social · Meta
You’re creating on Instagram, which means…
Meta doesn't own your posts, and its licence really does end when your content is deleted — but the terms give themselves up to months to finish deleting, and the licence never reaches the copies other people already made.
What they own
Nothing. The terms say it in their own words: “We do not claim ownership of your content that you post on or through the Service and you are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want.” Your photos and videos stay yours.
What you own
The copyright. The licence you hand Meta is non-exclusive, so the same photo can go on your own site, into a client's campaign, or up for sale, and Instagram can't stop you. You are also the one who has to have cleared everything in the frame: “You represent you own or have obtained all necessary rights to the content you post or share.”
What you don't
Control over the clock. The licence ends when your content is “deleted from our systems” — but deletion starts up to 30 days after you ask, takes up to 90 days more, and backups can take another 90 after that. And where someone else has already used your content under this licence, it “will continue to apply until that content is deleted” by them.
What they can do with it
Host it, copy it, modify it, translate it, publicly perform or display it, distribute it, and “create derivative works” from it — worldwide, and royalty-free. They can pass those rights along, because the licence is transferable and sub-licensable, and Meta's “past, present, and future affiliates and agents, including Instagram LLC” can invoke its rights. Separately, your username and profile picture can be shown next to ads “without any compensation to you.”
The clauses
The grant — and the sentence that ends it
You represent you own or have obtained all necessary rights to the content you post or share. … We do not claim ownership of your content, but you grant us a license to use it. … Nothing is changing about your rights in your content. We do not claim ownership of your content that you post on or through the Service and you are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want. However, we need certain legal permissions from you (known as a “license”) to provide the Service. When you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) on or in connection with our Service, you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings). This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems. You can delete content individually or all at once by deleting your account.
What you promise first
The subsection before the grant makes you warrant the rights: you represent you own or have obtained all necessary rights to everything you post. Section 7.3 then makes that promise expensive if it is wrong — you agree to “indemnify and hold us harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses” connected with your use of the Service.
The words that aren't here
“Perpetual” and “irrevocable” appear zero times in Instagram's Terms of Use. Across the 45 documents in this collection, “perpetual” appears in 21 of them and “irrevocable” in 24. Instagram's licence is written with an end condition in it, and that is the difference worth carrying out of this reading — but read the end condition against Section 6, which keeps the whole of Section 4 alive after your account is gone. The next clause quotes it.
Which way the grant runs
The clause reads “you hereby grant to us” — this is the licence you give Meta, not one it gives you. “non-exclusive” sits on that side of the grant, which makes it the reassuring word here: the same photo is still yours to post, sell, or license anywhere else.
Sub-licensable and transferable
Meta can pass the licence to someone else, and that someone can pass it on again. You will not be told who. That is also what makes the end condition matter — the more hands it reaches, the more copies have to be deleted before it lapses.
Create derivative works
Not just showing your photo — making something new out of it. This is the verb that matters if your footage or imagery is raw material someone could build a product on.
What “deleted from our systems” actually takes
Instagram Terms of Use — Section 6, Content Removal and Disabling or Terminating Your Account ↗
When you request to delete content or your account, the deletion process will automatically begin no more than 30 days after your request. It may take up to 90 days to delete content after the deletion process begins. While the deletion process for such content is being undertaken, the content is no longer visible to other users, but remains subject to these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . After the content is deleted, it may take us up to another 90 days to remove it from backups and disaster recovery systems. … Content will not be deleted within 90 days of the account deletion or content deletion process beginning in the following situations: where your content has been used by others in accordance with this license and they have not deleted it (in which case this license will continue to apply until that content is deleted) … If you delete or we disable your account… then these Terms shall terminate as an agreement between you and us, but this section, the section above called "Your Commitments," and the section below called "Our Agreement and What Happens if We Disagree" will still apply even after your account is terminated, disabled, or deleted…
Delete is a process, not a switch
Read the three periods in order: up to 30 days before deletion starts, up to 90 days to run, up to 90 more for backups. Through all of it the content “remains subject to these Terms of Use” — which is to say, still licensed.
The carve-out that outlasts you
If another person used your content under this licence and has not deleted their copy, the licence keeps applying to that copy until they delete it. You cannot make them. Deleting your own account does not touch it.
The section that outlives the account
Section 4 is headed “Your Commitments,” and Section 4.3 — the grant quoted above — is a subsection of it. So the document says in one place that the licence ends when your content is deleted, and in another that the section holding that licence still applies after your account is gone. The two fit: the section survives as a set of provisions, which is how the grant stays enforceable through the 30/90/90 windows and over the copies other people kept, while the licence inside it keeps its own end trigger. What outlives deletion is the machinery that holds the licence in place until the deleting is finished — not a licence with no end date.
