Early in 2012, Facebook approached the founders of Instagram with a $1
billion deal to buy the fledgling Internet photo company. In September 2012, the deal was finalized for
reportedly $750 million. Good news for Instagram,
but bad news for anyone who posted one or more of the 5 billion photos. Why?
Because now, with Facebook owning Instagram they have the right to sell
any of these photos.
The policy to sell user photos was supposed to take effect on January 16,
2013, which was 3 months after Facebook’s purchase. According to this new policy, Facebook is
claiming their right to sell Instagram photos without notifying or paying the
original poster. The only way to avoid
this happening to you is if you deleted your Instagram account before the
January 16th deadline. News
of this caused an uproar among users.
But how will this new Instagram policy affect users’ privacy? If you have an account that hasn’t been
deleted prior to the January 16, 2013 deadline, any of your photos could be
sold to advertisers. In other words,
that picture of you in your bikini while you were on Spring break, holding up a
bottle of Coors Light, could be sold to Coors and used in one of their advertisements. Imagine your surprise when you see this
picture on a billboard! Instagram will
be making money for Facebook from Coors, Coors will be making money from the
advertisement and you will be making nothing at all for your part in all of
this.
Kurt Opsahl, Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation says of this new policy, “It’s asking people to agree to unspecified
future commercial use of their photos.
That makes it challenging for someone to give informed consent to that
deal.”
Because there is nothing specified, this leaves an endless list of
possibilities for exploitation of user photos.
Travel agencies, airlines and resorts can all use your photos in
magazine ads, brochures, Internet advertising, television advertising,
etc. All they have to do is pay the fee to
Facebook and your Instagram photo is now theirs to use as they see fit. There is no limit to what types of photos
will be sold. This means that if you
post a picture of your children playing in the sands of a tropical island, your
children could be the subject of an advertisement.
