March 18--If a picture is worth a thousand words, Rep. Aaron Schock isn't saying much today.
The Peoria congressman abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday afternoon. Hours later, his globe-trotting Instagram account at instagram.com/aaronschock was set to private.
The Associated Press had cited the account in its Feb. 23 report detailing Schock's questionable spending habits. Schock had used the account to broadcast his exploits from the Greek Isles to the glaciers of Patagonia. He was shown surfboarding in Hawaii, doing the tango in Buenos Aires and parasailing in the Andes.
Instagram accounts are set to public by default, meaning anyone can view its content. But users can make their accounts private so that only approved followers can see what's posted there.
When posts are set to private, they don't appear in search and the profile page shows a blank screen with the message "No photos to show." Anyone who wants to view private content must click "follow" and wait to see if they are approved or denied access.
According to Instagram, new follow requests appear in the Activity tab. There, account owners must approve or ignore each request.
As of Wednesday morning, Schock's Instagram account had more than 18,000 followers and 337 posts. If someone was already following before the user set the account to private, the only way to keep them from viewing content is to block the user.
The lockdown doesn't appear to extend to Twitter. As of Wednesday morning, his Twitter account at twitter.com/aaronschock was still public facing. Interestingly, Twitter is one way people could get a glimpse into Schock's now private Instagram account.
Instagram's help page states that private posts shared on social networks may be visible to the public, depending on the privacy settings for those networks. So if Schock shares a private Instagram photo on Twitter and doesn't have Twitter also locked down, the photo could be visible there.
