this wont be reverted pronto.
And I expect this especially from internet savvy people like Wheaton, who have seen this play out tens of times on the nets with similar licence changes...
Had Wheaton written something like "I'm sure this is another one of countless examples of ill-thought and quickly reverted license changes" I would be totally OK.
The way it is now, it's like someone writing "Oh, my god, Charlie Brown was tricked again by Lucy, I don't believe it!!!!" for paragraph after paragraph.
Not to mention that I also presented several other reasons besides the backlash why this is a non-story (for one, it's inconceivable as a business move, when a competitor, Twitter, just turned on "kill mode", second it doesn't make sense as a monetization tactic, it's not like hipster filtered photos are a stock photo favorite, or stock photography itself is a large market).
Instagram would have closed shop the very first day it actually ATTEMPTED to sell a user photo without his permission.
Plus, I addressed this very question in my reply already. Not to mention that my first comment have several ADDITIONAL reasons why this is not actually happening.
CNN and other media outlets report that Facebook reverted their TOS update and went back to using the previous one. 'The site posted a brief message on users' home pages that said it was returning to its previous "Terms of Use" policy "while we resolve the issues that people have raised."
Are you? Citing one situation where they pulled back doesn't account for all of the endless updates they made against people's wishes, most recently that whole thing where they don't give users a choice anymore at all.
>Are you? Citing one situation where they pulled back doesn't account for all of the endless updates they made against people's wishes, most recently that whole thing where they don't give users a choice anymore at all.
What "users wishes"? Some people will always complain for anything.
It only matters when large volumes of users protest. Some guy in rural Montana not liking some Facebook policy doesn't mean FB will change it.
In this case the MAJORITY of the people are using Facebook as they did before, and have no problem with any changes.
Not the same case with Instagram, where the change has to do with the core (and basically only) feature of the service, uploading your photos.
> most likely they screwed up the phrasing but meant something extremely more limited
I'm a pretty firm believer in Hanlon's razor ("never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"), except when it comes to lawyers. They tend to put a lot of thought into what they write, and understand the ramifications of their words.
I worked for an ad network which was showcasing a banner template that looked like this: log in with your Facebook account from an ad, profile pictures of your friends appear, share stuff about the product with them. I'm pretty sure that covers "use of your pictures for advertising". It's not exactly using your face in the next Super Bowl ad, but it's still using your image for commercial purposes.
Why are you so sure they aren't going to do it? Facebook used and continues to use people's names and pictures in ads. I agree it's unlikely they'll do it Getty-style, but that's not the only way to make money off your picture.
Didn't Facebook already use people's pictures in their ads? What makes you so sure this will not happen again? (well okay, maybe not after all this outrage).
Instagram using users pictures in their ads (for Instagram itself) is totally fine (with the appropriate warning in the TOS). Companies do that all the time.
The problem would be Instragram using user pictures for third-party ads, ie. selling user pictures to ad agencies.
My question is do the Terms of Service allow for the situation Wil Wheaton is explaining?
People all over the technology industry fall over themselves trying to predict what these companies are going to do. A lot of them fail. Changing the ToS is a big deal because its tangible and meaningful. Intent is hard to define and I don't think folks should get the habit of assuming a companies intentions.
I agree, as I mentioned in an above comment, I feel like the ads will be something like FB's promoted posts that show highlighted ads of things your friends like.
To me, this sort of ad in the IG stream using photos my friends took at restaurants/venues, saying that 'my friend recently went to X place' seems like a pretty engaging ad that I'd like to see. I already look at my friends' photos, so having one show up again promoting a restaurant I might like to go to wouldn't a big deal to me.
But as you mentioned, I just don't know what the TOS actually allows for, so I'm only speculating.
It ought to be near the top of their concerns, though. A lot of celebrities use Instagram, and I'm sure that at least part of it's popularity is directly attributable to that.
Axiom 2: Company does not charge you for this service
Axiom 3: Company has no other visible means of income
Axiom 4: Company has non-trivial operating expenses
Given that this covers a huge amount of "our digital life", there are a few possible solutions:
- Keep getting services without paying money but paying with privacy
- Identify another way to get the services we rely on to be paid for
- Hope that a large benefactor company will buy the services we use and write the operational cost off out of the goodness of their hearts