Inside Scoop: Instagram backpedals on new privacy rules

-Hello and welcome to Inside Scoop. I'm Sumi Das, and joining me is Josh Lowensohn, Senior Writer for CNET. Josh, thanks for being with us. -My pleasure. -So, we've actually been talking all day about Instagram. Basically, they've backtracked here, right? They changed their policies, and now, they're saying, "No, that's not what we are going to do after all." -Sure. So, the controversy yesterday was all about who owns your photos, and where those photos are showing up. -People were worried they were going to be sold. -Yeah. I mean, a big thing that people worried about is, this is that photo of my kid, or my friend, or wherever I am. I'm going to get used in an advertisement without my permission. -And rightfully so, I think. -Yeah. We are in the world of Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram, where we're putting out content, and other companies are making moneys off it. So, this is a classic case for something like photos, which can be a really lucrative industry for photographers, will also be a privacy issue for people like parents to kind of converge. So, it's this perfect storm. -Okay. So, everybody was open arms, and then, just this afternoon, on Tuesday, what happened? Kevin Systrom permits you to blog post. -Sure. -And it said? -I mean, this is the co-founder of Instagram basically saying, "Uh, just kidding. We're going to make some changes." So, there are two real things happening. The first one is that they said, "No, you own your photos. That's not going to change. We have no, you know, no big, grand ideas of selling these photos as a stock service." And the other thing they did was they basically said that anything that you posted wasn't going to show up on an ad. That wasn't really their ITF. But they weren't really specific about how that's going to happen. -Right. They used some language about experimenting with advertising in a way that's appropriate on Instagram. I mean, that's really open to interpretation. It could mean any number of things. -Sure. The big take away is that, that photo you took on your vacation isn't going to show up on some ad without you knowing, or without you getting paid for it. But it did kind of hint that there would be a way for someone like a celebrity or a brand to, kind of, get their photos in front of more people and more users. Something like we saw with Twitter with their promoted tweets. -Right, right. And we've seen that on Facebook, as well. -Yeah. I mean, it's - the big story that this come is really trying to grapple with these free services that a lot of people are using that might be really hard to monetize. -Okay. So, there are going to be some revised terms of service, but we're probably not going to see them in the next 24 hours. -Yeah. I mean, they said that some more changes are coming, and they still have time to update that. The big kind of deadline that's slimming is these thirty days when these are up. It's mid-January really for when this going to affect. So, there's still some time for things to move around. -Okay. The blog post also mentioned something about privacy options. What is that about? -Sure. I mean, one of the big concerns of people with private accounts. These are - people are taking photos, but they're only sharing them with the limited group of people. It's not public. There was some kind of questions based on the way they worded the new privacy terms on who gets to see that, or what happens to that content. And today, the company basically said, "No, those are still private, and will always be private. We want you to share anything you want, but to who you want." -Okay. So, those are basically another reassurance. -Yeah. I mean, the whole thing about this letter was them saying, "You know what? Legal terms are sticky. We kind of messed up" - without saying that explicitly. -Okay. Got it. Well, thank you for breaking down that legal leads for us. -Sure. -For Inside Scoop, I'm Sumi Das. See you next time.