
xkcd: Instagram - jmedwards
http://xkcd.com/1150/
======
ry0ohki
I think a better comparison would be... a community art gallery opens, they
invite all local artists to show their work for free. It becomes more popular
then the Louvre and the owner gets fabulously rich, and sells the gallery to
MOMA.

One day the new owner of the gallery realizes it's losing tons of money (and
taking visitors from it's money making gallery in NYC), and it knows the
artists are not going to pay (and maybe can't afford to). So it starts making
prints of the artwork and selling them without giving the artists a royalty.

~~~
piqufoh
That may be a better comparison, but it's not what you'd say... you know,
'funny'.

~~~
001sky
The whole idea of instagram was "instant postcards". The idea that they would
help you do make these. Not that they would go creep out shots of your family
and sell them for a profit to 3rd parties without consent. Or sell your data
to be analyzed and fed into behaviroual profiling for junk mail. If they want
to charge for postcards, then nobody would complain in this way.

Instagram is (now) just a clever form of social engineering...not a product.

------
ragmondo
I disagree fundamentally with the message xkcd is saying here. Instagram,
facebook, myspace etc all gained traction as basically setting up a website or
wordpress site was just not practical at one time. They all give the
impression that it's a practical and reasonable alternative. And that's what
99.9% of their users think.

And then of course the funding starts to dry up and the accountants start
needing to see some hard $$$$ income. And that's when the ToS start to "adapt"
to enable aforementioned sites to monetize "their" content. Oh didn't you know
? It's not your website after all. Sorry ! And thanks for getting your friends
on board too !!

~~~
bbaker
Instagram, and other social networks, are fundamentally different than
wordpress sites in a number of important ways. 100 million users didn't join
because it was an alternative to a blog.

Their funding didn't dry up. They raised a substantial round, and then were
purchased by another company that had itself just raised billions of dollars.
They didn't need money.

But they did want to make it. Because they're a business.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I'm not sure what your point is here.

Raising money or being bought doesn't give them the revenue streams they need
to turn themselves into a real business with a sustainable future. They could
have carried on burning through capital sure, but that could only go on for so
long and ultimately some sort of direction change was inevitable, whether it
was asking users to pay, selling advertising or whatever.

------
smosher
This is the first time XKCD has struck me as being ignorant... I'm assuming
that it's for the sake of the joke.

People have a right to be annoyed by this, in fact I wish it was more common.
Rights to our own creations should not be taken so lightly. So I support the
sentiments of boycotters, even though Facebook is well within their rights to
make this change. I don't support the attitude that it's unjust, but
overreaction is better than none.

~~~
smspence
The "creations" that people are posting are low-res cellphone pics of food and
random scenery with a faux-retro filter added. Why so serious?

~~~
lord_nikon
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/12/19/instagram-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/12/19/instagram-
boycott-now-includes-national-geographic-and-anonymous/)

Looks like the National Geographic is doing more with Instagram than just some
filters and bad food photography.

~~~
smspence
I still do not understand the outrage over this. How would the new TOS
actually negatively affect the users? What would ACTUALLY happen to them that
is so horrible?

Here is a hypothetical:

1\. I post a photo of a dinner table at a restaurant that shows some fizzy
drinks in glasses.

2\. SodaStream wants to post an ad on Instagram, and my photo gets selected
kinda like a stock-photo would be selected because it is drink/food related,
and it gets shown somewhere on Instagram's website.

Result: my life is not negatively impacted by this in any way, and the world
continues turning.

My reaction: If ever saw this happening, my reaction would be "Whoa cool,
that's a picture I took! And now tons of people are seeing it, instead of just
the 5 or 6 people that normally see my Instagram photos. I'm internet famous,
haha!"

The blogo-sphere's reaction: "RAAAAAAAGGGGGGEEE!!!!!!!!!" I ask: "Seriously,
what is the big deal here?" They respond: "Just shut up, and
RAAAAAAAAGGGGEEEEE!!!!"

~~~
summerdown2
Not everyone has the same reaction about everything.

For some people, its not cool. And, being unable to buy a controlling stock
option in the company to make it obey their wishes, they used the lever of
public dissent.

Looks like it worked, too.

------
pavlov
"Chad's garage" seems like an appropriate generic term for a web startup whose
users are not the company's customers, but it's not clear that anyone else
wants to be the customer either.

As in: "-Why did MySpace fail? -They were basically Chad's garage."

