Endless Thread - Pics or this episode didn't happen

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

A picture's worth a thousand words, or in this case, a podcast episode. This week Ben and Amory bring two very different stories from Reddit about pictures on the internet. First – what legal rights do we have over our photos after posting them on Instagram? Then, Ben indoctrinates Amory to The Game. Show notes: Unauthorized use of my photo being displayed in every corporate store in US. Where to start? (Reddit) Let's confuse the younger generation (Reddit) This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

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Hey, y'all. Before the show starts, we just want to remind you that we set up secure lines for you to communicate with us. If there's anything you need to share anonymously or very carefully in this time that we are living.

Yeah, we have a proton mail account that is WBUR Secure Tips at proton. Or you can text or call us on Signal. That number is 646-456-9095. We should also mention that WBWR is an NPR member station and that the CEO of NPR, Catherine Marr, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation,

the nonprofit that supports the messaging app. Anyway, if there's anything you need to be in touch with us about and you want to be careful with how you share that information and protected. That's how you get in touch. WBUR SecureTips at Proton.m.m. or call us or text signal 646-456-9095. Amory Sieberton, my co-host on Endless Thread. How are you? So formal.

Benjamin Brock Johnson, my co-host on Endless Thread, a podcast from WBUR, Boston's NPR, I'm just fine. When did you get your first cell phone? When did you get your first cellie? I was in eighth grade, and I was told that I would have to pay for it myself. So I paid, it was $25 a month. It was a little kiosera.

It had an antenna. Virgin Mobile. And, yeah, eighth grade. Well, there's a big movement right now that it's basically all about wait till eighth. That's right. So I think you got your cell phone probably at the exact right time. But isn't that about smartphones? They're saying wait till 8th for smartphones.

Yeah, whatever. It's sure, yes. Because this phone could not have been dumber. It was pretty dumb. Okay, I think my first dumb phone cell phone, I think I got about the time I was like maybe 18 or 19. So. But do you know how you used to text in the way that you would text is like there were letters, three letters to each number. And you, like, kind of scroll through the letters by punching the numbers and, like, that's how you texted.

Right? Yes. Yep. Okay. So I have now texted you an image of an old school cell phone with the numbers and letters and some numbers attached to that. This was a photo that was on Reddit recently, and it has some numbers on it. What does it say? Describe the photo and what it says. Okay.

the photo is just of the keypad of the phone. The caption is, let's confuse the younger generation. And then there is a series of numbers that you would hit in order to spell something out on this old school phone where you have to hit, you know, a number multiple times to get a particular letter. So the series of numbers is 8-4-4-3-3-space, 4-2-6-3-33. Okay.

So before you spell it out, Yeah. If I say to you, Finchley Central or Cuffs, the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society, any of that ring bells? No. How about you've lost the game? Vaguely, but no.

Do you know what ironic processing is? No. So just to define very briefly, ironic processing is an attempt to... It's when Alanis Morissette has to process something. Wait, it's not, because she didn't use ironic correctly once in that whole song. Oh, man, hot takes. Okay.

So ironic processing is an attempt to suppress or avoid certain thoughts in a way that actually makes those thoughts more common or persistent than they would be at random. Okay? Did you ever play that game in middle school or high school? Maybe around the time that you got your first cell phone, where if you make the okay sign, like the thumb and the pointer finger are making a circle,

you would make that sign surreptitiously and put it somewhere on your body and you would get someone to look at that sign. You could punch them. You looked. We're doing this new thing called The Circle Game. Basically, if you can make the other guy look at your hand when you're doing this, below your waist, you get to hit them in the arm.

It's stupid, but hey, you get to hit people. You ever played that? No. This might have been an eighth-grade boys game, maybe, perhaps. This to me is an example of gamified ironic processing, where, like, acknowledgement or recognition of the thing means you lose the game. Does that make sense? There are like some horror memes, I would say, that fit into this general trope,

like Slender Man, Candyman, Beetlejuice. These are characters that you would, like, call into existence, right? You would conjure them by mentioning their names and acknowledging their existence. And, you know, you'd usually get yourself into lots of trouble just by invoking their name or acknowledging that they were a thing. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetle juice.

It's showtime. Okay, so this, all of this to me is connected to the idea of intrusive thoughts. You know, we, of course, endless thread has a whole episode about intrusive thoughts called Call of the Void, which listeners should definitely check out, by the way. But intrusive thoughts are in my mind similar to this ironic processing idea because you're often, again, like imagining a thing you actually don't want to happen, but just the act of imagine. it is a little scary, right? Because it can feel like imagining it makes it more real or more possible.

Does that make sense? Oh, yes. This resonates big time with me. So the game is a great film featuring Michael Douglas. What are you selling? It's a game. Game. It is also an incredibly amorphous vague meme,

where the way you play is to remind someone that the game exists and the way you lose is to be reminded of its existence. Hmm. Am I making sense? I think so, yeah. There are three simple rules to this game, which is basically a mind game. And I'm going to play you something from Kiwi FM, which is a commercial call-in radio station in New Zealand or was to both explain the rules of the game and also, Amory, give you an example of how you can

play the game and lose. Okay. Oh, I just lost the game. You lost what game? The game. Don't you know about the game? Oh. Have we been drawn into something here?

