Law abiding user

Law abiding user

By Eirini Paggou

The mutual love of two Stanford University graduates in October 2010 for photography, became the reason of creation of the most well-known platform in the area of social media for now, Instagram. Aside from <<post-scrolling>> does it have anything else to offer us? Or is it just an app that grands anybody the ability to act however one desires?

A daily Instagram phenomenon is freebooting, aka the theft of third party posts and then reposting them without any credit to the actual creators and claiming that they belong to the person that re-uploaded them. A prior example to that is the collection of stolen pictures that Richard Prince shared from other users and then managed to sell these pictures for outrageous amounts of money. He was, later on, led to court of course. Furthermore, other cases that have taken place are the creation of accounts from ill-intended users that pretend to be TV personas, famous people or even relatives.

Freedom of speech. In a vast app like this one, every user is given the chance to communicate their ideas, their knowledge, even spread their messages. However, the control of the limits of this right is often lost! Purposely or not, social groups, people of various ethnicities and religions are often offended by some people who are suffering, usually, from inferiority complexes. Therefore, the right of those users ceases to be a right, since their freedom is interfering with the freedom of many other individuals.

Now, Instagram has begun to have an enormous effect on children, even grade-schoolers. In order for this app to become safer for both the young and old, Instagram includes a report option which anyone can report there any kind of unwanted incident simply. Act in time for a fairer internet world.