Meta is adopting additional measures to restrict kids’ privacy settings. The business is changing the default privacy settings for kids’ Facebook accounts and restricting “suspicious” adults’ ability to communicate with teens on Instagram and Facebook.
According to Meta, Facebook will begin automatically adjusting the default privacy settings on new accounts established by kids under the age of 16. The visibility of their buddy list, tagged posts, and sites and accounts they follow will be automatically switched to “more private settings” as a result of the adjustments.
Specifically, the new options will only be enabled automatically for new accounts established by teenagers, while Meta says it will encourage existing adolescent accounts to adopt comparable settings. The change is similar to what Instagram did last year when it made teen accounts private by default.
Meta is also implementing additional safeguards to prevent “suspicious” adults from contacting kids. It will restrict these accounts from the site’s “people you may know” function on Facebook, and it will try eliminating the messaging option from teen profiles on Instagram. The business did not specify how it will assess if someone is “suspicious,” but stated that it will consider variables such as whether someone has recently been banned or reported by a younger user.
Furthermore, Meta stated that it is collaborating with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) on a “global platform” to prevent minors from sharing personal photographs without their consent. According to Meta, the platform, which might go live by mid-December, would function similarly to a system meant to discourage adults from sharing identical photos.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, the system would enable kids to make a “private report” for photographs on their devices that they do not want published. NCMEC’s software would then generate a unique hash of the image, which would be stored in a database so that firms like Facebook could identify when matching images were posted on their platforms. The original image, according to the spokesperson, never leaves the teen’s device.
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