Comment by ambirex
14 years ago
A little devil's avocate: Isn't Instagram primarily a photo sharing app? I'm not sure why people are complaining that it starts the upload on filter completion.
My only question is how long are photos not marked as user initiated uploads kept?
To me this seems way offside.
What if I, a regular user, uses instagram for taking all my photos.
What if I take nude photos of my wife. Should I really expect instagram to upload them without my permission?
I'm guessing 99% of people would not only be surprised by this behavior, but also outraged.
If you're taking nude photos of your wife with an app that is specifically known for sharing photos, you're doing it wrong.
99% of people are probably very happy that their uploads don't take 5 minutes once they hit save. To them, it's worth the privacy "risk".
Is it a privacy risk at all, though? Instagram starts uploading after you click the green check mark, which presumably says, "Hey, upload this for me," and continues uploading while you dilly-dally over the photo metadata sheet.
I'm a complete paranoid when it comes to privacy issues, and I don't see any issue with an upload that starts after I click a green check mark that, to me, means, "Hey, upload my photo, please!" There's the question of what happens to the uploaded photo on their servers when you cancel at the metadata stage, for sure, but that's a data retention question, not acquisition.
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"You look nice and everything, Honey, but you could use an Instagram filter."
No, you're not. Several answers of this sort, ignoring the expectation that apps to disseminate information without your permission. This is a general expectation, but in particular on iOS there is a clear tilt towards ensuring the user is happy with such actions.
You know that Instagram can load photos from your camera roll, right? "what would this nude photo look like with that filter?" is a common use-case, I'd guess. And a strong expectation that it would not be sent to an outside party as a result.
That's a pretty damn presumptuous thing to say... have you seen any studies or conducted one yourself where people admitted to leaning towards user-experience benefits about online photo sharing at the expense of privacy?
I agree with your point though that users have a responsibility to figure out the objective of the app in order to understand the context of its intended use.
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You probably wouldn't use Instagram for taking all your photos.
On the iPhone at least, it only saves photos if you post them. You wouldn't be able to use it as a camera for private photos unless you didn't want to keep them.
There is one work around - you can get it to save the photo if the upload fails, so if you put your phone in airplane mode, you can take a private photo. Apart from that, Instagram only works as a sharing app, not a general camera. I think since it works this way, 99% of people won't care.
> On the iPhone at least, it only saves photos if you post them.
Ah, if that's the case, then this seems much better.
I was under the assumption that photo's were uploaded after being taken.
If the user has to explicitly say, "Upload this picture" and only then does the upload start, then this seems to be much better.
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Instagram is a photo sharing service. They've never hidden that aspect. The default user expectation is uploading and sharing. I don't see why immediately initiating the upload would be unexpected for the user.
Because, uploading before pressing the "save this publicly" button is counter-intuitive to most people. Much like if texts were sent before I pressed the send button -- until i press that button there is the option to change my mind, edit what i say, etc. This is the mental model most people will have, way more so when presented with a "publish" button (akin to a send mms button).
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If you take nude photos of your wife, you're using the wrong app and you know it. Also, what's your Instagram user name?
There is a difference between upload and publish. The app might be uploading the photo in the background, but that's to get it over the wire to instagram. The publish isn't being made (aka, the photo being visible to anyone) until you complete the upload process.
They're uploaded once you get to the caption screen, not when you take the photo.
Uploaded doesn't mean it's permanently stored, it only means that part of the file might have been uploaded already by the time you confirm the upload.
If your intention was in fact to upload the photo, good on you, you save a few precious seconds. If your intention was not to upload the photo, then they simply cut the connection, send a delete order and move on.
Does it bother you if no one ever sees those images that are uploaded?
True. But there's a disconnect between the common person's understanding of the process and what's happening. It matters because it's user content.
As for the deletion, who knows. They could say anything and the users would have no way to tell unless they slip up.
> I'm not sure why people are complaining that it starts the upload on filter completion.
If it put responsiveness before everything else, it could even start uploading before the filters are applied and apply the filters server-side when they are validated.
While this would significantly increase server load (and duplicate the work, as filters would be applied both by the phone and by the server), it would make the visible upload window even lower (or even not exist at all).