A new functionality on Instagram which allows users to share their physical location in real time with others on the application, experts in confidentiality concerned by the quantity of security data exposed and potential for users.
Called Instagram Map, the new feature was introduced Thursday as part of an application update. On its blog, the company says that the localization sharing tool facilitates “that your friends are easier to stay in contact with the content you appreciate on Instagram”.
“You can choose to share your latest active location with friends you choose, and you can deactivate it at any time,” said Instagram in a blog announcing the new feature. “You can also open the card to see the content that your favorite friends publish from nice points. No matter how you use the card, you and your friends have a new light way to connect with each other. ”
“Default OFF”
In a division shared with CBS Moneywatch on Friday, Instagram parent company, Meta, stressed that Instagram Maps is not automatically active when updating the application and that users must oppose the location sharing function in order to make their place visible.
Instagram
“The Instagram card is deactivated by default, and your live location is never shared, unless you choose to activate it. If you do, only the people you follow – or a private and personalized list that you select – can see your location,” said a Meta spokesperson in a press release at CBS Moneywatch.
Users can also choose not to share their locations when they are in special places or with special people.
However, confidentiality experts say that social media users are not always aware of the quantity of information they share with an application or its users, even if they have the possibility of limiting who sees what.
“The more these location features are deployed on social networks, this causes the hypothesis that as long as you give users the possibility of switching them off, they know exactly how to do it,” Cbbsywatch Douglas Zytko, an aggregated professor of innovation and technology at the University of Michigan, in CBSWatch, told Cbbsywatch. “But the average user is not always aware of his confidentiality parameters and if they correspond to their preferences.”
When the Instagram card function is activated, any content that a user publishes with a tagged location, including a coil, a publication or a story, will appear on the application card for 24 hours, according to the Instagram blog. Although the functionality remains activated, the user’s location is updated each time it opens the application or returns. The functionality can be deactivated at any time.
In an Instagram publication by discussing functionality, Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri, explains how he uses the card himself. “Personally, I use the card to share what I do with a handful of my closest friends, and I manage this list carefully,” he said.
User confusion to find out if the functionality is activated or deactivated
On the threads, the Meta microblogging site, a number of Instagram account holders claimed That their locations were pinned on the default friend cards.
Mosseri weighed, saying that the concerns prompted the company to re -examine the functioning of the functionality.
“We check everything, but so far, it seems that people are confused and assume that, because they can see themselves on the map when they open, other people can see them too,” he said. “We always check everything to ensure that no one shares the location without explicitly deciding to do so, which, by the way, requires a double consent by design (we ask you to confirm after you want to share).”
How to activate Instagram cards
In the upper right corner of the application, press the messaging function. There, you will see an icon of the Circular World Card entitled “Map. If you click on the icon, you will see that you are on site on a card. Friends who share their location will also appear. Click on the equipment icon to choose to share your location without anyone, or a personalized list of friends, or all your friends – who are subscribers that you also follow on the application.
Social pressures, risks of privacy and safety
Zytko, however, said that it can be complicated for social media users to manage the confidentiality parameters that allow them to share different types of content with different groups of people. “This problem is called” the collapse of the context, “he said. “Your colleagues see your publications on social networks, your friends and your family, and there are certain content that you want certain groups to see, but no others, and it can be difficult to manage the visibility of the content.”
Robbie Torney, principal director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, which makes recommendations for entertainment and technology for families, said that localization sharing features can be particularly risky for young application users.
“These features may seem fun and social, but they create unnecessary risks that adolescents and many adults do not necessarily understand,” he told CBS Moneywatch.
While parents who oversee their adolescents through controls integrated into the application can control the location sharing parameters of their children, he always has concerns about the types of social pressures, these features also exhibit adolescents.
Torney said that research on Common Sense Media shows that location sharing also creates “social pressures around where adolescents go and with whom they spend time, and children feel obliged to share the location to show that they are a cool place”.
In addition, when adolescents share their locations, “they potentially say that foreigners are in real time,” Torney told CBS Moneywatch. “If you are not selective with whom you share your location, this creates opportunities for harassment, hunt or worse.”