The company is said to be working on a version for younger people a few days after the squeeze to limit access to minors in order to ensure their safety and avoid penalties like the 170 million in 2019 that hit YouTube.
Designing a version of Instagram for ‘under 13’, more suitable in terms of safety for the little ones: this is the latest project that Facebook would be dedicating to. The indiscretion comes from the American site Buzzfeed News which came into possession of an internal note from the company.
The current Instagram policy – like many social networks – prohibits children under 13 from using the service. According to rumors, the project would be overseen by Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, and led by Pavni Diwanji, hired by Facebook in December and previously working for Google on the YouTube Kids project.
“I am thrilled to announce that for the foreseeable future we have identified the very young as a priority for Instagram,” wrote Vishal Shah, vice president of product of Instagram on a notice board intended for communications between employees. Just a few days ago the platform put in place a squeeze for the “under 13”, with artificial intelligence technologies and safety warnings to make young people understand to be more cautious in conversations with adults.
The Messenger and TikTok experiences
In 2017, Facebook released a special version of Messenger for kids, controlled by parents. Two years later the company had to fix a bug that allowed little ones to chat with adult contacts, even unapproved ones. In February of this year, following an intervention by the Italian Data Protection Authority after news stories, TikTok decided to ask users for their age, with the promise to also deploy artificial intelligence systems to find any false admissions, so as to delete the profiles of members under the age of 13.
The issue is also delicate from a legal point of view: in September 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Google a $ 170 million fine for collecting data on minors on YouTube, without parental consent, to show them relevant ads. .
