The Death of Instagram? Website Can Now Sell Your Pictures Without Your Permission

We have two questions for you: do you have an Instagram account and, if so, have you heard about the latest changes the website has made to its privacy policy?

We’re asking because apparently, Instagram, the photo-sharing social networking, can now sell all of your pictures without paying you or notifying you of the move to do so.

Eh… what now?

Yes, yesterday Instagram announced that it has the perpetual right to sell your pictures to advertisers or other parties whether you like it or not. So if you use the website, you can pretty much expect this to happen. You can also expect to receive no notification if your mug is being gawked at by an advertiser elsewhere in the world.

The new intellectual property policy, which will come into full effect on January 16, will see the contents of your Instagram account become public property oh and unless you delete your account before the January deadline, you can’t opt out of this new policy.

This policy comes just three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the photo sharing website and under the new policy, Facebook can licence all your pictures to companies or any other organisation that they want.

Essentially, your pictures will become stock photos for advertisers only you won’t get paid for providing them. Nice, right?

How do you feel about Instagram's newest policy change?

Understandably the move by Facebook has provoked a massive amount of public outcry. Reginal Braithwaite, an author and software developer posted a tongue-in-cheek “translation” of the new Instagram policy which read:

“You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest bidder. Enjoy your feed and keep producing the milk.”

And another Instagram user dubbed the policy change as being “Instagram’s suicide note.”

“The service itself is still a fun one, but that’s a lot of red marks that have shown up over the past couple weeks. Many shooters – even the casual ones – probably aren’t that excited to have a giant corporation out there selling their photos without being paid or even notified about it,” said a spokesperson for photography website PopPhoto.com.

You may be wondering if this new policy is legal and, believe it or not, it actually is. Due to some clever wording on the policy itself, Instagram is immunized from liability such as class action lawsuits.

We have to ask – will this new implementation make you delete your Instagram account?