~~~
jpswade
Only Tom sold the garage for quite a lot of money in 2005 but there was no
stuff in it, just a dusty list of people who had left the area never to
return.

~~~
pavlov
Apparently quite a few local bands had moved their stuff into the garage,
spray-painting the walls and keeping loud music blaring all night. This had
given Tom the false impression that the garage is a popular nightclub, so he
expected to make his money back by selling $10 drinks but it turned out that
nobody except stoned band members ever visited the garage.

~~~
JonnieCache
Then the band members all went to holland to use this modern, well outfitted
studio space in a fetching shade of orange. The owners of the studios had the
sense to charge them a reasonable fee and so they actually stayed, and all was
well.

~~~
unimpressive
What site is this? Soundcloud?

------
bonaldi
Feeble. More like "I got this note from Chad. He sold his garage to a guy who
collects interesting things, and is going to let him use my stuff".

But the crux of this is the complaint is _not_ "That's no way to run a storage
business". The complaint is "that's a dick move to pull when he invited me to
keep all my stuff in his garage, and got rich as a result".

~~~
simonh
The better analogy is that Chad got rich by selling the well-stocked garage to
someone else. The new owner didn't get rich by hosting your stuff, in fact
they have paid good money for the privilege and now want to find a way of
making that money back.

Facebook is in the hole for one billion dollars on this deal and so far
haven't made back a single cent.

------
vetler
Well, in this case Instagram invited us to use their service, and only later
(as far as I know) changed the terms to allow them to sell our stuff, so the
comparison between Instagram and Chad's garage isn't exactly correct.

~~~
AndrewDucker
When Instagram invited you to use their service you should have considered how
they might make some money out of that...

~~~
marcosdumay
Yes, and the most common way of achieving that is by showing me ads, not by
selling my photos. Now, why should I have assumed the latter, and not the
former?

Hell, I don't have an Instagram acount anyway...

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
If people wanted their photos hosted on an ad driven site they existed, if
they wanted them on a paid for site they existed too.

But instead they chose one with uncertainty over what might happen and this is
what you get.

Sure it might not be what they would have expected but that happens sometimes
when you open yourself up like that.

------
drcube
I said it the other day in another thread, but just because you pay doesn't
mean you've avoided this type of treatment. Remember when cable TV was ad-ree
because, you know, people paid for it?

There is absolutely nothing stopping Facebook or Instagram from doing the same
shit they currently do, even if they start charging their users. And the
services that currently get by on user subscriptions alone will one day have
to find another way to grow. And the way they'll do that is by selling ads and
monetizing user data.

~~~
brown9-2
_Remember when cable TV was ad-ree because, you know, people paid for it?_

No, I don't. Do you recall how far back this was?

~~~
drcube
I'm pretty sure MTV was ad-free when it began. Same with HBO, etc. I'm
thinking early 80s. I'm sure not _every_ cable channel was ad-free, but plenty
of them were because they got enough revenue from subscriptions.

The thing is, services that start out free can't begin charging users without
losing more users than it's worth. But services that start out being paid for
can easily find ways to grow revenue by monetizing their user base and selling
ads, in addition to maintaining or raising subscription fees. Satellite radio
is yet another example.

------
jere
I don't understand the disagreements.

>Well, I'm _this_ close to not giving him any more stuff.

>That'll teach him.

The point is, unless you're paying them money, you have nothing to threaten
them with. You can't stop paying for their service (like you can with other
businesses), since you weren't paying in the first place. They're a business
and they're not beholden to you in any way.

Maybe it would be more clear if we had another panel explaining that Chad has
no job, yet recently took a large loan from the mob. And you still decided to
put your stuff in Chad's garage.

The final punchline of course is that you're not going to do anything about
it.

~~~
Dirlewanger
>The point is, unless you're paying them money, you have nothing to threaten
them with.

That self-righteous attitude being made fun of (i.e. That'll teach them!) is
the morose self-righteousness so many of our generation feel these days when
they figure out that they aren't the special flower who produces sacred works
of art and are rather an id in a database who needs to be exploited for
revenue somehow.

No one gives a shit if you stop using Instagram over this perfectly legitimate
(in my eyes) move that was unfortunately retracted. Don't announce it over
Twitter, because no one is listening but yourself.

------
jwilliams
Metaphor is a too weak -- The differences between physical storage and social
photo sharing are just too numerous.

Chad would have actively promoted that you add stuff to his garage. He'd have
also encouraged you to encourage others to put their stuff there -- _and_ he'd
have encouraged you to put stuff there on others' behalf.

Plus, somehow, convincing people to put stuff in his garage (greatly, greatly)
increases the value of the garage.

So yeah... I know it's a joke, but it's a labored one.

