How to Download Your Instagram Photos and Kill Your Account | Hacker News Reader

How to Download Your Instagram Photos and Kill Your Account

wired.com

389 pointsmtgx146 comments

For those of you who don't think this is a big deal. Instagram is explicitly stating that they're going to sell the use of your pictures to third parties. They're also going to start showing ads in their news stream. I know the pictures are of too low quality to be plastered on a billboard. That's not the point. What I expect they want to happen is something like this:

I post a picture of me drinking a Coke to Instagram. I expect to share this with my friends, and maybe the people who follow me on Twitter. I know it's publicly available, but the chances of anyone beyond my circle of friends seeing it are slim to none. But now, Instagram notices that I posted this picture and sells it to Coke. Now, when Coke starts buying ads on Instagram, my photo shows on total stranger's news streams saying something like "Hey Enjoy a Coke, like this guy here!"

So, what's wrong with that? Well, for one thing, I never agreed to be in an ad campaign for Coke. Maybe I don't even like Coke. Maybe MY caption was something like "Ugh, out of Pepsi".

For another thing, generally, when you appear in an advertisement for a product, you get paid. Your likeness in the context of a commercial ad campaign has value, and when a company says "Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and take that and not pay you anything" the appropriate response is "hell no".

It'd be even more effective (read: messed up) if they take your coke-drinking-photo and show this in your own friends' feeds as an advertisement, with the kind of caption you mentioned.

I experienced the effectiveness of seeing a friend's face on an ad first hand a few years ago, when a friend of mine put up a job-posting ad on facebook with his face on it. My engagement with that ad was ridiculously high and it lead me to go proactively research what his company was about.

Why is it "messed up" if it makes advertising more engaging? Facebook essentially does what you describe, by showing your friends the posts/ads of pages you have liked.

I think it's just a spectrum where ads can become a service. What if Netflix could show me movies that friends have recently watched? Or TV ads rendered client-side to have personal details (adapting to the demographics)? What if I was emailed early about new concerts happening in my area, based on what I listen to on Spotify? And then was encouraged to post to FB when I bought tickets.

The last one is a real (Songkick) and is actually one my my favorite services. Though, is it an ad company? They certainly get a referral from Ticketmaster. What if they sold my preferences to Ticketmaster so they could know how to optimize a lineup with listener preferences?

What I'm getting at is that people seem really afraid of customization and personalization. Somehow it's "messed up" if ads capitalize on the network they have built; our reaction is that these free services are taking advantage us.

It's important to remember, if you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. This is why Google gives away a browser, why Facebook and Twitter remain free, and why Instagram was worth $1B. That number certainly didn't correspond to an iPhone app and a relatively simple backend tech stack -- it bought their growth, user engagement, and stickiness. And that's exactly what they're going to capitalize on to make back the investment.

But this isn't even "your data" that's being used. It's "you" whose likeliness is being leveraged to attain higher ad engagement.

While the use of our data for advertisement is covert in nature, the possible scenario I suggest where "we" ourselves become the advertisement seems very overt to me. I agree that this is similar to facebook likes and shares. However, facebook likes are voluntary actions by me. That is very different from my personal photos (which are even stronger impressions that likes or shares) being used in their original form as advertisements without my knowledge or consent (well I guess I do consent to it if I use the service under the new TOS).

Maybe this will be accepted by society in the coming years, but right here and now, it evokes an eerie "evil-mustache universe" type reaction in me, where my "normal universe personal photos" become mirrored as "evil-mustache universe advertisement photos".

>Why is it "messed up" if it makes advertising more engaging?

You do understand that "making advertising more engaging" does not preclude something being messed up, right? If anything, it's the opposite.

Killing people on camera would also make for engaging advertising. Wouldn't you find it "messed up" for that reason?

There are tons of stock photography models who live with this risk for a bit of compensation. So they make (say) $100 to be in a photo and have a 0.01% chance of being in an ad they find objectionable.

I get a free/fun app instead of $100. Instead of a .01% chance, I have a .00000001% of appearing in an objectionable ad (my photos just aren't as good as pros, and I'm just not that pretty). Add to that-- if this happens, I certainly won't be the first one it happens to and will almost certainly have an opportunity to delete my account when I start hearing about this happening in the wild. Even if I don't delete it, the chance of my crappy photos getting found/used out of the MANY BILLIONS on instagram also seems laughably small.

Statistically, this could bite me-- but I have to figure that the chance is so close to 0% that the (small) reward of using Instagram is worth the (trivial) risk. I also tend to dismiss concerns around lightning, sharks, and hijackers.

What about the risk of your image being attached with a company/idea that disagree with your believes nor doesn't reflect your ideas?

