Instagram Faced First Class Action Lawsuit over Its Terms of Service

Instagram photo-sharing service was slapped with first civil lawsuit which resulted because of its changed terms of service leading to protests from the user in the third week of December 2012.

Proposed class action lawsuit was filed against Instagram in the federal court of San Francisco. The California-based Instagram user slapped it with the breach of contract as well as other charges against it. In the third week of December 2012, Facebook had announced to the Instagram users its plans to alter the terms and conditions of the service.

Concerned users had panicked that Facebook would start selling the photos or licensing these photos to the advertiser’s without taking users’ permission. A lot of people had deleted their Facebook accounts as well. Instagram enables people to add certain effects as well as filters to their photographs while also sharing them on the Web. Instagram was acquired earlier in 2012 by Facebook for 715 million dollar.

The panicked reaction of the users had compelled the founder and CEO of Instagram to partially draw back. As an action, Instagram deleted the language regarding display of photos without any compensation. However, Instagram maintained the language which enabled it to put the ads in line with the content of the users. It had kept the arbitration clause as obligatory.

The lawsuit was filed by the San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk. The firm mentioned that those customers who failed to agree with terms of Instagram could definitely cancel the profile but rights to their photographs which were posted initially should be forfeited.

Critics however declared that it was good on the part of Instagram to roll back a few advertising terms, but these new terms did not contain the language which had promised that personal photos would remain personal.