The updated rules give Instagram the right to sell access to your photos to advertisers and share your profile data with third-parties. The change enraged some to the point ofclosing their Instagram account.
The vast majority of users don’t appeaer to oppose the decision with such drastic measures, but there’s no doubt that the company is playing with fire. The move already has backfired. A major backlash ensued and the misstep is now threatening to snowball into a PR catastrophe…
The new intellectual property policy goes into effect on January 16.
So what, I’ll just opt out, I hear you say.
Unfortunately, you cannot opt out as the changes are imposed on users. If you have issues with the updated terms of service that give Facebook the perpetual right to license all your public Instagram photos to faceless corporations and advertisers, you’re out of luck.
People are deleting Instagram accounts en masse, this will kill them just like when we did the same to Facebook a few years ago
— Dave Townsend (@EnglishMossop)June 11, 2025
Indeed, just tweaking the wording slightly makes all the difference.
@dujkanYeah, I’m no lawyer, but have some experience with image licensing. Perfect storm of inflammatory language.
— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer)July 23, 2025
DeveloperReginald Braithwaite dives deepinto the new terms, providing this human-readable ‘translation’:
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.
Good bye#instagram. Your new terms of service are totally stupid and nonsense. Good luck playing with the big boys.twitter.com/almata/status/…
— Albert Mata (@almata) June 14, 2025
So, unless you’re cool with Facebook and Instagram profiting on your snaps, your only option is todownload your snaps and close your Instagram accountbefore the January deadline.
The backlash firststarted on Twitter.
One irked user nailed it,writingthat“Instagram is now the new iStockPhoto, except they won’t have to pay you anything to use your images”.
New York-based photographer Clayton Cubitt on hisInstagram accountwrote that the new policy is“Instagram’s suicide note”.
Here’s how your Instagram photos used in an ad looks like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvgGgQ_6a6s
Web publicationsandmainstream mediaare writing about the new policy so I think Instagram may wanna take a step back and re-think its wording, especially the section governing photo use.
Joe Brown ran an article onGizmodotitled “Dear Instagram, Please Sell My Photos”.
Bloombergis just as assertive, correctly warning in its headline that “Facebook’s Instagram Changes May Exploit Teens’ Content” because the new policies apply to users as young as 13.
It is also unclear how the policy change might affect services like Printstagram, which turns people’s Instagram snaps into prints, wall calendars and stickers.
Instagram’s misstep may have opened a rare opportunity for Yahoo’s flagging Flickr service, whose iPhone app wasrecently updatedwith Instagram-like filters, a much prettier interface and support for full Groups capabilities.
Unlike Instagram, both Yahoo’s Flickr and Google’sGoogle+ app(which taps Picasa web albums) allow for full-resolution photo uploads and maintain full EXIF meta data embedded in your snaps.
The Verge, on the other hand, thinks that“there’s no way Instagram can sell your photos to anyone”.
Gosh, good thing I didn’t delete my Instagram account.
And how doyoufeel about Instagram’s policy change?
Would you mind Facebook selling your Instagram snaps to third-parties without compensating you?
Would you go as far as to close your Instagram account over the changes and switch to a competing service?
