Say Goodbye to Privacy: Instagram Can Now Sell Your Pictures

Hipsters, listen up!

Instagram announced yesterday that it can sell any and all of your photos as of January 16. This announcement comes three months after Facebook’s acquisition of the popular photo uploading site, effectively transforming Facebook into the largest stock photo agency online.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that if you happen to have great pictures of – for example – a restaurant chain, and the restaurant chain wants to use those pictures in advertisements, all they have to do is pay Facebook. And here’s the kicker – you’re not even notified. We are no longer middle men.

Start deleting your instagram accounts folks. You’ve got until January 16 to keep ownership of your own photos, and after, well, say goodbye to privacy.

POST EDIT

After the crazy – but deserved – reaction from instagram users yesterday, Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, released a message and an explanation to the public.

In the blog post, Systrom clarifies that confusing parts of instagram’s terms will be modified and that, in regards to ownership and privacy, nothing has changed. Instagram users still own their own content and, as Systrom so transparently states: “it is not our intention to sell your photos.”

We’ll see what happens come January.