Instagram: we won't sell your photos He said that Instagram would re-write the terms to clarify how pictures might be used. "The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement," Systrom wrote. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we're going to remove the language that raised the question. Systrom added that Instagram was not claiming ownership of users' photos and said that privacy settings would not be changed. This is not the only controversy Instagram has been drawn into this month. It recently removed the feature allowing Instagram pictures to be displayed on Twitter, escalating tensions between the rival networks. More recently it has been claimed that Systrom "verbally agreed" a $525m deal to sell Instagram to Twitter, just weeks before announcing that the service had in fact been bought by Facebook. Testifying before regulators in August as part of official scrutiny of the Facebook deal, Systrom said there had been no formal offers for Instagram, other than the one from Facebook. Facebook's offer for Instagram was originally valued at $1bn but that figure dropped to $735m as the social network's share price slid. Last month Facebook announced changes to its terms and conditions that would see more data shared between Instagram and Facebook.