[cbs]

>I have a hard time imagining a more better apology from Instagram.

I don't. This message from on high wasn't particularly bad for a startup, but there are plenty of internet "lifestyle businesses" that can communicate with their user base much much better. The guys who accidentally turn their hobby projects into a small, sustainable business for themselves talk to their userbase with a level of candidness that you'll never see from startup guys, so don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining.

I can imagine a better explanation from instagam easily. It wouldn't start with "Legal documents are easy to misinterpret", it would start with "It's no secret that lawyers will write contract terms as strongly in our favor as possible in a general cover-your-ass measure. Even though we don't plan to do the thing you're all so pissed off about, we sure had them write the terms in a way that gives us room to change our minds in future and actually do most of what you are worried about."

Actually, I guess I can't imagine that. They don't have the balls to admit that. They did the standard lawyer-over-the-shoulder thing of calling it all this big misunderstanding, and we really should have just trusted them to be more benevolent all along.

[porker]

> but there are plenty of internet "lifestyle businesses" that can communicate with their user base much much better.

Like..?

> The guys who accidentally turn their hobby projects into a small, sustainable business for themselves talk to their userbase with a level of candidness that you'll never see from startup guys

I'd really like to know which, so I can learn from them.

[michaelt]

>> but there are plenty of internet "lifestyle businesses" that can communicate with their user base much much better.

> Like..?

MetaFilter [1] does an excellent job of owner-moderator-user interaction. Here are some key features:

* Because of the size of the site, they don't have to rely on community moderation - and the moderators they do have do a very patient and professional job. You don't get capricious or childish deletions, you get the feeling moderators think carefully before deleting posts, and they're always willing to explain their decisions. There's nothing like wheel wars or moderators trying to kick out other moderators.

* There's a $5 signup fee so regular bans work - no need for things like hell bans/shadow bans.

* There's a section of the site called 'metatalk' [2] where things like policies, bugs, moderator actions etc can be discussed. Metatalk posts tend to get read by mods pretty quickly; the top post there has a reply from the site's main developer within 2 minutes.

* Between Metatalk and the mods chatting in the site's normal threads, people feel they know the moderators [3]. Matt, the site's owner, seems like a reasonable guy.

As such, people are much less worried that the site's owners are trying to fuck them over - because the site's owners have an established history of not doing that.

[1] http://metafilter.com/ [2] http://metatalk.metafilter.com/ [3] http://metatalk.metafilter.com/17338/Does-MeFi-have-a-privac...

[foobarqux]

Metafilter seems to be going the way of kuro5hin

[FourthProtocol]

> Like..?

It's actions that define an individual or an organisation, and not words. Better would've been an unambiguous policy update that clearly quells people's concerns, without the feel-good corporate messaging.

Trust is easily given, sometimes earned. It is also easily lost, and very hard to re-earn.

Their app is symptomatic of an immature industry in which trivial/fun apps far outnumber and precede useful business/productivity apps. An app in the former category with a cavalier attitude to its users will be dropped first, given the arrival of a worthwhile replacement.

[rizumu]

> I'd really like to know which, so I can learn from them.

Pinboard is a great example http://pinboard.in/

[loceng]

You're dead-on -- and this is Facebook now in charge who doesn't care about your privacy, or even your settings.