Earlier today Instagram posted Updated Terms of Service Based on Your Feedback on their blog in which they say:
The concerns we heard about from you the most focused on advertising, and what our changes might mean for you and your photos. There was confusion and real concern about what our possible advertising products could look like and how they would work.
Because of the feedback we have heard from you, we are reverting this advertising section to the original version that has been in effect since we launched the service in October 2010.
This is the first time I can remember any social network, let alone Facebook and let us not forget that Instagram is now Facebook, backing down under pressure from users.
On reading the news via my RSS feeds this morning my initial reaction was “they’ll back within 6 months with a better worded set of terms”. Reading the full blog post reveals
Going forward, rather than obtain permission from you to introduce possible advertising products we have not yet developed, we are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work.
Facebook still want to ‘monetize’ Instagram, they now understand they need to be more careful in how they do so.
Remember you aren’t a customer you are a user, and as a user you are simply data, data that Facebook can and will sell.