> Add to that-- if this happens, I certainly won't be the first one it happens to and will almost certainly have an opportunity to delete my account when I start hearing about this happening in the wild. Even if I don't delete it, the chance of my crappy photos getting found/used out of the MANY BILLIONS on instagram also seems laughably small.

You don't understand the situation. When you delete your account, it won't delete the ads in circulation - there won't be anything you can do about that.

And your photo won't be used for a general Coke advertising campaign. It will be used to sell Coke to YOUR FRIENDS, on Facebook and elsewhere across the web. Everywhere your friends go on the intertubez, they'll see a picture of you drinking Coke, with the caption "Drink Coke, just like your good buddy Webwright does!" And that will stay as long as Coke feels like it.

"You don't understand the situation."

I sure do. My point was-- the first time this happens, there will be an outcry that makes this one seem small. At that point, I can delete my account. Maybe the poor sucker who was the first victim can't, but I can. MAYBE Instagram at this point is so malevolent that they give me the finger and retain my photos, but that seems kinda unlikely.

Edit: And I couldn't give a single damn about whether my friends see my visage next to a coke logo if I was willing to photograph myself enjoying a coke. It doesn't inconvenience me or my friends one single bit. Even if they throw my photo into a cigarette ad, I'd probably send them an annoyed note, nuke my account, shrug and move on with my life.

The contract explicitly specifies that they can, and will, retain all your photos if you don't delete your account by the deadline. After that, they have a permanent license to do whatever they want with your photos.

Yep-- lawyers who write ToS' tend to make them as company-friendly as possible to give them the most wiggle room (and best defense in case they get sued). But it'd be silly/suicidal to use photos from deleted accounts when there are literally BILLIONS from non-deleted accounts.

You still don't understand the situation. By taking down Instagram now we'll send a clear message that taking liberties with our privacy and personal identity and likeness is /not acceptable/.

>By taking down Instagram now we'll send a clear message that taking liberties with our privacy and personal identity and likeness is /not acceptable/.

I call BS. Having already accepted the Patriot Act, mass domestic surveillance, phone taps without a warrant, most of our data in Google/Facebook/MS/Apple/Dropbox/Amazon clouds, etc, we're now supposed "send a clear message that taking liberties with our privacy and personal identity and likeness is /not acceptable/."???

It's the opposite: few things have been MORE acceptable by american society than companies and governments taking liberties with our privacy and personal identity.

Sending a message to Instagram? It's like being inside a burning house and we respond by stomping on our cigarette.

pretoriusB: It sounds that you are a victim of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

No -- but you might be responding to something I have NOT said.

I'm not against action. I'm for action where it _matters_.

Abandoning all those really relevant privacy fronts and then "sending a message" to ...Instagram, is not it.

That's what I tried to convey with my "stomping the cigarette" analogy. Better try to put down the house fire first...

You make a seriously excellent point!

Are you equally bothered by the use of "your friends like X page" on Facebook?

I know I am.

I kind of agree with you here. Perhaps it's just my natural aversion to mass hysteria, but I think that allowing them to use the photos they provided you with an app, bandwidth, servers, and a web application to create is pretty reasonable. Now, I assume that everyone (including Instagram) is aware that using them in any harming way to the original author can only ruin their business. Sure, perhaps legally they COULD use that picture of me sipping on my latte to advertise extra large dildos, but I'm going to assume that they're aware that would be a poor choice. However, if they want to use the picture of my feet in the sand as stock photography somewhere, go for it. I'd be flattered. I would happily count the $10 I would have made on a stock photo website an appropriate fee to access to their service.

Most stock photography companies require that models sign a release to prevent legal problems from arising due to the photo.

In this case, it presents a problem if you photograph someone and Instagram sells that photo without a release. Instagram or the third-party that buys the photo could be liable as a result.

I'm surprised that Instagram's lawyers didn't consider this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release

Models != InstagramUsers

I think the chance of your photo being used in an ad targetting your friends is much higher than .00000001%.

I think the more interesting thing about the ad approach described by the OP that you are commenting on is that it's not unlikely that this advertising approach if automated just ends up completely debasing the value of photo ads entirely. An ad with a gorgeous woman (or handsome guy) prominantly drinking a coke is going to be far more effective than a nobody casually drinking a coke. The chance of a random instagram photo that contains a coke in the image serving as effective advertising is minute. The coke can needs to be prominent. The person in the photo needs to be someone that the viewer envies, desires or aspires to be like. Lastly the photo needs to somehow make coke a key subject/focal point of the photo. The changes of the stars aligning to make an instagram photo serve as good advertising for a product is very unlikely versus the opposite. That means that most of the time the advertiser would be receiving shitty advertising.

you describe old fashioned ads pics, but the next generation of ads could be very different. maybe some marketing finally discovered that repeating 100 times the same glamour expensive pic is boring and not efficient. display an amateur pic that is new every f5 can work much better to attract attention, with a good algorithm, and the coke can is not necessary, a vague similarity with someone you know would be enough.

