In today’s digital world, people share all kinds of information over multiple social media platforms on the Internet; information consisting of your pictures, little stories about what has happened during your day, private information like your home address, and your job.
But the important question is: is your privacy protected on those platforms? Many of these social network sites have a huge user base, and they need to have a good privacy policy so their users can enjoy the platform without the risk of sharing their private information with the rest of the world.
As a user, you have to remember that once something finds its way on the Internet, it’s hard to get it off. So always think about what you are posting and how it can affect you and your life. One of those massive social media networks is Instagram.
Here we will analyze what methods they use to protect their users and the privacy of those users.
Your Privacy on Instagram is not Protected as Good as You Might Think
Instagram was released in October 2010 and since then has become extremely popular with its number of users increasing every day. Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, announced in 2015 that the number has grown to over 300 million users. A quick google search today will show that it has risen above 1 billion registered and active accounts.
Gaining new followers on a social platform that big is hard and takes a lot of time. As the platform keeps changing every year to accommodate the rise in popularity, like adding new features, people that use Instagram also resort to different techniques and ways with the goal of gaining new followers.
Read also: How Instagram Changed Society
For instance, Instagram has allowed its users to link their accounts with other social networks that include:
- Foursquare
- Flickr
Linking your accounts will allow you to upload a picture on Instagram, but make it appear on all the sites you have linked. But does that make your account safer or more prone to privacy invasions?
Users on Instagram combat these privacy concerns by making their accounts private. This is also one of the techniques for gaining new followers as everyone who wants to be able to see the content on your account has to follow you.
Why do People Make Their Profiles Private on Instagram?
While Instagram is a social network that focuses on picture-sharing the users can also add different filters and digital effects to those pictures making them different in their unique way. Once a photo is uploaded to an Instagram profile other users can like, comment, and share that photo, but not if the profile is private.
Many users set their profiles on private, so only people who become their followers can see their content. It’s one way of ensuring you get a steady income of new followers while you also have a base amount of people who can see your content. And many people think users who are not their followers can’t see the activity on their account. And they are wrong.
Private Profiles not so Private Anymore
Many people won’t like that their private profile can be seen by others who don’t follow them. But for users that don’t want to follow everyone this tool gives them the power to see other people’s content on Instagram. Usually, the person who sets their profile private does so just to get new followers, and most of the time they don’t follow back.
Which, if you ask us, is kind of a one-sided relationship where you help them gain more followers while you get nothing in return. The users who don’t like Instagram’s privacy features can use the Instaspy app to bypass those features and decide whose followers they want to become.
Is there a Way to Limit These Privacy Intrusions on Your Instagram Account?
In short, no. To grasp how Instagram works you first need to understand that it has a huge user base, with over 1 billion users. Instagram, apparently, does not know when this application is being used in that massive userbase pool. Looking for a particular user in its massive 1 billion user base is like looking for one specific fish in the sea.
While technology is always getting new upgrades, and Instagram implements new features in its app, its privacy rules are also under constant controversy. With many people are not happy about how some of their features work. The founders of Instagram have made promises to stop privacy invasions like this app, and other ways of privacy intrusion, but nothing has been done so far.
With the private profile feature, many people are forced into following accounts just to be able to view content, for instance, news profiles on Instagram. We believe that Instagram should revise its features of attracting new followers for their users. As long as there is an element that promotes something being forced on the user, there will be users who find ways to bypass that rule.
And once that feature is bypassed by one, many others will follow making it a failed privacy feature. It’s also a bad feature when one gets every benefit from the follower while the other side gets nothing. For instance, users that have millions of followers who have made a career and earned money on Instagram, but don’t follow their user base back giving nothing in return.
We hope that you found our app helpful and that this article has explained to you how privacy on Instagram works.