(Image Source:  Petapixel ) BY JASMINE BAILEY Instagram’s announcement of a change in its terms of service did not go ignored— the new policy would have allowed the photo-sharing site to sell user’s pictures for advertising, without compensation. And after a recent drop in user activity by 25 percent , the New York Post claims user’s outrage is to blame. Instagram peaked at 16.4 million active daily users the week it rolled out its policy change, but fell to 12.4 million Friday. Now, this data only looked at numbers of users who’ve connected their Facebook accounts to Instagram. The findings come from company, AppData, who told the New York Post, “[We are] pretty sure the decline in Instagram users was due to the terms of service announcement.” But CNBC points out — there are other factors to consider — the terms of service hiccup might not be to blame for the decline in usage. “The drop in Instagram daily users actually happens around Christmas time. That’s when people are traveling, when they’re on vacation, when they’re not logging into Facebook.” Thanksgiving Day was the busiest day for Instagram yet and that’s why the drop in usage over Christmas raised a few eyebrows. But there were similar trends in traffic all across the web with sites like Skype, Pandora and Pinterest. And a writer for Mashable notes — “The number of people who used Instagram in the last month actually rose... from 42.5 million to 44 million.” They also note that... “Instagram's potential health problem, then, has nothing to do with statistics and everything to do with perception. The Terms of Service story went viral, but the apology didn't. The danger is that Instagram has been indelibly defined in the public mind by this story, and is on its way to becoming a butt of late-night jokes...” “ According to The Wall Street Journal — Facebook’s stock also is down more than 2% [as of Saturday], which could be a result of those reports— any weakness in an app that Facebook paid $1 billion for at the time wouldn’t be well-received by the market.” Instagram declined to comment or provide any data of its own in relation to the new findings but according to the New York Post, it is still the second-most popular app.