1150: Instagram
 Title text: I'm gonna call the cops and get Chad arrested for theft, then move all my stuff to the house across the street. Hopefully the owners there are more responsible. |
Explanation
As indicated by the title, this comic is an allegory for a recent controversy over Instagram, a photo-sharing social network now owned by Facebook. In December 2012, Instagram changed their terms of use, allowing the network to sell user-uploaded images, without profit to the content generators. This infuriated many users, who closed their accounts or stopped uploading images.
Craigslist is a website where individuals can contact others interested in buying or selling goods. As a verb, it means to sell something on Craigslist. So Chad is sending a note where he is giving the Dude a month to move his shit - after that he will try to get rid of it by selling it on craigslist.org. (FYI is an abbreviation of For Your Information). So instead of getting angry the Dude should just go and remove his stuff.
When he do get angry, his friend asks him if he paid anything for this "storage business." It turns out that he did not, and the friend then concludes that it is NOT a storage business. This is exactly the problem with Instagram (or it's users). A user do not pay anything, and to create an account you have to sign a terms of service/end user license agreement. A user has thus effectively signed their consent to whatever Instagram has written. And then can then change these if they give a forewarning (like Chad here). Unfortunately, most users don't read the terms before clicking the "I agree" option, so it can come as a shock when Instagram uses the data in a way the user hadn't anticipated.
The Dude gets so angry that he is almost ready to stop giving him anymore stuff. This is also making fun of those Instagram users that complain about the new way of using their data pictures, but a the same time keeps uploading more pictures. The users have often developed a kind of addiction, so they cannot just stop sharing their life (in pictures).
In the title text Dude continues with an idea of calling the cops. He thinks that Chad is a thief. He thus ignores that he left the stuff at Chads house. And after Chad has been arrested (which will of course never happen) he wishes to move all his stuff to another house, just to continue to get free storage. There are major two flaws in this logic - and it is the same with the logic of the disgruntled Instagram users. You cannot accuse Instagram of stealing because it was you who gave them the images in the first place, and it is irresponsible to assume that this will not happen if you give your photos to another social networking company (like Facebook).
These kind of issued (with Facebook as the evildoer) is also the subject of 743: Infrastructures and 1390: Research Ethics.
Transcript
- [The Dude is talking to his friend who is sitting by his computer.]
- The Dude: I've been putting all my stuff in Chad's garage.
- The Dude: He has nice shelves.
- The Dude: And he lets me in to see it whenever I want.
- [In panel two a note is shown. Above the note is a frame with the the Dude comment:]
- But I got this note from him:
- [The note:]
- Dude
- In like a month im gonna Craigslist all that shit you left in my garage
- Just FYI
- -Chad
- [Zoom in on the Dude]
- The Dude: It's an outrage! This is no way to run a storage business!
- Friend (off screen): Are you paying him to look after your stuff?
- [Final frame almost like the first frame]
- The Dude: No.
- Friend: Then what he runs isn't a storage business.
- The Dude: Well, I'm this close to not giving him any more stuff.
- Friend: That'll teach him.
