Instagram said it is deploying new tools to protect young people and combat sexual extortion, including a feature that will automatically blur nudity in direct messages.
The social media platform said in a blog post on Thursday that it is testing out the features as part of its campaign to fight sexual scams and other forms of “image abuse,” and to make it tougher for criminals to contact teens.
Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading a person to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or engages in sexual favors. Recent high-profile cases include two Nigerian brothers who pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teen boys and young men in Michigan, including one who took his own life, and a Virginia sheriff’s deputy who sexually extorted and kidnapped a 15-year-old girl.
Photo: AP
Instagram and other social media companies have faced growing criticism for not doing enough to protect young people. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Instagram’s owner, Meta Platforms, apologized to the parents of victims of such abuse during a US Senate hearing earlier this year.
Meta also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, but the nudity blur feature would not be added to those platforms.
Instagram said scammers often use direct messages to ask for “intimate images.”
To counter this, it will soon start testing a nudity-protection feature for direct messages that blurs any images with nudity “and encourages people to think twice before sending nude images.”
“The feature is designed not only to protect people from seeing unwanted nudity in their DMs, but also to protect them from scammers who may send nude images to trick people into sending their own images in return,” Instagram said.
The feature will be turned on by default globally for teens under 18. Adult users will get a notification encouraging them to activate it.
Images with nudity will be blurred with a warning, giving users the option to view it. They will also get an option to block the sender and report the chat.
For people sending direct messages with nudity, they will get a message reminding them to be cautious when sending “sensitive photos.” They will also be informed that they can unsend the photos if they change their mind, but that there is a chance others may have already seen them.
As with many of Meta’s tools and policies around child safety, critics saw the move as a positive step, but one that does not go far enough.
“I think the tools announced can protect senders, and that is welcome. But what about recipients?” said Arturo Bejar, former engineering director at the social media giant who is known for his expertise in curbing online harassment.
He said one in eight teens receives an unwanted advance on Instagram every seven days, citing internal research he compiled while at Meta that he presented in November testimony before Congress.
“What tools do they get? What can they do if they get an unwanted nude?” he asked.
“Things won’t meaningfully change” until there is a way for a teen to say they have received an unwanted advance, and there is transparency about it, he said.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS