Meta introduces additional securities for Instagram accounts administered by adults who mainly present children, the company announced Wednesday. These accounts will automatically be inserted into the most strict message settings of the app to prevent unwanted messages, and will have the platform “Hidden Words” feature Enabled to filter offensive comments. The company also wears new security features for teenage accounts.
Accounts that will be placed in the new, stricter message settings include those managed by adults who regularly share photos and videos of their children, along with accounts managed by parents or talented administrators who represent children.
“While these accounts are widely used in benign ways, unfortunately there are people who may try to abuse them, leaving sexual comments under their posts or asking sexual images in DMS, in a clear violation of our rules,” the company wrote in Blog post. “Today we announce steps to help prevent this abuse.”
Meta says it will try to prevent potentially suspicious adults, such as people who have already been blocked by young people, from finding accounts who mainly have children. Meta will avoid recommending suspicious adults to these accounts on Instagram, and vice versa, and make it difficult to find each other on an Instagram search.
Today’s announcement comes as Metagram and Instagram has taken steps Over the past year to address mental health concerns related to social media. These concerns were Raised by the US surgeon general and various states, some of which have even have gone so far to claim parental consent for access to social media.
The changes will significantly affect the accounts of family vloggers/creators and parents about accounts for “children’s streams”, both have faced criticism for the risks associated with division of children’s lives on social media. A survey of New York Times released last year found that the Parents are often aware about their child’s exploitation or even participating in it, selling photos or clothing their child wore. In the NYT examination of 5,000 parent accounts, it found 32 million links to male followers.
The company says the accounts that are put into these tighter settings will see notification at the top of their Instagram nutrition notifying them that the social network has updated its security settings. The notice will also encourage them to review the privacy settings of their accounts.
Meta -notes it removed nearly 135,000 Instagram accounts, which have been sexualizing accounts, which mainly have children, as well as 500,000 Instagram and Facebook accounts that were associated with the original accounts it removed.
In addition to today’s announcement, Meta also brings new security features to DMS in Adolescent accountsIts app experience with built-in protections for adolescents automatically applied.
Teenagers will now see new options to see security tips, reminding them of checking profiles carefully and paying attention to what they share. Additionally, the month and year when the account joined Instagram will appear at the top of new talks. In addition, Instagram has added a new option on blockchain and reporting, which allows users to do both things at once.
The new features are designed to give young people more context about the accounts they message and help them see possible scammers, Meta says.
“These new features complete the security notices that we show to remind people to be careful in private messages and block and report anything that makes them uncomfortable – and we encourage to see young people answer them,” Meta wrote on the blog. “Only in June, they blocked accounts 1 million times and reported another 1 million after seeing a security notice.”
Meta also provided an update on its Naked Protection filterNoticing that 99% of people, including young people, supported it. Last month, more than 40% of unclear images received in DMS remained unclear, the company said.
