Goodbye Instagram, hello Flickr

So yesterday my Facebook feed exploded with this CNET article highlighting the changes in Instagram’s policies that basically say “it has the perpetual right to sell users’ photographs without payment or notification” (quoted from article).

This sounds a lot like the past issues with Facebook and their policies on photos and content you post on your timeline, which a lot of people complained about–and skimming a few articles, it looks like when Facebook bought Instagram a while back, there were already people worrying about something like this happening to Instagram (I was blissfully ignorant). Well, it did happen; although this morning when I opened my Instagram account, there was a note about how your photos are still your photos (the CNET article on that is here).

My immediate thought when I read their message was, “well, you know how people reacted to Facebook’s policies on content, why did you even try to pull that off here too?” This is in the middle of me deleting my Instagram photos one by one (which is not a walk in the park–every 20th photo I delete, I get rate limited, which is understandable for creating content, but a bit odd for removing content). I decided that since most of my photos I do send on to my Flickr account, and with the update to the Flickr iPhone app that adds filters, I’d just stop Instagramming (albeit the Flickr filters kind of underwhelmed me at first try). (I didn’t want to remove my account completely, mostly so that I can keep the above photo up ;) haha.)

All I can say is, this move by Facebook/Instagram couldn’t have come at a worse time for them. With limited Twitter support and the new Flickr app, this extra bit with their policies–though quickly responded to–just isn’t doing them any favors. A few friends of mine have already removed their accounts. And my deleted photos aren’t coming back.