~~~
elemenohpee
Yeah, how does that work? If someone uploads a photo they took of me to
Instagram, can Instagram now sell that to an advertiser and use the image of
me without my consent?

~~~
icebraining
It's probably not an easy question to answer:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#United_States)

------
dkhenry
This is a really weak argument. It glosses over the nuances of what was
originally offered from a business , and what they then tried to pivot to. Its
one thing If I as an individual let you upload photos to my server, and make
you a little front end to share them. It's another thing altogether If I
register a business and market a product to you along with specifics about
things like price and terms of service, then after I become popular and widely
used I switch out the terms of service that we had originally agreed to. This
is like a manufacture dumping products on the market, then once all the
competitors are out of business raising prices for replacement parts.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
The issue with that argument is it was (or at least should have been) clear to
everyone that Instagram didn't really offer anything "as a business"
initially, it was an unsustainable land grab.

That means that the pivot was always going to come, whether it be to an
advertising driven model, a merchandising model, a paying user model or
whatever.

While I'm not wild about the direction they've chosen, anyone using Instagram
should have known that a change was coming and accepted that risk from the
outset.

~~~
dkhenry
That's the same kind of argument that people use to say you should only buy
"American" cars, or read the labels of where your clothes or smartphones were
made. It doesn't work.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Two things:

1) I agree they don't but I'm saying they should. I don't think having people
understand that there's no such thing as a free lunch is that much of a
stretch.

2) The people filling the HN boards moaning about it are generally internet
and business savvy and already have the information they need to understand
this. I'm not saying they need to be happy about what's happened, but they
shouldn't be surprised and should have understood the risk of it happening.

------
error
I think this one has missed the point... Chad does everything he can to get
people store their shit in his garage and is really proud that so many are
using his garage.

------
vibrunazo
But differently from Chad, instagram openly does care if you leave. So you've
got leverage to negotiate with instagram, but not with Chad. I don't care if
you prefer to label it as users or products or whatever. If they care to keep
you, then you've got leverage to negotiate, period. The rest is just
subjective semantics.

------
nutanc
Well, I would say the difference is that when you put your stuff at your
friend's place, he did not say that he may sell your stuff at some later date.
If he had told that, you maybe would never have put the stuff at his place at
all.

~~~
kennywinker
He didn't tell you he _wouldn't_ sell your stuff thought. And you'll notice
it's not "my friend Chad" implying a level of trust reserved for friends. It's
just Chad. This guy Chad. His garage has nice shelves.

~~~
jeltz
It is still legally theft though to sell stuff belonging to someone else even
if it happens to be in your garage.

For it to not be theft you need an agreement which says he may sell it.

~~~
ithkuil
You might be right, in the sense that I probably cannot make profit from your
stuff you left in my house, although I'm not sure about it.

But imagine this scenario: I don't know you, but I dump a pile of stuff in
your backyard. A lot of stuff, with some relatively valuable stuff in it, like
copper.

You get home and what? Are you expected by the law to put your sweat and/or
money to get rid of that stuff from your backyard?

Or is it perfectly legal to call somebody which will clean that up for you in
exchange for the value of the stuff? They might even profit from that (after
all that's profit in exchange for work)

~~~
summerdown2
No one jumped a fence to place things in Instagram's back yard. They were
invited in and told to leave things there.

------
fallenhitokiri
I have one problem with this comparison: If Instagram would start selling my
photos I could still access and display them. I would not lose anything.

~~~
mjhagen
Same thing as the "you wouldn't steel a car" analogy. Didn't think XKCD would
fall for that mistake.

~~~
thirdtruck
In this case, the "car" and other garage contents in the analogy equate to the
_exclusivity_ of one's legal claims to one's own copyrighted material. Under
the Instagram ToS, that would have gone away, in that they asserted a
perpetual, broad-scoped license to your copyrights.

A large gulf lies between having individuals infringe your copyright and
having the legal ability to enforce that copyright taken away.

------
jerrya
Chad offered me and my friends a place on his lot to store our stuff. He told
us all about how safe his lot was and how easy it would be to find our stuff.

Now Chad says that to pay his bills in the future he's going to let strangers
pay to wear our clothes. And he won't tell us when they do, or how often, or
which clothes they wore.

