Instagram Adds Live Location Sharing to Direct Messages

[MacRumors]

Instagram today announced several updates for direct messages on its platform, including location sharing, nicknames, new sticker packs, and more.

There's now an option to share a live location with a friend for up to one hour on Instagram, which can be used for locating friends when getting together in real life. There's also an option to pin a spot to a map for coordinating meetups.

Instagram says that locations can only be shared privately in DMs, either in a chat with just one other person or a group chat. All live locations will expire after an hour, and the feature is turned off by default. Only people in the chat can see your location, and location information cannot be forwarded to other chats. Instagram's blog post says that users should be "mindful" of their privacy and only share their location with real-life friends.

DMs in Instagram can be customized with nicknames, which appear in DM chats. Users can set nicknames for themselves or their friends, simplifying lengthy usernames to make them easier to recognize. Creating a nickname can be done by tapping on the chat name at the top of a conversation and then tapping on Nicknames and the username of the person.

Along with location sharing and nicknames, Instagram has also added 17 sticker packs with 300 new stickers that can be used in DMs. There is a new option to favorite a sticker, and a new DM sticker tray.

Article Link: Instagram Adds Live Location Sharing to Direct Messages

 

[grantishere]

Oh no...

 

[TechnoMonk]

Yeah, then sell the location information to third parties for better uSeR ExPeRieNcE.

 

[ignatius345]

Oh hellllls no

 

[blicked]

Slow news day, eh?

 

[nostradumbass]

Get the zuck out of here.

 

[coffeemilktea]

I'm sure this couldn't possibly lead to anything bad. 🤡

 

[picpicmac]

including location sharing

I'm so old that I remember people were scared of the day when big brother could track them in real-time...

 

[gknewell]

Voluntarily sharing your location in real-time with Meta sounds like an absolutely terrible idea.

 

[waltman]

I can’t wait to share my location with Zuck! 😍

 

[Janschi]

Instagram is trying to be anything but good in what they were initially known for.

 

[Rounder077]

This is an aggressive hard pass. It seems more and more people are trying to get predatory social media out of their life, not further in it.

 

[steve09090]

This is an aggressive hard pass. It seems more and more people are trying to get predatory social media out of their life, not further in it.

This week they will be changing the laws in Australia to ban social media from having anyone under 16 years. Zuck and Musk can keep their dirty hands off the kids!

 

[Jay Tee]

Instagram: helping you find your friends in real life while giving you 300 new stickers to distract them from showing up on time.

Balance is everything!

 

[Logamaniac]

I'm so old that I remember people were scared of the day when big brother could track them in real-time...

That was before big brother invented likes and people could manufacture their worth

 

[SIGSEGV1]

“Lizzard Zuckerburg” would like to track your location. Would you like to grant it permissions?
[Yes, please] [Yes, but another button]

 

[Skyscraperfan]

I still remember what I would call a "location bug" in the early days of Instagram. Back then all photos uploaded to Instagram had their location in their EXIF data, when you had turned on GPS. While that location was not shown on Instagram, you were able to save a photo with a third party service and then see the location on the map. As most people posted from their own homes, their addresses were revealed to the whole world.

Each times I found out someone had accidentally shared their location this way, I warned the person by sending them a screenshot of the map. The reactions were quite mixed. Many very dumb people told me I am a stalker, while the smarter ones thanked me for warning them. I still have a few friends that I met this way. Usually good looking women. It was a great staring point for a conversation. "Hey, be careful! Instagram shares the location of your home!".

So I am very thankful to Instagram for that bug. This time of course it is not a bug, but people should still be careful.

 

[Will Co]

So when are we going to see the emergence of an "honest" messaging system. One where there is no data harvesting, reselling and general exploitation of the user, and no advertising. Sure, to make that viable there would have to be a charge to make it work. But so what? At scale, a couple of bucks/pounds a month to cover all your messaging needs is probably something most people would pay for. IF, and only IF, the product was genuinely free from all the bad stuff.

And no advertising in a paid for app. Looking at you, Apple News.

 

[shadowboi]

Obviously if you had ever shared a photo with location embedded or maybe used some Meta location-based features, Facebook already knows where are you. Turns out they even triangulate to know your location and also show you recommendations of people who have logged on same wifi as you have. Facebook and Instagram are pretty evil in terms of hidden privacy threats. Probably since 2013 I had not taken a single image with location. While I am not a person who should care about privacy at all, it somewhat feels better when data is kept where it belongs