If you count yourself among those hostile to Instagram's new terms of service rolling out next month, the social network wants you to know they've heard your complaints and may or may not be doing something about it.
Instagram has responded to vocal critics displeased with the social network's changes to its privacy policy and terms of service, which take effect on January 16. Calling the revised legal documents "easy to misinterpret," the company is hoping to head mass defections from its popular photo sharing service before things get any worse.
Co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote a blog post entitled "Thank you, and we're listening" on Tuesday, in which the company hopes better explain what it intends to do with the photos you upload to the service.
"I’m writing this today to let you know we’re listening and to commit to you that we will be doing more to answer your questions, fix any mistakes, and eliminate the confusion," Systrom writes. "As we review your feedback and stories in the press, we’re going to modify specific parts of the terms to make it more clear what will happen with your photos."
Make no mistake: Users will continue to own their photos, same as always -- but Instagram was clearly hoping to leverage these images in an effort to raise advertising revenue to make the service "a self-sustaining business." The company denies that was the intention, and is working on updating the language used to explain this.
In the meantime, the PR damage may be done: Scores of users have taken to Twitter and Facebook in the last day to rage against the machine, many even taking the extreme step of deleting their images and account completely from Instagram.
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