Instagram has announced new tools aimed at protecting young people and combating sexual extortion, according to a report published by AP on Friday. These tools include a feature that automatically blurs nudity in direct messages. The social media platform is testing these features as part of its campaign against sexual scams and “image abuse,” aiming 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 favours. Recent high-profile cases have highlighted the seriousness of this issue.
Instagram and other social media companies have faced criticism for not doing enough to protect young people. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Instagram’s owner Meta Platforms, apologized to the parents of victims of such abuse during a Senate hearing earlier this year.
The nudity blur feature will be added to Instagram’s direct messages but won’t be available on Facebook and WhatsApp. Instagram said scammers often use direct messages to ask for “intimate images,” so it will soon start testing a nudity-protection feature that blurs any images with nudity and encourages people to think twice before sending such images.
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The feature will be turned on by default globally for teens under 18, with adult users receiving a notification encouraging them to activate it. Images with nudity will be blurred with a warning, giving users the option to view them, block the sender, and report the chat.
To protect recipients of direct messages, Instagram is working on technology to help identify accounts that could be engaging in sexual extortion scams. It is also taking measures to prevent potential sextortion accounts from connecting with young people.
Arturo Béjar, former engineering director at Meta, highlighted the need for tools to protect recipients from unwanted advances. White House Assistant Press Secretary Robyn Patterson noted President Joe Biden’s belief that social media companies can do more to combat sexual exploitation online.
In January, the FBI warned of a “huge increase” in sextortion cases targeting children, including financially motivated sextortion. The FBI saw a more than 20% increase in reporting of financially motivated sextortion cases involving minor victims compared to the same period in the previous year.
