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Lawyer Rewrites Instagram's Privacy Policy So Kids and Parents Can Have a Meaningful Talk About Privacy (qz.com)
Kids, of age between 12 and 15, are increasingly joining Facebook's Instagram service, but according to a research, they likely don't even understand what they are signing up for. Jenny Afia, a privacy law expert at Schillings, a UK-based law firm, rewrote Instagram's terms of service in child-friendly language, so that not only the kids but their parents are able to understand what things are at stake. Highlighted are the changes the lawyer has made: Officially you own any original pictures and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them, and we can let others use them as well, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and we will not pay you for that. [...] We may keep, use and share your personal information with companies connected with Instagram. This information includes your name, email address, school, where you live, pictures, phone number, your likes and dislikes, where you go, who your friends are, how often you use Instagram, and any other personal information we find such as your birthday or who you are chatting with, including in private messages (DMs). [...] We might send you adverts connected to your interests which we are monitoring. You cannot stop us doing this and it will not always be obvious that it is an advert.
1) Anything you post online will be there forever
2) Always lie about your age, use a fake name, and never provide a real address
3) Don't post nude pics
4) Don't post anything racist, etc.
5) Don't post anything illegal, etc.
6) At any time, I can haz your phone/computer/account and I may burn your devices and your online profiles down to the waterline if I don't like what I see
You do realize that the summary makes it pretty clear it's a UK lawyer rewriting what are presumably their terms of service, right?
The US shares plenty of responsibility when it comes to weird laws and terms of service, but the law affecting IMDB is a California one (which is its own brand of nuts) rather than a national law, and the Instagram terms of service are bad worldwide, not just in the US. If what you got out of those two headlines is that this is a US problem, you may be correct technically, in that the US suffers from them as well, but you've missed the bigger picture: this is a global problem that needs addressing through both cultural and legal changes.
The article is informative, but alas, hardly surprising. I read Facebook's TOS recently when considering an account to connect with friends, and was extremely put off by their insistence on knowing *everything* about me, to the point where, if news reports are to be believed, they will buy data on subscribers from private aggregators to fill in their dossier. It is explicitly clear from their TOS that they reserve the right to snoop all the files on my PC and portable devices. "Fuggeddabouddit."
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Something like this is needed for every site for adults, most of who cannot be bothered to read any ToS and would not understand them if they did. Hell: I suspect a lot of adults would still not remember much about a ToS written like this even if you could persuade them to read it.
This written by someone who does read ToS and frequently refuses to use a service as a result.