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Celebs ditching Instagram over privacy

Los Angeles - Photo-sharing application Instagram has been subject to a flood of backlash from some of its most celebrated users after the company, owned by Facebook, announced plans to implement a new privacy policy, reports The Daily Mail.

This policy - tied in which the application's user agreement licence - will reportedly see the service use their users' images in ad campaigns, without paying any remuneration to its users.

The latest inclusion to its licence agreement means that it may sell users' photos, profile information and other data for compensation to other companies, while their users do not receive any profit from the ad.

Late on Tuesday this claim was refuted by Instagram CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom who said that the language of the new policy would be revised.

As feverishly as this application is consumed by celebrities, many of them are now threatening to abandon the social networking app.

'I don't think it's fair'

An outcry was sparked by many Hollywood starlets who feel that this new policy is unfair, and could lead to a misuse of their image, if their images are used in unflattering campaigns, for which they will not be compensated.

Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Khloe Kardashian, Lauren Conrad and Anderson Cooper are amongst the celebrities who have vowed to delete their Instagram accounts when this new policy comes into play on 16 January 2013.

Kim took to her Twitter profile to express her disgust regarding the new policy, writing:
Her younger sibling Kendall, who is an avid Instagrammer, has also said she will close her account:
Anderson Cooper didn't seem pleased at all when he found out about the proposed change:

CNN reported on Tuesday that Instagram has since then backed down on its proposed new policy.

"The language we proposed ... raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement," Systrom wrote in a blog post. "We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we're going to remove the language that raised the question."

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