I regret not having instagram account I could wipe right now.

> For another thing, generally, when you appear in an advertisement for a product, you get paid. Your likeness in the context of a commercial ad campaign has value

I don't think this is going to be a popular opinion, but keep in mind that Instagram has untold engineers and UI people, all of whom are fairly expensive, and this advertising clause is really in lieu of a licensing fee, not something consumers provide "for free".

I'm not really in favor of the business model, but in a world where apps are licensed at 99c I think models like this are to be expected. To fix this problem, we would have to return to a system where the costs to develop software are paid by the people who use it.

I agree. Personally, I wouldn't mind paying more for software in return for more control over how my information is used, but I'm probably in the minority. I just assume everything I post Facebook, Twitter, etc, is available for public consumption regardless of what privacy controls they have.

The thing about this model is it extracts a large cost from a very small proportion of the users and the rest get a free ride. If they'd included it as an opt-in service and shared some of the revenue with the users whose photos they sold, it would probably be very popular.

There's nothing wrong with setting up a business model like this, as long as people know what they are opting into it from the very start. Luring people into using your service then yanking the rug out from under them by changing your business model is just plain not cool.

Not only that, but pulling the rug out after the founders made away with a billion dollars is what's normally called fraud.

You have no imagination, a better idea would be to sell the photos and all the data Facebook and Instagram have on you to Coke so in a couple of years when you're pumping gas a little camera recognizes your face and the gas pump says "Hi Imgabe! You like Coke! You can't fool us! Press yes to buy a Coke! Your mom's birthday is next Tuesday but since she's a diabetic would you like to buy her a Diet Coke? STOP TRYING TO HIDE YOUR FACE AND PRESS YES TO BUY YOUR DIABETIC MOM A DIET COKE IMGABE.

It's coming.

We started a complaint to ask Instagram to reconsider. http://www.publikdemand.com/s/dXpDf7/

"Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos."

-- http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-wer...

"I know the pictures are of too low quality to be plastered on a billboard."

Don't be too sure about that. Billboard pictures are very lowres (sometimes even 10ppi) because most of the time they are viewed from a large distance.

I think it boils down to economics: Why give away your chance to become a poster child and the money that goes with it? Taking your photos elsewhere will kill that chance, and the accompanying unfairness.

I wonder why instagram didn't opt for the revenue sharing model with its users.

You are close, I think their plan is to use your photos with people you know. AKA you drinking the coke is now coke's ad on your friend's pages.

Can somebody explain to me what the big deal is about Instagram and these new terms of service? I can't fathom that anything but 1% of 1% of photos taken there are good enough to be used commercially, and if folks are so afraid that their pictures of Starbucks lattes will be used in some kind of marketing campaign (in which case they should actually be flattered), what exactly is stopping users from removing location information from the pictures they want to keep private?

For me, if the local coffee shop here wants to dig up some pictures I took of their business to help them get more customers, why not let them? I'm not Richard Avedon, and I never, ever, expected to profit from my Instagram photography. I'm more than happy to support small businesses and Instagram. Have a ball, guys. It's all public anyway.

Human-produced carbon output is only like 1% of 1% of the atmosphere. No big deal right? Murderers are only like 1% of 1% of people. No big deal right?

...

I think Instagram missed a GREAT PR opportunity here -- Imagine if they came out and made this an "opt-in" option for people interested in having their photos featured. Even with the odds being low, I'd happily participate, as I think it would be ridiculously cool to see my photos featured.

I'd imagine they'd easily get enough participation to get them the content they need to experiment with this.

Flickr and Google (among others) don't claim the kind of license that Instagram demands in the new ToS. So this is only a big deal in that there are some alternatives that don't suck and are really easy to switch to.

If they want to put content users in touch with content providers, they can do what Flickr did: make a way for them to do so. There are a ton of ways to monetize that, too, without dialing it up all the way to "we own your content". I bet most users would love a request system that lets businesses use their photos free of charge with attribution if they click "yes".

You sure you actually read the ToS?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939159

Of course not. No-one did. Nothing like a good ole' pitchfork mob.

The terms are deliberately vague, and allow broader interpretation than the Verge article theorizes.

What? Instagram's current TOS includes the following:

"By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services."

So the "new" ToS is not as far from the old one as you would think.

Let's look at your claim that around "1% of 1%", or one in ten thousand, of Instagram photos are of commercial quality. With 5 million+ photos uploaded per day [1], that's 500 photos a day.

It seems to me that the new ToS made some people want to leave the service, because that's not what they signed up for. You obviously made another choice.

[1] http://allthingsd.com/20120403/instagram-by-the-numbers-1-bi...

The big deal is that someone is profiting from my work without my consent and it isn't me.

