What are you agreeing to? Six things you should know about Instagrams new Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“We’re making some improvements and updating our Privacy Policy & Terms of Service. Read more about our changes.” Instagram

In the last few weeks, you may have seen a little bubble appear at the top of your News Feed telling you that there are going to be changes to your Instagram account. I can almost guarantee you that many of you reading the article right now will blindly scroll down to the bottom to check the box. We have to if we want to continue using Instagram, but have you looked at what you are agreeing to?

Many of us don’t know and don’t care until it affects us directly, especially when it comes to privacy. We are not inclined to read the terms and conditions. When you are trying to get something accomplished it is easy to hurry the process and click “Agree” to get it out the way.

Chances are you haven’t read all of the text concerning the changes to the Terms of Service for Instagram, which takes effect on January 16^th, 2021. Don’t worry. I took the time to comb through the terms, and I thought I would highlight some of the information you might have missed.

Your data will be used for ads

Ads are coming to Instagram, and the terms outline the fact that the ads will use your data, photos, and even the metadata (geo-location data) for targeting purposes. Yep! They are going to target you and lure you to buy products. This is no surprise. They have been doing this on Facebook anyways, so some of you might already be used to it.

Terms and systems will be in place to combat abuse and violations of terms (Censorship)

In order to provide a positive and inclusive space, they have developed tools and are offering resources to the community that will help make user experiences an amazing one. They will have teams and systems that work to combat abuse and violations of terms and policies, as well as harmful and DECEPTIVE behaviour.

They may share your information (if they think it is harmful) with other Facebook Companies or law enforcement. This sounds great, but we have to be mindful of who these teams consist of. What does this mean to our freedom of speech? Let’s take a look at the Community Guidelines.

COVID-19: Community Guidelines Updates and Protections

“As people around the world confront this unprecedented public health emergency, we want to make sure that our Community Guidelines protect people from harmful content and new types of abuse related to COVID-19.”

Ahh! Here it is. They are working to remove content that has the potential to contribute to real-world harm, including through our policies prohibiting coordination of harm, sale of medical masks and related goods.That means that if you post anything that is against what is being propagated regarding COVID-19, it will be removed. This is already happening on YouTube and Facebook. This is censorship in full effect.

They say that they will continue to look at content on the platform, assess speech trends, engage with experts, and provide additional policy guidance when appropriate to keep the members of Instagram safe during this crisis.

They do not claim ownership of your content, but you grant them license to use it.

They do not claim ownership of the content that you post on or through the Service and you are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want. However, they need certain legal permissions from you (that “Agree” that you check) to provide the Service.

When you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) on or in connection with their Service, you grant them: non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems.

Permission to use your username, profile picture, and information about your relationships and actions with accounts, ads, and sponsored content.

When you say yes, you give them permission to show your username, profile picture, and information about your actions (such as likes) or relationships (such as follows) next to or in connection with accounts, ads, offers, and other sponsored content that you follow or engage with that are displayed on Facebook Products, without any compensation to you.

You agree that we can download and install updates to the Service on your device. (Contact tracing apps, etc)

They can also terminate or change the Service, remove or block content (censorship) information shared on our Service, or stop providing all or part of the Service if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts on us.

This is another way of saying that if you don’t follow their rules, they will delete your Instagram account.

To some, this means nothing, and you are going to press “Agree” to the new terms and conditions. There are those who may be uncomfortable with these new terms, and rightfully so. It is really your decision how you proceed, and I would recommend you thoroughly looking over the terms before you continuing using this platform. Once again, knowledge is power!