After two days of increasingly loud arguments, the flap over Instagram's new terms of service has started to quiet down. Amid widespread concern the Facebook-owned company was about to start selling user photos to advertisers, the company yesterday said it "has no intention" of doing so, and would change its terms of service to reflect that intention.
At this point we should probably turn our attention to more pressing worldly concerns, of which there are plenty. And yet the fracas has revealed something ugly in the way that many in the tech press blame average people for Instagram's mistake. Somehow the botched rollout of a business model has been painted as the fault of the service's 100 million users.
"Who's to blame for the Instagram debacle? Take a look in the mirror," says GigaOm. Time's Techland blog rolled its eyes at "A Bunch of Tech Things People Have Threatened to Quit Recently," including Instagram, which "can now sell you to fur traders per the new Terms of Service." To anyone who assumed Instagram's new terms would result in their photos being sold without permission, TechCrunch's M.G. Siegler had this to say: "You sound like a delusional, paranoid jackass."
These pieces, which were accompanied by similar sentiments on Twitter and around the Web, make four basic arguments: You are an idiot for thinking Instagram would never try to make money. You are an idiot for failing to understand the new terms of service. You are an idiot for assuming Instagram would act against your interests. You are an idiot for caring about any of this to begin with.
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