It's that we (the people) get slammed by DMCA violations for taking someone else's content (for private consumption). When a huge corporation takes ours (and gets paid for it), what recourse do we have?

It's that these corporations can change the rules on us in the middle of the game. It's the classic bait and switch.

It's that we're not even getting asked or given credit.

The Instagram developer page (http://instagram.com/developer) says users own their images. They expect third party developers to respect that. Why won't they?

Who fights for the user?

Didn't they profit from your work before this?

Seems like most of them are not smart enough to realize this.

Technically we _are_ giving our consent by using the service. In fact, we already agreed to the current terms, which state "We reserve the right to alter these Terms of Use at any time." It's not even a classic bait-and-switch. It's clearly stated in the contract we all signed up for.

I agree that it's sort of uncool on Instagram's part, but as fellow app developers, shouldn't we also be siding with Instagram for their right to protect the interest of their product?

I hate to be the guy that points this out, but it's an important distinction.

There are many things that they would not be able to add to a contract. Requiring you to commit an illegal act, for instance. Or beginning to charge for their service, without giving you the ability to cancel your account.

Instagram's change is in one of the grey areas that makes contract law interesting.

(I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, yada yada)

As an app developer, the lesson you should take away from this is that your users will be outraged at seemingly perfectly cromulent changes in your TOS (remember, sometimes you & your users have different use cases in mind for your app).

You just have to have a little bit of foresight into this, understand that users have emotions, if not total understanding of law, and figure out if the changes that benefit you will outweigh the pr hit. I think it is obvious in this case (and probably 9 times out of 10) that the owners of the app stand to benefit more than they'll get hurt.

First, would anyone sign a credit card agreement that said "we can change the terms at any time without telling you"? No. In fact, a material change to a contract means that either party can back out of the original contract. This is how people get out of cell phone contracts when rates are changed without having to pay the ETF.

Second, yes, the new terms are exactly why people are pissed. They don't like the new terms and they are upset that Instagram would form something so distasteful on them (or try to do so).

Just because Instagram is legally protected doesn't mean everyone should be happy about their decision and keep using the service. That's how a market economy works. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it will be popular in the market.

but as fellow app developers, shouldn't we also be siding with Instagram for their right to protect the interest of their product?

Huh?? How about this instead: as fellow app developers, shouldn't we stop producing shitty ad and 'free' apps and start monetizing them from the start? And how about we actually care about our customers and growing our business instead of the 'strike it rich' corporate acquisition? How about we actually have a solid business model in mind and not sucking on the angel/vc teets and doing the hard thing - self funding?

We all have choices. In an ever increasing world where you are the product, it's up to all of us to make something better. Ads and 'free' are a waste of fucking time. But everyone seems to want their 'free' investment money to launch the next Instagram.

Jesus, I feel like I just recruited for a Stallman seminar. :) Maybe he has a point after all..

Your view just plain scares me, there wouldn't be so much heat over this right now if it was something the majority of people including app developers thought was the right thing to do. There's plenty of examples of things that I feel is uncool, but I can understand it from the business side. A few weeks ago, when people went nuts over the possibility of ads showing up in peoples instagram feeds, I was like, fine. In every single terms of service that I have ever read, that line, "we reserve the right to alter these terms of use at any time", appears in some form or another. That is not an end all, and it's not an important distinction. What you alter the terms to still matters, especially on this big of a scale.

You make it sound like if they did this and didn't tell anyone about it, just opted everyone in, and started selling off photos. That you'd be ok with this. Not sure where you draw the line, but facebook/instagram finally decided to cross it. Users of products do have rights, and honestly app developers should head this as an important warning/lesson. You should always have a right to protect the interest of your product, but sometimes, when you decide to monetize a service years after its conception, you mess up. Even facebook/instagram can make huge mistakes. Instagram is going to take a gigantic hit from this.

My view scares me, too, but I think you have the right idea: It's a terrible business decision. Much like the Netflix/Qwikster ordeal, I imagine the result to be some sort of mass exodus.

Obviously, our use of any application is simply a privilege, and participation is not compulsory. As creators of the application, it's Instagram right to control their application how they see fit.

That point is easily overlooked. It's the principle I'm defending, not the decision.

My hope is that great companies will make great decisions. I think we've seen a little bit of that from organizations like Google and MapBox doing the "right thing", and they have great products to show for it.

Just because you agree to a thing doesn't mean you like it. When enough people have been sufficiently pissed off about an issue, you get demonstrations, riots, and all sorts of mass protests about The State Of That Thing We Don't Want/Like.

I'd really like to see internet protests driving some actual worthwhile changes, not least because on the whole they're a lot less destructive than an actual riot[1]

As developers, instagram can do absolutely anything (legal) they like with their app, and we should totally support them in that.

As a business, they're somewhat beholden to their customers to either do things the customers want (and not hte things the customers don't want), or find a new set of customers. Otherwise, they stop being a business.

