Instagram begins blurring nudity in messages to protect teens

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Kelvin Chan

Printed Apr 11, 2024  •  2 minute learn

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LONDON (AP) — Instagram stated it’s deploying new new instruments to guard younger individuals and fight sexual extortion, together with a function that may mechanically blur nudity in direct messages.

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The social media platform stated in a weblog submit Thursday that it’s testing out the brand new options as a part of its marketing campaign to struggle sexual scams and different types of “picture abuse,” and to make it harder for criminals to contact teenagers.

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Sexual extortion, or sextortion, includes persuading an individual to ship express photographs on-line after which threatening to make the pictures public until the sufferer pays cash or engages in sexual favors. Latest high-profile instances embrace two Nigerian brothers who pleaded responsible to sexually extorting teen boys and younger males in Michigan, together with one who took his personal life, and a Virginia sheriff’s deputy who sexually extorted and kidnapped a 15-year-old woman.

Instagram and different social media corporations have confronted rising criticism for not doing sufficient to guard younger individuals. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Fb mum or dad firm Meta, apologized to the mother and father of victims of such abuse throughout a Senate listening to earlier this 12 months.

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The corporate stated scammers usually use direct messages to ask for “intimate pictures.” To counter this, it should quickly begin testing out a nudity safety function for direct messages that blurs any pictures with nudity “and encourages individuals to suppose twice earlier than sending nude pictures.”

“The function is designed not solely to guard individuals from seeing undesirable nudity of their DMs, but additionally to guard them from scammers who might ship nude pictures to trick individuals into sending their very own pictures in return,” Instagram stated.

The function shall be turned on by default globally for teenagers beneath 18. Grownup customers will get a notification encouraging them to activate it.

Photographs with nudity shall be blurred with a warning, giving customers the choice to view it. They’ll additionally get an possibility to dam the sender and report the chat.

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For individuals sending direct messages with nudity, they may get a message reminding them to be cautious when sending “delicate photographs.” They’ll additionally learn that they’ll unsend the photographs if they modify their thoughts, however that there’s an opportunity others might have already seen them.

Instagram stated it’s engaged on expertise to assist determine accounts that might be doubtlessly be participating in sexual extortion scams, “based mostly on a spread of indicators that would point out sextortion conduct.”

To cease criminals from connecting with younger individuals, it’s additionally taking measures together with not exhibiting the “message” button on a teen’s profile to potential sextortion accounts, even when they already observe one another, and testing new methods to cover teenagers from these accounts.

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