Facebook is taking new steps to increase the safety of the younger Instagram audience, including barring children under 13 from joining the social network. Starting today, users who create a new account on Instagram will have to provide their birthday, though it won't be shared with the public. If a Facebook account is used to create an Instagram account, the information will be pulled from the Facebook profile.
For now, it's mostly aimed at preventing younger users form joining the platform, which is against Instagram's terms of use in many countries. However, in the future, Instagram will use this information to provide more tailored experiences to its users, specifically by providing more education around account controls and recommending certain privacy settings for younger users.
Instagram is also making some improvements to the privacy settings for Direct messages on Instagram. Users can now make it so that they can only receive messages from accounts they follow, which should reduce the number of unwanted messages. A separate setting allows users to restrict strangers from adding them to group chats.
Instagram has been taking a series of measures towards protecting its users in one way or another, such as an AI tool to reduce bullying on the platform. The platform is also hiding like counts from users in some countries so these numbers can't be used to attack users.
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