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Instagram wants right to sell users’ photos to advertisers

As we are currently looking into our position as a company on social media sites we found this quite interesting:

Instagram (Facebook’s photo-sharing site) has updated its privacy policy, giving it the right to sell users’ photos to advertisers without notification. If users don’t delete their accounts by 16th January they cannot opt out.

The changes will mean Instagram can share information about its users with Facebook, its parent company, as well as other affiliates and advertisers. This even means that even people who don’t use Instagram could find themselves in an advertisement, if a friend snaps a picture of them and shares it. Leading to a huge amount of backlash from social media users, with some threatening to quit.

Facebook’s vice-president of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson earlier this month had said: “Eventually we’ll figure out a way to monetise Instagram.” To be honest we wouldn’t be surprised if this doesn’t alienate Facebook users as well as having a negative effect on Facebook’s reputation.

Facebook have altered their privacy policy many times in the past, and every time it has had a negative effect. This tactic is likely to involve many challenges, legally and ethically. Thus putting people or companies like us, who are new to social media, off the idea of placing ourselves in the arena at all.

Facebook has critical mass, and is quite confident that such moves may cause uproar, but not a flight of business. But how long will this last?