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Comment by bjornsteffanson | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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