Well, not really. Basically, rule one is everyone is playing the game, so you've been playing it, whether you knew it or not. Rule two, if you think about the game, you lose. Oh, no. And rule three, you have to announce it. So you've all just lost for the first time. Congratulations.

Can we play again tomorrow? Yep, you're always playing. As soon as you forget about it, you're winning again. So it's a pretty fun game. Thanks, caller. Good, see you later. The first known reference of The Game is a blog post from 2002. Eventually someone created a website called LoseThegame.net,

which endeavored to gather examples of this amorphous sort of meme from around the world. It's a very old-school website. It kind of has some, like, clip art vibes. there is actually a map of like collected instances of the game, of people playing the game or losing the game. Okay. This website Losethegame.net seems to have been key in identifying the origins of the game because after the website was created,

the creators started to receive messages from former members of Cusfs, Cambridge University Science Fiction Society. Okay. who said that they had made up this very similar game where the goal was to remind someone of Finchley Central Station, which is a North London tube stop. The next station is Finchley Central, where this train terminates. Why the science fiction nerds picked this particular station

to be the reference for the game in the 1970s that they created, I am not sure. But there was a song in 1967, you know, a little bit before, maybe about a decade before this game was started, referencing that particular station. That's from a band called the Modern Vaudeville Band. I mean, you've played games like this before, right? Like, have you ever played, like, Werewolf or Murder?

Like, those games where you kind of sit around and talk, and there's a goal to the game. It's not like you don't play it with cards. It doesn't have a board, but like it's gamified interaction between humans, right? Yeah. So this is kind of in that zone. But eventually it sort of jumps to the internet. It has survived for a very long time on the internet, clearly.

If it's, you know, first was referenced by a blog in 2002, there's still a website about it. And it gets memed all over the place. It's very similar in that OK sign punch game. it sort of like survives just through people playing it and being ridiculous with each other and playing it and it survives online. So I want you to look at the image that I sent you on your phone again. Okay.

And can you tell me what you think the numbers spell out? All right. Well, 8 is T. If you hit 4 twice, that's H. If you hit 3 twice, that's E. So the. Four once would be G. Two once would be A. Six once is M.

And two threes again is E. The game. Well, you've lost, Amory. Thanks for playing. Oh, no! No! Is that an appropriate reaction? Yeah, sure.

Why not? Well, that's my, that's my story. The game. The game. All right. Well, coming up in just a minute, I have a story for you about a different sort of game. A game called posting personal photos on Instagram. Oh, boy.

And how that can turn out. It's coming up. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex.

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Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, so Ben, your story was more about posting something online with a particular outcome or hope for it. Sure. Mine is about posting something online and then having something happened to it that you just did not see coming.

Okay. So I was just, you know, tooling around on Reddit like you do. And I saw a post in the legal advice subreddit, a favorite. hours. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Lots of dumpster fire over there. Yes, and also, like, sometimes the advice or the path forward is not clear, but the thought experiment that it sends you down on in the process, this is one of those where it's like, the journey is valuable, even though we don't know what's going to happen in this case. So the title of this post is unauthorized use of my photo being displayed in every corporate store in U.S.

Where to start? Location, California. Upon walking into a store, I realized the photo displayed on the front doors are mine. Me and my dog. It's a photo I posted on Instagram around three years ago. Deleted Instagram shortly afterwards. However, I do have timestamps, series of photos of it from the day. I also noticed they touched me up and tried to make me not as identifiable.

The ad is being displayed for one month total. Where do I start the legal process? Oh, okay. So I already have so many questions about this. Is the person's face in the photo? The person's face is in the photo. They say they clarify a little more further down in the comments because this, you know, people chime in to this big time. They say, it's a selfie I took of my dog and I.

I'm kissing him and my side profile is there and my dog has extremely unique markings. They didn't Photoshop out his original harness, making it more clear it's my dog. In the photo, I'm touched up to have a different shirt, stronger jawline. Whoa. I, of course, immediately wanted to Google pictures of person kissing. profile, advertisement to see if I could find the ad that this person is talking about. Okay. I didn't.

The top commenter is a user who goes by Darwin's photographer. They say, I'm not a lawyer, but I am a professional photographer who deals with multiple copyright infringement cases every year. I have yet to lose. For your image to be pursued for full damages, you need to register the copyright with the Library of Congress. Okay. Then they say further down, In your shoes, I would reach out to the California State Bar referral service

and ask for a lawyer who has experience with copyright infringement. So that's the top comment, but the commenters get really into the idea of what Instagram can do with your photos, if anything. Okay. So there's some back and forth about that. Someone says, unless something changed, I thought once you post any image on Instagram,

as per their terms of service, they own the image? Someone else says, no, the terms of service gives Instagram a license to use the image, so they don't own it, but they can use it. Then someone points out a particular bullet point, 4.3, in their current terms of service, saying, 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 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. Okay. Okay. That last line seems potentially important, but maybe not if, well, it depends on what happens to the content after people posted and what they do with their accounts and what impact that has on the content. But this is just a great reminder to read the terms of service.

