Thank god I'm not a Facebook or Instagram user. 

Amen to that!  Same here. 

There's a bit more background information on Instagram's "need to monetise" in this report from the Beeb;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20767537

I agree with this comment on that article by John McCormick

"One thing the complacent overlook. This is what the top of the slippery slope looks like. You'll find after one or two more shake-ups like this that THEY own YOUR photo, because you uploaded it onto THEIR server. As inevitable as gravity. Get out while you can."

Even if they do a u-turn - that's it for me.

And since SS has a Facebook page and displays our images at a large size they are now giving away our images for free to be sold elsewhere and they and we make no any money off of it!

I wonder how this is going to fly?

 

This is going to be the story of FB from now on - one obnoxious 'terms and conditions' attack after another.  And your news feed will be polluted with ads.  They have one goal - "monetize" - and one way to reach it - sell their users' privacy and content.

Some changes will cause a big negative reaction, and they'll back off. For a while.  And then try something else.  They'll try to just wear us down.

Imagine the telephone was new technology today.  The phone company starts as a free service - everyone gets a phone and starts talking.  In a couple of years they have millions of users, and it's indispensable.  Then they dust off that old "T &C" we all agreed to, and announce they have the right to record our conversations and sell them to advertisers.  And our calls are interrupted with ads.   But we have no place to go because we all have to be on the same phone network....

I always wondered what the benefit to the founders was in FB and instagram being free.
Clearly they had to hook loads of suckers users in, then monetise.
I tend to be very, very suspicious of anything that's 'free', especially online.

You know what they say about the internet ... if the service is 'free' then you are the product.

"By Reading This I Now Own You": http://blog.photoshelter.com/2012/12/by-reading-this-i-now-own-you/

Quote from: grafix04 on December 18, 2012, 21:10

Instagram has responded.  It's all good now, no one is selling our photos.

http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-were-listening

What a vomit-inducing, cuddly "we're all friends together" statement. *hugs*

The actual translation is "We got found out and now we're trying to limit the damage"

   Spot on!

There's a bit more background information on Instagram's "need to monetise" in this report from the Beeb;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20767537

"The fact is that Facebook has critical mass, and is quite confident that such moves may cause uproar, but not a flight of business."

ThIS sounds familiar.

AOL once thought they had "critical mass" too.  The world eventually routed around them.    Like Jeff Goldblum's character said in Jurassic Park: "Life finds a way".

Microstock is an early application of crowdsourcing.  Crowds eventually move on. 

Here's some more information on the topic:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/instagram-ads_n_2325477.html

I wonder if Facebook had any idea what to do with instagram when they bought it. It seems to me that they splashed one billion dollars just to show the world that they can buy anything on this planet if they want.  And now when they found out that fb ads on mobile phones do not work that well as they expected etc., they're trying to find any way how to monetize Instagram. Maybe they should sell some extra filters for a few dollars instead...

Anyhow, I downloaded Add Watermark app to smartphone and won't upload any photo to FB without it. Just to be sure.

I'm still not a fanboy of either, but happy that people got past the mob mentality in under one day.

I look at it as that "mob" got needed results, in the "clarification" and removal of some of the terms.  Better to take care of things before they happen.  And "the people" aren't really out anything for deleting their account.  In this case, the business learned that they don't hold a monopoly.

I can never understand why they don't run things like that past someone with common sense before putting them out there.

Enjoyed Joe's post on the IS forum which got deleted

If that place was a foreign govt they would call it anti democratic and call for regime change.