Ugh. Instagram sure is “pulling a Facebook” (by not explaining themselves better with their TOS changes). Everyone crying foul about Instagram selling your individual photos is presumptuous. And the tech journalists using this as fodder are just stirring the pot. Facebook’s intentions likely are not to monetize the photos taken by Insta users. Their attorneys are likely using overly broad language to allow for future business models or opportunities (even though they may never happen). I predict that Facebook and Instagram PR will step in, clarify their intentions to align FB and Insta’s TOS (likely  to structure their ad network they recently announced).

It’s further evidence that tech companies need to work harder on how to properly roll out and announce TOS changes. Even Google went through these same pains earlier this year. And this certainly isn’t anything new for Zucky and his team. Ugh. Such a hot mess.

Bottom line- wait and pause. It’s drastic in my opinion at this point to close your account. Insta does have an official blog post about the TOS changes and their intentions do seem to help and protect its community and users (not the opposite).

**4PM CST UPDATE** Instagram posted a blog post clarifying the proposed changes. Kevin Systrom in his clarification blog post explains that part of their intentions was/is to produce advertisements similar to Facebook like this example below (only advertisements with social connection relevancy would appear, e.g. “your friend likes this Account- so we will only show advertisements from that brand”).

(KCBiz Journal, thanks for the mention!)