Earlier today you may have seen a flurry of posts by the usual social media worry warts decrying that Instagram will now be selling your photos or that they'll now be using your images in advertising. The claim rang hollow with me right away, since Facebook owns it and FB doesn't do that, despite the same 'jump-the-gun-ignorant' reaction a few years ago (OH how soon we forget inter-dweebs).

The over-reaction stemmed from a change in the Instagram Privacy Policy which, according to Mashable.com's Chris Taylor, would transport you to a future where you are;

...opening the laptop and seeing an ad -- one of those faux-amateur, gauzy collections of images of everyday life used to sell just about everything. Only one of the images is you, or your spouse, or your kid from when

she lost her tooth the other month.

On top of that, the language seemed to convey the fact that you wouldn't even be compensated in gum, much less money;

"You agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."

That sounded pretty dire, but today Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom issued a statement that 'clarified' the language in a blog post;

Legal documents are easy to misinterpret. So I’d like to address specific concerns we’ve heard from everyone:
Advertising on Instagram
From the start, Instagram was created to become a business. Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business,

but not the only one. 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. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.

At that point, Instagram instantly re-worked the language in their policy statement.

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So have no fear, fear-monger and stand down you rabble-rousing reddit douche-bag internet trolls, once again you've turned a simple statement into a SOCIAL MEDIA SITE attack on our privacy. SOCIAL MEDIA-- get what the name implies??? SOCIAL. NOT PRIVATE MEDIA. So the next time tumblr or Twitter or Cheezburger refines it's privacy policy, give it a day or two to sink in. Instead of flaming up the troll-cannon on Facebook (now populated with millions of normal unsuspecting morons who don't know the difference between a blog and a Borg), turn your semi-sharp wit onto the site itself and bring attention to the odd language that you so vehemently oppose.

Now go back to your stupid low-fat sugar free vanilla latte and your $30 train rides from Connecticut to Greenwich Village and stop bothering us with your jump-to-conclusion articles on cheap bull-shit generating aggregate websites.

We've got snow to shovel and beer to guzzle.

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