Adults love children. But love them in a wrong way, and that is very wrong.
Instagram is the largest photo and video sharing social networking service. Owned by Facebook, it has more users than almost all platforms on both the mobile and the web, except for only a bunch. And policing that many users is a difficult task, and can be burden, especially if it involves humans.
This is why the social media unveiled two new AI tools, designed to protect its young users from irresponsible adults.
The first of the two, is a feature that prevents adults from messaging its users who are under 18 and don’t follow them. When users Instagram considers adults try message the youngsters, Instagram will automatically send the adult users a notification saying that they can’t DM the account.
They will simply receive a prompt saying that they may not message the account unless that account follows them.
According to Facebook on its blog post:
In other words, this Instagram feature uses AI to predict peoples’ ages.
Instagram does ask users to provide their age when they first signed up. But people can lie, and Instagram know that very well.
Since it cannot entirely trust to whatever people say about themselves, Instagram instead relies on machine-learning algorithms to better understand whether users are what they say they are, or are actually older/younger then they say they are.
The second feature Instagram is introducing, is also powered by AI, built to improve and benefit the first one.
It feature is designed to send its teenage users prompts to encourage them to be careful when interacting with adults to whom they’re already connected.
What this particular feature does, is using AI to automatically detect potentially suspicious behavior, such as an adult sending a large number of friend or message requests to children.
And when it detects such activities, the AI will insert a safety notice within the recipient’s DMs, to also give them the option to immediately end the conversation, block, report, or restrict the sender.
Instagram said that the AI tools are meant to be launched in only select countries only, before Instagram can roll them out globally.
Adding on top of the two features, Facebook is also encouraging its teenage users to make their accounts private.
"Having a private account offers more protections for teens as they can better control who can see and interact with their content," said Facebook.
"We’ve recently added a new step when someone under 18 signs up for an Instagram account that gives them the option to choose between a public or private account. We aim is to encourage young people to opt for a private account by equipping them with information on what the different settings mean."
But knowing that many influencers and many of its most-active users are actually youngsters who only find value in using Instagram when they have their accounts shown to public, Instagram said that teens "can still opt for a public account if they choose to do so after learning more about the options."
And the options is them to first understand "the benefits of a private account and reminding them to check their settings."