Which I think is cool, because hey, free service, free market, amirite
hackers?

~~~
smspence
"...he's going to let strangers pay to wear our clothes..."

How does this match up with Instagram's TOS in any way? I still do not
understand what Instagram is doing that is getting everyone so riled up.

~~~
jerrya
Instagram put forth a new TOS in which they could sell your photos to be used
in advertising and you would have no rights over that. They wouldn't pay you
for it. They wouldn't tell you when it was happening.

They've since recanted.

------
JacobAldridge
Discovered this week when tweeting a link to an old xkcd comic that @xkcd has
been registered and has more than 14,000 followers ... and only 1 tweet.
(Confirming it was officially Randall.)

Seems to be an opportunity for some simple automation to add some reasonable
distribution into the 'Twittersphere', so I was surprised to note it.

~~~
kennywinker
Maybe he doesn't want to pass out flyers for his band practice in Chad's
Garage.

By publishing on Twitter, he is essentially handing some control over his
output to Twitter. Not a lot, but some. By registering @xkcd, he's just
protecting his online identity.

------
ImprovedSilence
There are waaay too many comments in here stating one way or another "this is
a terrible comparison! it's nothing like this!"

A.) it's a webcomic, not a lawyers overview of the situation. B.) I think yall
are missing out on the joke, which is not the metaphor with Instagram, it's
the users reaction that is the punch line. C.) The take from the comic is, if
you're not paying for it, don't call it a business, at least not a business
where you are the customer.

~~~
smackfu
Does he think he's writing a editorial cartoon now?

------
DoubleMalt
If you're not paying for the product, YOU are the product.

~~~
karl_nerd
I'm getting very tired of hearing this. It's like we make up excuses for
startups being dicks. There has to be a way to find business model that
involves showing respect for your users and the content they're creating,
while still making money on ads, offers, etc.

It also completely ignores the fact that paying customers get ripped off all
the time, by the companies they pay money to. In the wider perspective, being
a dick doesn't seem to correlate to receiving money from your user-base.

Here's an excellent text about it: <http://powazek.com/posts/3229>

~~~
pdonis
_There has to be a way to find business model that involves showing respect
for your users and the content they're creating, while still making money on
ads, offers, etc._

I agree with the first part but not the second. What if the best way to show
respect for your users is _not_ to pester them with ads and offers, but to let
them pay you directly for the value you are giving them?

~~~
mnicole
I think that's my biggest hangup with this. There was never a "Well, we're
thinking about doing this with your photos, but we were wondering if you
valued the service enough to pay for it instead?"

There would have still been outrage, but people pay to get rid of ads on
services all the time.. particularly if they want to continue a streamlined
experience. If not, they can tolerate the ads. But using _my_ photos as ads?
If I opt-in, sure. But I don't want that by default. I'd rather see something
irrelevant than have my likeness potentially supporting a business I don't
want to.

------
DanEdge
Surely it would have made a better analogy if Chad had ended up hiring out
stuff stored rather than selling it.

------
jmilloy
Would we say that WQHT 97.1 FM in NYC is not a music broadcasting business
just because it's listeners don't pay for the service? Would we argue that a
lot of users threatening to stop listening is meaningless because they can't
stop paying the station?

------
WettowelReactor
How is it that when it comes to copying corporate owned assets like music the
debate is always on how its not theft as the core product remains. Yet now
that we are talking about user submitted content that view does not hold.

------
gprasanth
I've never been to Chad's garage so far and probably ever won't.

One point to see here is that digital things are unlike physical things and
can be copied and stored somewhere. You wouldn't even know!

------
bckmn
I just wrote about his same idea: <http://bckmn.com/pay-for-your-life-online/>

------
sageikosa
I think Chad blinked when he heard the sound of multiple trucks backing up to
his garage to collect all the stuff he thought he was going to sell.

------
gcmartinelli
when will consumer internet businesses start charging people real money, and
when will users realize that they need to open their wallets? there is no free
lunch... a direct business relationship (customer x company) is better for
everyone.

------
chrisringrose
lol Too true. It's inevitable that any free internet service will have to make
money somehow - and if the only asset they have are photos you uploaded, well,
they'll use them.

------
jnazario
bear in mind that the complaints appear to have worked. instagram reverted
their policy, it seems (via the front page at present on hn).

------
macspoofing
It's funny but the analogy doesn't really hold.

------
gbeeson
Spot. On. Except Chad wants us to store our crap in his garage. Hmm.

------
smiddereens
xkcd: often right, rarely funny.

------
debuggerpk
this is actually spot on

