The recent internet content ownership snafu from Instagram’s new terms of service made me think about content ownership. Maybe all this is obvious but I wanted to share my thoughts.

As always, misunderstanding spread faster than facts an people were talking about Instagram selling your photos . While it turns out that that wasn’t the plan , but just to use them for ads.

This has happened before and it will keep happening as long as there are free services that grow enough to require them to find a way to make money to keep going.

And here is my point. Content creators, specially the ones that aim to make money or don’t want their “brand” be diluted need to make a decision about what they post to social networks.

Lately, we have heard a lot that if you’re not paying for the product you’re using then you are the product : your information, data and behavior becomes the currency being exchanged. This makes sense and is probably ok for most people.

But I think it’s different for content creators; when posting your content in a free web service you are actively engaging in a different commercial exchange: you gain access to big audiences (like the ones on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest or Instagram) for the modicum price of your content being used in ads and your data used to fuel behavioral and demographic analysis.

You need to decide where you stand in the balance between the benefit of reaching people against allowing corporations to benefit from you.

But what those companies do with each tiny piece of data stops being your problem after you click the post button. It stops being under your control.

Imagine how you’d feel if something you sold was re-sold for double the value. You may feel you got the short end of the stick but the truly frustrating part is that you can’t do anything about it.

When it comes to personal data you will always get the short end.