Combating the disturbingly short attention span for online privacy
Over the weekend, Instagram’s new terms of service went into effect. If your head wasn’t buried in the sand in recent weeks, you may have heard that the company instigated quite a brouhaha over its updated legalese. The proposed changes included what most saw as an assertion that it had the right to sell users’ pictures at will, without consent or compensation. “How dare they?!” shouted the interwebs.
Instagram officials responded to the outcry by saying this was a miscommunication and reverted that section back to the original language. As we pointed out at the time, the previous wording was far more vague and gave Instagram greater leeway over its access to and use of your images.
But, once again, a full grasp of online privacy eludes so many. Because, while there was significant backlash over this singular aspect of the updated terms of service, very little attention was paid to the rest of the changes. For example, Instagram can now freely share user data with Facebook.
