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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.

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?

"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 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.

"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.

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

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.

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.