[1] except maybe CloudFlare ends up with a slightly higher bandwidth bill for the DDOS.

"Why won't they"

Because Instagram can make whatever TOS they feel is necessary when they are interacting with your data.

You are using Instagram's servers and products display data. Therefore they can, essentially, do whatever they want with said data if you agrees to their TOS. Why do people still feel they have some recourse when you are volunteering your data to a private company in a public domain?

  | public domain

That means something specific. It's probably best to use another term. People are not releasing their photos into the 'public domain.'

"The big deal is that someone is profiting from my work without my consent and it isn't me."

You know you've just described all the popular free services[email,facebook,instagram, dropbox....and so on...].

It is amusing to see people get irate over something that is such OLD news.

Implicitly, your information and your privacy has been up for sale for years but when the reality is explicitly stated, some people get upset?

I'm not sharecropping e-mail for Google by using GMail. Instagram users are now unpaid freelancers, and some of them don't like it.

"someone is profiting from my work without my consent and it isn't me"

That's the price you pay for using a "free" service.

Its like the radio saying "we'll play your song, but we get the copyright and get to sell the CD/iTunes etc". Oh, and we're not gonna pay you ever.

Sound good?

The main issue is that basically it removes the concept of private photos. The new TOS allows Instagram to use your photos any way they want and removes any responsibility of keeping private pictures private.

Those pictures of you doing a keg stand at a Toga party which you shared only with your closest friends? Well now they are in a nationwide PSA about binge drinking.

Those pictures of you with your ex girlfriend on a beach vacation? Those are now in Carnival ad about whisking your loved ones on a cruise. Your wife is pissed and even deleting the photo off Instagram doesn't do anything about it.

If you are ok with all your photos becoming public, then sure this isn't a big deal. I think many people aren't.

Eh, not quite. Private accounts can't have their photos used outside of Instagram.

>"except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.

That doesn't mean they won't be used inside Instagram as ads, however.

There's little difference to me between public on the internet and public on Instagram. They both ignore my photo's original privacy controls (to share with a specific set of users).

Regardless, it looks like Instagram's response has said they will be respecting privacy controls (http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-wer...) although I'm not convinced until this is made clear in the TOS.

it removes the concept of private photos

Maybe I'm just old and cynical, but after seeing how most online services work, I just refuse to upload/share any photograph that I wouldn't be happy seeing splashed on the front page of the newspaper.

I apply the same test to pretty much everything I do online these days, and as a result, I maintain a dignified silence through most social media channels.

I whitewalled my Facebook a long time ago, don't 'like' any pages, and provide minimal personal information only to friends.

I don't use Twitter because I figure, even if I had an account purely to follow people, the individuals/organizations I follow could come back to haunt me. The same applies to YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, Foursquare, etc.

I maintain a dignified silence...

That is a beautiful phrase that captures the intention perfectly. I'm going to use that.

I agree. Instagram is simply going to use interesting photos of places and items to help market those places.

Someone you follow tagged a photo of a latte at a new coffee shop in town? Well, now that photo might show up as a sponsored post in the same way Facebook likes generate sponsored posts.

I generally like seeing the photos of the people I am subscribed to, so seeing them attached to a location or product ad doesn't bother me in the slightest.

You might feel differently if you were a professional photographer or a celebrity (even a minor local one). I don't use instagram, and I'm not sure if the change would cause me to leave if I did use instagram. But I'm not going to start using it, because I expect that anyone who values their pictures is going to leave, so it will suck.

Most of the people I follow on instagram are family and friends. They take pictures of their families doing stuff I'm interested in knowing about like going out to eat, gathering for holidays, hiking, or whatever. They use IG as an easier and more visually pleasing way to keep in touch and share moments of their lives.

So while there are a number of people that use the free service to promote their professional work or celebrity selves, it seems like the vast majority of IG users are in the same boat as me and just don't care about the TOS change.

"Most of the people I follow on instagram are family and friends. "

Look up "confirmation bias", "selection bias" and a few other biases. You're welcome.

I think the fact that I was giving a personal opinion made it pretty clear that I was sharing a biased point of view. My point is that I personally disagree with pseut's point of view that "once professional photographers and celebs leave instagram, the service will be worthless".

Do you believe that to be the case?

Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if the vast majority of users that you described are pretty indifferent about which photo sharing service they use, as long as there are other people they know using it. But the "power users" (I hate that term) will care about the service they use, and will influence the others. These people could be friends and family who like to follow news orgs/photographers/celebs through IG, they could be friends and family who are just enthusiastic amateurs, etc., the point is, they don't necessarily have to be celebrities or professionals that you personally follow.

