Let's all freak out about Facebook owning our Instagram content

instagram-screenshot-app.jpgEarly next year Instagram will be introducing a new policy that means it’ll soon be sharing all of its content with its new BFF (we mean owner), Facebook.

This morning the Instagram team wrote an official announcement on the company’s blog, outlining some of the key changes that are set to come into affect in January and its relationship with Facebook plays a big part:

“Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups. This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.”

The company is keen to point out that nothing will change in terms of who owns photos and who has access to them, but regardless it’s clear that Facebook and Instagram are set to get a hell of a lot more cosy. The area of the new policy that’s rung alarm bells for those who are wary of Facebook’s involvement is in the information section:

We may share User Content and your information (including but not limited to, information from cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data, and usage data) with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of, or that become part of that group (“Affiliates”). Affiliates may use this information to help provide, understand, and improve the Service (including by providing analytics) and Affiliates’ own services (including by providing you with better and more relevant experiences). But these Affiliates will honor the choices you make about who can see your photos.

Facebook haters are already getting all worked up about the thought of their data being even more closely monitored by the social network, but we’re not really sure what they expected since it acquired Instagram…

[Via TechCrunch]

Becca Caddy