Sticking it to the (Instagram) man

Like a lot of people, I deleted the Instagram app (and all the mediocre photos I’d taken with it) after reading about Facebook’s new terms of service. At first reading, the new TOS made it sound like anybody who uses the app is a mindless tool who exists solely to consume ads and provide free content for Facebook. It gave the impression that I am the product, and not the customer.

Which is, of course, true. And remains true, despite the Facebook’s later equivocating in the wake of online protests. But I’m no dummy. I’m teaching them a lesson: I’ve started using the new Flickr app for taking and sharing photos. It’s better than Instagram in many ways. It has a lot more features, and still offers the same great filters for obscuring the general crappiness of my iPhone photos. I enjoy the creativity of taking pictures of my feet or my sandwiches and jazzing them up with a vignette and a sepia cast.

Who owns Flickr? A little mom-and-pop social media storefront called Yahoo. You’ve probably never heard of them. But I always like to support the little guy. I know a scrappy start-up like Yahoo would never dream of shoving ads down my throat or using user-generated content to beef up their bottom line. This way I get to express my righteous outrage at Facebook, and I never really have to change how I roll.

Hear that, Instagram? That’s the sound of the screen door not hitting me in the ass on my way out. I’m gone, baby. And I’m taking my eight followers with me.