So, even if you don't care about the TOS change, it could degrade your instagram experience enough that you leave. I should emphasize that this is pure speculation in an area I don't understand at all, so take it for what it's worth. And the "sucks" in my earlier comment was of course only directed at what I would want to get out of instagram and wasn't meant as a general statement.

ps, given their latest announcement, this discussion may or may not be entirely academic.

Edit: severe typo and clarification

Here's an example of a company building a business model off of people sharing photos on Instagram and Twitter.

http://www.pixlee.com/warriors/albums/527?embed=true

I probably wouldn't care if my photos showed up in a public manner, but I could understand why some people might.

I think the interesting question here is "how many folks will simply ignore all of this and keep on using Instagram?" -- if privacy scandals were going to hurt user bases, Facebook would long since be gone. I suspect that any loss of users Instagram has suffered are more likely to have been through the dumbing-down of their iOS app than privacy concerns.

I will continue to use Instagram, as I don't feel particularly concerned with my photos on there. I'd even feel honored if they were a bit smarter about their approach and planned on asking for permission to use specific photos first. Shit, that would probably have kept this from being a PR disaster and instead become a bonus for some users, as I think it would be really cool to see my photos featured in different mediums.

Good points -- although I suspect that the reason they don't ask permission is they want to be able to transparently do the kinds of things they've been doing with profile pics for years ("your friends love X, click here").

tl;dr:

Use this to download your Instagram photos http://instaport.me

Then use this to delete your account http://help.instagram.com/customer/portal/articles/95760

Does deleting your account actually remove your photos? I've seen some people claim that you can still load the images if you know the URL. Not sure if it's just a CDN that hasn't expired the content yet or if Instagram really keeps your photos after you "delete" them.

Deleting your account certainly implies that you don't accept the new TOS.

Ah, but the TOS states using the site means you accept it. You have to use the site to delete your account.

The new TOS doesn't come into effect until one month from now.

I wouldn't doubt it. I've Facebook URL of images that were "deleted" year ago, but the links still work. I'm not sure what it would take for the content to actually be removed.

Facebook doesn't delete your images for years (if ever). There are links to photos deleted in 2008 (or perhaps earlier) that still work.

My god, people, calm down. This isn't instagram trying to use your photos as stock photos.

First: they're not good enough. They're snapshots taken with camera phones, they're not marketing materials.

Second: that would piss off their users, and no sane company would ever do this. The thing you're seeing in their ToS is an interpretation that allows for this.

Expect a statement from instagram confirming that they will change their ToS to explicitly disallow this sometime today.

In the meantime: calm down, go outside for a walk.

>The thing you're seeing in their ToS is an interpretation that allows for this.

Then maybe companies shouldn't amend their ToS to "allow" for things that are so utterly odious. None of the other companies that matter do this, so the claim that this is standard boilerplate is bunkola.

I came here to post almost exactly this. This happens regularly with the big sites - some idiot lawyer writes an overly cautious ToS change, everyone gets up in arms about it, the site writes an apology clarifying (and probably fires the lawyer).

It seems common sense to me if you just think it to the end: do you REALLY think taking a photo of me drinking Coke (against my will) would be good advertising? Or selling my photo as a stock photo without compensating me - that that would fly? Really? It seems absolutely obvious to me that Instagram has no interest whatsoever in doing what people are all afraid they'll be doing.

7 hours later: told ya so... http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-wer...

>It seems absolutely obvious to me that Instagram has no interest whatsoever in doing what people are all afraid they'll be doing

The same question is raised: Why have it in the TOS if it's not going to happen? At the very least it shows a great lack of care for the operation of their business (in which case you should think twice about using the service), at most it shows a complete disregard for their users (also in which case you should think twice about using the service).

Wait. Lot's of people were telling me that lack of Instagram app prevented them from switching to Windows Phone. Turns out lack of that app was just trend setting? :-)

There are also free services to migrate your photos to dropbox, drive, etc.

Full disclosure and shameless plug, I work for one. pi.pe

Not to completely derail this into a pi.pe thread, but...

a) I'd love to use it, but you're really making it hard to find out what destinations/sources you support.

b) There's quite a bit of bandwidth cost, so I'm baffled as to how you can do this profitably. This makes me wary. Which plays into

c) Your facebook app requires permission to post on my behalf? Sorry, but over my dead body. Especially since I can't give you money. (I assume it's to upload pictures, but there's no way to know. If you had separate up/download apps, you could sidestep that if I just want to export)

So, overall, it's an awesome idea. And I'd happily give you money to do this for me, but you don't let me :)

And if you want to make me really happy: Allow me to set up a continuous job, add s3/google drive destination support.

Now back to your regular instagram discussion :)

You can skip the permission to post on facebook.

News flash - YouTube also has a TOS that allows them to license and resell your uploaded content and it has worked this way for years.

