Democracy Dies in Darkness

This viral Instagram hoax duped A-listers — and the man overseeing our nuclear arsenal

August 21, 2019 at 2:27 p.m. EDT
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The ramifications of Instagram’s supposedly new “rule where they can use your photos” weren’t totally clear.

But the warnings multiplied rapidly online: Your posts could end up being leveraged against you in court cases. There was some sort of deadline to declare your opposition. Even deleted pictures could become public — unless you reposted a note riddled with odd capitalization and inconsistent font sizes that spread the word about the threat to people’s privacy and declared that Instagram did not have permission to use your account’s content.