Meta is continuing its flurry of teen safety features for Instagram as the company faces mounting questions about its handling of younger users’ privacy and safety in its apps. The latest batch of updates are meant to tighten its protections against sextortion.
With the changes, Meta says it will make it harder for “potentially scammy” accounts to target teens on Instagram. The company will start to send follow requests from such accounts to users’ spam folders or block them entirely. The app will also start testing an alert that notifies teens when they receive a message from such an account, warning them that the message appears to be coming from a different country.
Additionally, when the company detects that a potential scammer is already following a teen, it will prevent them from being able to view teens’ follower lists and accounts that have tagged them in photos. The company isn’t saying exactly how it’s determining which accounts are deemed “potentially