Sortof. They have similar clauses, but the YouTube TOS (similar to other services like Dropbox, Flicker, etc.) gives them a "worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free ... transferable license" to provide the service. Legally, you need a "license" for somebody's content in order to access it and generate a thumbnail.

This change in Instagram's TOS is different:

    Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising 
    revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored 
    content or promotions, you agree that a business or other 
    entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos 
    (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, 
    in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, 
    without any compensation to you

Note, this is essentially what Facebook does when you "like" a company's page.

many might be surprised that instagram only keep 612x612 images, so if you were hoping to download full resolution images,. you're out of luck...

that, however, also makes the whole issue moot since the images are so small to be of little/no use in any commercial sense.

flickr's iOS app, by comparison, stores on their server the full resolution image.

#nofilter FTW

> many might be surprised that instagram only keep 612x612 images

How do we know that for sure?

They could easily have the full res versions stored elsewhere. They own them, after all.

Because the resolution shift happens client side, before the photo is transmitted to their servers.

They couldn't have the full res version stored elsewhere.

That's how we know.

How do we know the resolution shift happens client side? I did a quick google and found nothing.

One could watch the traffic when posting a photo.

It also uploads before you confirm your posting to make the process faster.

Because the uploading is damn fast.

> since the images are so small to be of little/no use in any commercial sense

The most likely scenario for Instagram photos being used in advertising would be online, not in print. So the size is fine.

Probably even more likely is that they would be used on mobile.

> that, however, also makes the whole issue moot since the images are so small to be of little/no use in any commercial sense.

612x612 images as ads on instagram would make a whole lot of commercial sense.

Relevant: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-te...

Instagram's new TOS[1] state:

  To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

In other words, they're trying to monetize Instagram a similar way Facebook is - Sponsored Posts - your photos and associated data can be promoted by companies without having to notify you about it.

Furthermore under Section 106: Exclusive rights in copyrighted works aka. 17 U.S.C. § 106[2] Instagram cannot sell your photos and it cannot use your photos and alter them in any meaningful way.

Having said that Instagram could have communicated this better as this hasn't helped the situation either.

[1] http://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/updated/

[2] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html

====

NOTE: Also posted this at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939650

Wouldn't the simplest fix be to let users opt-in to this?

Hell, opt me in automatically by default. But maybe this is the compromise, that way Instagram can make money (as they should) and users don't feel ripped off.

You're in their casino, you play by their rules. The house always wins.

As far as I can tell, some Android devices also save your photos (with filters) in a separate album, so you may not need to download them from Instagram directly.

They should. I recently switched from a Droid X running Gingerbread to a newer Android phone, and it was super easy to grab all of my instagram photos (and everything else, really) out of the files directory.

Alternative export tool, doesn't require login, open source and can be trivially rehosted by anyone if the traffic overwhelms:

Source: https://github.com/duggan/instazip

"Demo" (aka, you can use this unless traffic kills it): http://instazip.orchestra.io/

Caveats: bit buggy, running on a free Orchestra plan, wants a very recent browser to run.

PRs obviously welcome/sought.

Love Flickr due to this. See this: http://blog.flickr.net/en/2011/05/13/at-flickr-your-photos-a...

Here they have explained how Y! can't use your photos for anything else except for the purpose the content was made available. Additionally, users have the option to make content licensable if they want to using Getty.

Sometimes when these discussions appear, people talk of alternatives like "personal clouds" or "peer to peer photo sharing and blogging".

I know of at least Diaspora but there is at least one other i can't remember the name of, that you can install on your own server but i doubt that these projects in their current form will ever take off and be of any competition to the Facebook/Instagram models, because the technical aspect is just too complicated to the average user (assuming it to be a kind of user that has no existing or minimal skills to install Wordpress on a shared hosting).

Was just wondering about this on my way here to the "office" and a solution for this mess regarding user content ownership, privacy and companies "slipping the rug" under the user's feet could be the separation of service provider, the software itself and hosting (where the content is) ?

Basically something along the lines of:

* the user signing up for the hosting part on his prefered provider (Amazon Cloud, Rackspace, Linode, Google appengine, etc)

* the user signing up for his favourite social software provider, let's say as example, software companies that provided on-demand installed software distributions that provided services similar to Facebook, Instagram, Posterous, etc ... including personal e-mail services. Could be addons on a base system or a full distribution per se, rolled on subdomains (photos.bilbobaggins.com, blog.bilbobaggins.com, ... )

* the software provider would be given access (through OAuth or whatever credential system) to roll their software on the hosting provided by the user)

* discoverability (ask aggregated public timelines and the sorts) could work based on a system akin to DNS for humans/peer to peer.

* a form of standard for interoperability between service/software providers would have to bee in place for the users to be able to switch between them and allow competition.

This would mean that:

* users would retain ownership of their content since they control the hosting, meaning they could pull the plug on a service provider or switch to the competition.

