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Instagram today announced several new tools and changes coming to the platform with the aim of "protecting young people." Amongst the changes will be the inability for adults to DM teenagers (users under 18 years old) who don't follow them.

Instagram-Feature-2.jpg

Instagram says it has partnered with The Child Mind Institute and the non-profit group ConnectSafely to publish a new Parents Guide in the U.S. The new resource advises parents and teenagers on proper and safe usage of the platform. It will additionally roll out in partnership with experts in Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and Singapore, joining existing guides for the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain and with plans to expand further in the future.

Instagram's terms and conditions require all users to be at least 13 years old to make an account, although some young users "can lie about their date of birth," circumventing the requirement. To battle it, Instagram does ask some new users for a form of age verification, and now, Instagram will use artificial intelligence to help "keep teens safer and apply new age-appropriate features."

One of the most prominent new "age-appropriate features" will be limited interaction between adults and teenagers who aren't following each other. As Instagram explains, if an adult tries to DM a teenager who doesn't follow them, they'll be shown a prompt saying, "You can't message this account unless they follow you." Additionally, Instagram will add new "Saftey Notices" for teenagers when messaging an adult they follow.
Safety notices in DMs will notify young people when an adult who has been exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior is interacting with them in DMs. For example, if an adult is sending a large amount of friend or message requests to people under 18, we'll use it to alert the recipients within their DMs and give them an option to end the conversation, or block, report, or restrict the adult.
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Other changes coming to Instagram will include the platform attempting to make it harder for adults to find teenagers to follow if they've been "exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior to interact with teens." Instagram also says it will encourage teenagers to make their accounts private, only allowing people they approve to see their photos and videos.

Article Link: Instagram Announces New Tools to 'Protect Young People' on the Platform
 

ArPe

macrumors 65816
May 31, 2020
1,281
3,325
The only way to clean up that that crap is separate it from FB and give it new bosses who give a damn about the users. They allowed the worst things to happen on it. Not by accident. You can report real Nazis and real crimes on there and you get a message from the auto mod telling you to go F yourself.
 

yaxomoxay

macrumors 604
Mar 3, 2010
7,389
34,164
Texas
imagine there is a feature that:

i adult stranger messages your kids
ii automatically the message is sent to the parents too
iii including the IP address of this MF
iv and an option to send John Wick, with a pencil, to the house of this MF ??

Fixed it for you, just to be sure everything is in order.
 
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tranceking26

macrumors 65816
Apr 16, 2013
1,383
1,532
I mean, good for them, but A) it has taken this long and B) what about all the data fb has gathered from said children?
 

Maconplasma

Cancelled
Sep 15, 2020
2,489
2,215
Just like smoking, privacy invasive apps should have legal age before you are permitted to use.
And just like smoking kids will easily get someone to buy the cigarettes for them, so they will find a way to get what they want despite age, especially with apps not requiring I.D but rather you just confirming your age on the screen.
 

svanstrom

macrumors 6502a
Feb 8, 2002
787
1,744
??
Really makes you wonder why this wasn’t a “feature” from the start. Ick.
It's a decade old image sharing platform started by entrepreneurs exploring different features; it's not like the first step of entrepreneurship is to raise capital to spend years researching all the ways that something could be exploited by pedophiles before you actually get to exploring features people might want.
 

oosamon

macrumors regular
May 6, 2013
111
119
Not sure it's really true that young people can "be protected" and still use the socials..... As much as I'm in favor of baby steps like this.
 

svanstrom

macrumors 6502a
Feb 8, 2002
787
1,744
??
And just like smoking kids will easily get someone to buy the cigarettes for them, so they will find a way to get what they want despite age, especially with apps not requiring I.D but rather you just confirming your age on the screen.
Sometimes the protection is there to make it obvious when someone circumvents it.

Like, you can't really pretend innocence if you've specifically setup a profile pretending to be a teenager just for the app to unlock itself for sending messages to those underage; there's just this extra level of premeditation if a person has done something like that, which really could be the zinger when they have their day in court. They go straight from any form of "I didn't know"-excuse to having planned the whole thing.
 

Saturn1995

macrumors member
Oct 28, 2019
43
87
imagine there is a feature that:

i adult stranger messages your kids
ii automatically the message is sent to the parents too
iii including the IP address of this MF
iv and an option to send John Wick to the house of this MF ??
This is a really good idea. We make minors get a parent/guardian consent for a school field trip to a museum but social media’s anything goes?

I think a schoolmate might be less likely to say “you’re fat, kill yourself” if they knew a parent was getting cc’
 
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bsolar

macrumors 65816
Jun 20, 2011
1,491
1,601
I think a schoolmate might be less likely to say “you’re fat, kill yourself” if they knew a parent was getting cc’

I doubt teenagers would still use a social network they know is monitored by the parents for the communications they want to hide from them.
 
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jonblatho

macrumors 68030
Jan 20, 2014
2,500
6,168
Oklahoma
It's a decade old image sharing platform started by entrepreneurs exploring different features; it's not like the first step of entrepreneurship is to raise capital to spend years researching all the ways that something could be exploited by pedophiles before you actually get to exploring features people might want.
Okay, fine. Why wasn’t this functionality limited between the time Instagram started taking off, say 2012, and when Instagram had grown to a billion monthly active users? There’s, what, all of a 6-year gap there?
 

svanstrom

macrumors 6502a
Feb 8, 2002
787
1,744
??
Okay, fine. Why wasn’t this functionality limited between the time Instagram started taking off, say 2012, and when Instagram had grown to a billion monthly active users? There’s, what, all of a 6-year gap there?
Why hasn't the phone company limited who can call people under the age of 18? Why can people send emails to people under 18? Why are ISPs allowing people under the age of 18 to access adult information? Why? Why? Why?

As much as I'm for a new feature like this I find it quite ridiculous that people suddenly faced with this to them new idea use it as some sort of reason for blaming the company for not having created it before; it makes about as much sense as me yelling at the local food delivery company for not having delivered my food before I ordered it.
 

crawfish963

macrumors 6502a
Apr 16, 2010
933
1,637
Texas
And just like smoking kids will easily get someone to buy the cigarettes for them, so they will find a way to get what they want despite age, especially with apps not requiring I.D but rather you just confirming your age on the screen.
Imagine “some people will do it anyway so it shouldn’t be illegal” as a sane justification for anything harmful to society….
 
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