Right, which nobody does. Which nobody does. Because they're all 5,000 words long. Right. And we just can't wait to post ourselves being licked by a dog. And then here we are. They are kissing the dog. We don't know if licking is happening. I just want to say that. But yes, another important point here, though, is that the O.P.

said that they deleted their Instagram account shortly after posting this photo. But what does that mean actually? Do you know what I mean? Yes. Does it mean de-activating or does it mean, like, deleting all the photos? How does one even do that? I've never even tried. Like there's a lot of nuance in the idea of deleting an account. Very good question. Yes, as a commenter points out, they say Infosec Pro here.

The license is perpetual until the content is deleted from IG's system. Deleting one's account does not delete stored content in the host system. Oh, boy. So we don't know for sure because terms of service, they're not legally binding. It's also like a little squishy, but it sounds like maybe just deleting your account doesn't necessarily delete everything, or maybe it does. Someone else points out, found this fun edition in Section 6 of the Terms of Service, quote, content will not be deleted within 90 days of the account deletion, which isn't relevant here because the OP says it was deleted three years ago, but within 90 days of the account deletion or content deletion process beginning. getting in the following situations, and then they note this particular situation, where your content has been used by others in accordance with this license.

Okay. So that's important because in that longer, you know, bullet point four point three of the terms of service, that word sub-licensable was in there. You hereby grant us to a non-exclusive royalty-free transferable sub-licensable licenseable. Yeah. That basically means like whoever, just whoever can have this. Well, and not just whoever, but did the company, and I don't know what company this is who made these ads, but did the company sub-license this photo from Instagram? Right.

And what does that look like? What does that mean? Oh, God. Then someone else jumps in. Cato the Middle-aged says, this is more than just a copyright claim. This is a right of publicity claim. Unlike copyright, which is federal law, right of public. is a law which varies from state to state that basically says you have the right to control

the use of your likeness for commercial purposes. They say, of course, there are complications with the terms of service, but they share an example of someone in their law school who had their picture taken in front of a landmark near the school, and the picture was used in an advertisement. And this commenter says, apparently this person paid for his whole law school education just from the settlement over the fact that this picture of him was used in an ad. This commenter also says, luckily, you're in California where right of publicity laws are strong, and there should be a lot of lawyers with experience in those cases. So this person is basically saying, like, forget what Instagram says. This is a right of publicity case. It has, it doesn't really matter

if Instagram sub-licensed the image. A company can't make ads with your like, without involving you. Wow. How do you feel? I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't know what to say about this. It's really tough because on the one hand,

it's sort of like you feel for the person who like walked into the store and was like, wait a second. Like, this isn't cool, right? I have no sympathy for companies that prey upon people in order to make money. and that's a lot of companies, and that makes me sad. But also, like, I don't know. Like, on the other hand, like, what can they do other than be like, this is the legal agreement, do you agree?

You know what I mean? Yes, but if this company can just sub-license something and then use it for an advertisement, we got a lot of overhaul here, you know? Well, and I guess also, like, the other thing is, like, we've now acclimated to the expectation. that like your average person is going to understand like 5,000 words of legalese. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So like that's this other thing that's kind of like, really? Like, you know, we're not making it easy for people to make good choices either. Supposedly we are because we're giving them all the information. But like if they can't understand it, then what do you expect? Right, right. Well, and this is where several people conclude in the comments section, like, well, this is why you should never post anything on Instagram ever. Or if you do, you should just assume that your photos are just going to get used however, wherever, too bad. Not that they're actually taking that position or that they think that that's the way that it should be.

But, you know, for some people, the takeaway is just kind of like, well, that's what you get. Unless you want to have a private photo album with friends and family that is not a social media platform. So, yeah, at this point, we don't know how this will work out for the O.P. But I will be following this thread to see if there's an update to this post because I want to know what can actually happen to our photos on Instagram. Can they just be taken by a corporation to make an ad? And I hope the answer is no. I'm glad we had this talk. I'm going to post about it on Instagram right now.

Yeah, do it with a photo of yourself kissing a rabbit. Endless thread is a show from WBURBustin's NPR. This episode is produced by Frannie Monaghan, Ben Brock Johnson, and me, Amory Seaberson. And it was co-hosted by myself, Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Seaburtson. Mix and sound design by our production manager, Paul Vigis. Our editor is Meg Kramer. Our managing producer is Sumitujoshi. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, and Emily Jenkowski.

If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or another wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. We promise not to turn your Instagram photo into an advertisement. We promise. For real. You can email us at Endless Thread at WBUR.org.