* since much of this can be abstracted from the user as automated devops keep getting better, the technical barrier would be lower.

* most of the hosting and networking costs would be shared between the users, so the software providers could focus more on business models relating to a better service/software, much like app stores work these days i guess?

"...will not be able to sign up for Instagram later with the same account name" - I wonder why?...

i'm guessing to prevent the possibility of impersonation

That is a valid assumption. But I don't give them full credit for it.

It depends on how instagram implements this policy, they need a policy that gives them enough flexibility to try new things and find out what will stick. It's too early to start a kill your instagram campaign. Why not wait and see how they implement this.

Does anyone what the legal implications are if someone takes a picture of my baby and Instagram sells it to somebody for an ad? Would they need some sort of release?

Because I can delete my own photos but what what happens with other people's?

Having it be a baby confuses the issue because babies can't give consent, but if someone took a picture of you and you're not an instagram user and thus never agreed to their TOS and that photo is used for commercial advertising you'd have a very strong case to sue in many places of the world.

Using the identifiable image of a person (even a private non-celebrity) in a non-editorial commercial manner is not permitted in most places, especially (bur not only) if the photo was taken in a place where there is an implied right to privacy (someone's home, etc, rather than outside in public). This is why photographers are anal about making sure all people who are identifiable in their photos sign a model release form if they plan to sell the photo for non-editorial uses.

If instagram ran this idea by their lawyers I'm sure they've been informed that they should absolutely never use any of these images for advertising if there is an identifiable person in it because otherwise the risk of being sued for it eventually is far too great.

There are none. They probably wouldn't. You can certainly try and fight it though!

Food for thought: http://photorights.org/faq/is-it-legal-to-take-photos-of-peo...

How can you say there are none when the very link you provide mentions a release can be required for commercial use? You cannot imply that another person endorses your product or service without permission, and I've never seen an exclusion for babies. One may exist, but that FAQ doesn't say anything about it.

I was wondering exactly the same thing, because you do need a model release from all identifiable people in a photo if you wish to use it for non-editorial commercial purposes. Courts have ruled that "identifiable" does not necessarily mean "can see their face" - if you can see any significant part of a person, you need to get a model release before it can be used commercially (e.g. in an ad).

You do not need a model release if the photo is taken for artistic/personal reasons (even if prints of the photo are sold as artistic items).

Why wouldn't they implement a system where you can flag certain photos for promotion and receive a cut if that photo is used for promotion?

Why can Facebook only come up with monetization strategies that take advantage of its users?

I'm really curious why http://instaport.me/ redirects you to http://54.246.82.151/ Did anybody else notice that?

I'm seeing that too. They probably just got a massive spike in traffic.

I think what we're actually seeing is users declare that the value that Instagram provides them is not worth a perpetual and transferable commercial license for all photos taken, past and present.

I feel sleezy using Flickr, because they were doing the same thing, uncredited, and running Flickr images in Yahoo! ads. This has been years ago, but one of the reasons I stopped using Flickr.

Details?

Still won't help you save your comments/photos commented on and likes all too well, though. I personally find them more important as someone who doesn't submit many photos.

"...except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services." from the TOS. Seems interesting to me.

Hahah loved this part: "That’s it. Of course you’ll need to find another photo service to see photos of meals and your friend’s feet." ^_^

I feel bad for the lawyer who wrote that TOS and will be blamed for killing a toy project facebook paid a billion for.

Whenever something like this happens I immediately look for the open alternative. But, does one exist?

Such a massive infrastructure is expensive, and given that (arguably) the most useful open system, Wikipedia, constantly has funding drives it doesn't seem viable as a free, large-scale consumer-fronting service. I could see such a service being run as a non-profit perhaps, given some monetization or donations.

I'd pay for it.

Twitter implements this feature, there has been some overlap anyway. I was never sure where to share a picture.

So, how's instaport making money?

'donate' and 'Ads via Adsie' banners on the right?

Someone explain to me how instagram is evil and facebook is okay?

Everybody is always trying to get something for nothing.

The fact that the article uses a crappy Instagrammed photo for the picture is baffling

why? seems on-topic and relevant to me. Maybe you missed the irony.

The photo felt like it was also trying to frame Instagram in a harsh light, similar to how articles about violent crime often feature mugshots.

Not necessarily. Someone took that photo and posted it to their Instagram filter, spreading the word to all of their Instagram followers. Seems like the author of the photo could have been trying to get the message to Instagram users.

check out www.instabyebye.com built today

I had the same (great) idea, but your site doesn't do what I thought it would. Instead of being able to download all of my large size images, I now have a publicly viewable listing of thumbnails of all of my photos that are now mirrored on your amazon account. There are no privacy settings, or ability to delete them from your server.

I think you should be clearer about the ability to delete them from your server.

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