The other exits
The same section lists further situations where deletion is delayed — technical limitations, investigating violations, legal obligations, and requests from courts, law enforcement or government agencies — with the content retained “no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it has been retained (the exact duration will vary on a case-by-case basis)”.
Your username and face, next to ads
Instagram Terms of Use — Section 4.3, Permissions You Give to Us ↗
You give us permission to show your username, profile picture, and information about your actions (such as likes) or relationships (such as follows) next to or in connection with accounts, ads, offers, and other sponsored content that you follow or engage with that are displayed on Meta Products, without any compensation to you. For example, we may show that you liked a sponsored post created by a brand that has paid us to display its ads on Instagram. … We will also respect your ad settings.
A separate permission
This is not the content licence. It is its own grant, and it covers you rather than your work — your name, your picture, and what you liked or followed.
Across Meta Products
The permission is not limited to the Instagram app. It runs to anything “displayed on Meta Products,” and Instagram is only one of them: “The Instagram Service is one of the Meta Products”. That family is not the same defined term as the one that shares data — “Instagram is part of the Meta Companies, which share technology, systems, insights, and information” — and Section 6 names both in one breath, “the Meta Products and Meta Company Products”.
Without any compensation to you
Meta is paid by the advertiser. The clause states plainly that you are not. The one brake in the sentence is your ad settings, which Meta builds and can change.
This document is not the whole agreement
Instagram Terms of Use — Section 7.1, Our Agreement ↗
Your use of music on the Service is also subject to our Music Guidelines , and your use of our API is subject to our Meta Platform Terms and Developer Policies . If you use certain other features or related services, you will be provided with an opportunity to agree to additional terms that will also become a part of our agreement. For example, if you use payment features, you will be asked to agree to the Community Payment Terms . If you use Avatars, then the Avatar Terms also apply. If you use our AI products and features, the Meta AI Terms also apply. … If any of those terms conflict with this agreement, those other terms will govern.
The later terms win
Where any of those documents conflicts with what you just read, the other document governs. Everything above is the floor, not the ceiling — a further agreement can take more, and the Terms of Use will not stop it.
Named elsewhere too
Section 4.2 adds more: the Community Standards, the Branded Content Policies (which apply “If you post branded content”), and the Automated Data Collection Terms. Section 3 makes the Privacy Policy compulsory. Section 5 points at the Brand Guidelines. None of those documents are in this collection.
Where AI would live
The strings “train” and “model” appear zero times in this Terms of Use. It uses “machine learning” once and “artificial intelligence” once, both in Section 1's description of the Service, not in the licence. AI use is routed to the separate Meta AI Terms — a different document, not read here, and one that governs over this one if the two conflict.
Who else can use these rights
Instagram Terms of Use — Section 7.2, Who Has Rights Under this Agreement ↗
Our past, present, and future affiliates and agents, including Instagram LLC, can invoke our rights under this agreement in the event they become involved in a dispute. Otherwise, this agreement does not give rights to any third parties. … You cannot transfer your rights or obligations under this agreement without our consent. … Our rights and obligations can be assigned to others. For example, this could occur if our ownership changes (as in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets) or by law.
It runs to companies that don't exist yet
The phrase “future affiliates and agents” means the contract already binds you to entities Meta has not created or acquired. Read alongside the assignment sentence, the party on the other side of your agreement is not fixed.
One-way mobility
The two sentences are deliberately asymmetric. You cannot transfer your side without their consent; they can assign theirs without yours.
Whose contract this is
The document opens by naming the counterparty: “These Terms of Use therefore constitute an agreement between you and Meta Platforms, Inc.” It also says “The Meta Terms of Service do not apply to this Service” — Instagram is a Meta product on its own paper.
What it's worth if they delete it by mistake
Instagram Terms of Use — Section 7.3, Who Is Responsible if Something Happens ↗
You agree that we won't be responsible ("liable") for any lost profits, revenues, information, or data, or consequential, special, indirect, exemplary, punitive, or incidental damages arising out of or related to these Terms, even if we know they are possible. This includes when we delete your content, information, or account. Our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these Terms will not exceed the greater of $100 or the amount you have paid us in the past twelve months.
Read the floor, not the cap
This is a “greater of” clause, not a flat $100 limit — if you have spent more than $100 with Meta in the past twelve months, that larger figure is the ceiling. For someone who has spent nothing, $100 is what the whole account is worth in damages.
The sentence in the middle
“This includes when we delete your content, information, or account.” Losing the archive is expressly inside the exclusion, and lost profits and lost data are expressly outside recovery.
And you arbitrate it
Section 7.4 sends claims to individual arbitration and bars class actions. Intellectual property disputes are carved out and can still go to court. You can opt out of arbitration, but only within 30 days of agreeing to the Terms, and only by sending your name, address and account details to a street address in Menlo Park — the clause offers no other channel.
Due Dilly reads the paperwork and reports what it says. This is not legal advice.