Instagram's official response
I find this thread really fascinating.  I have a hard time imagining a more better apology from Instagram.  They accept responsibility, there isn't a trace of hostility towards any of the people who 'misinterpreted' their terms, they are upfront about needing to make money, and they communicate (or attempt to) that they were never in favor of any of those kind of downright villainous things it seemed like they were in favor of.  If anyone in the masses of angry Instagram users could be appeased by words, this is probably about as good as you could do at appeasing them.However, judging from the responses here, a lot of Instagram users are unappeasable, and I don't think unreasonably.  Their motives are basically unknowable by anyone not in their inner circle, so all we have to go on is their actions and their words.  If your internal heuristics say that when it looks like a social media company is trying to steal your personal data/intellectual property, they probably are and will then lie about it after the fact... well, that seems like a reasonable heuristic to have this day and age. I'm not sure I buy into it unreservedly, but I wouldn't try to convince anyone they're wrong about it, either.This whole event shows me (or at least, reminds me) that there are limits to what words can fix.