Instagram is rolling out new protections for its teenage users to default young people into private accounts. This way, it makes it harder for suspicious adults to make unwanted contact. The facebook-owned photo-sharing app has also restricted targeting options for advertisers who want to promote their products to teen users.
The company said that they are creating an experience on the app that’s safe and private for young people. They want them to easily make new friends and keep up with their interests, but they don’t want them to deal with unwanted messages or comments from strangers.From this week, people under 18 join Instagram, the account’s default to private.
This feature means people must follow the users to see and comment on their content. Instagram also shows users who already have public accounts a notification highlighting the benefits of switching to a private account and explaining how to do it. This will bring Facebook into submission with the U.K.’s new Age Appropriate Design Code, which is a set of rules from the country’s data protection authority. It requires all online platforms to default the accounts of users under age 18 to the strictest privacy settings.The photo-sharing app has developed a tool that detects suspicious adult accounts and stops those accounts from interacting with teenage accounts on the app.
Instagram head of public policy, Karina Newton, said that an adult’s account is marked suspicious if it has been blocked or reported by multiple teen accounts. Once the adult accounts are flagged suspicious, they won’t be shown teen accounts in discovery tools. Those users won’t be able to follow young people’s accounts, leave comments on their posts or see comments from teens on other people’s accounts.
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