The social media platform Instagram has announced the launch of new measures to safeguard young people against sexual extortion, including a function that automatically blurs nudity in direct messages.
Google Image
The social media platform stated in a blog post on Thursday that it is testing the features as part of its campaign to combat sexual fraud and other forms of “image abuse,” as well as to make it more difficult for criminals to contact teenagers.
Sexual extortion, often known as sextortion, is the practice of enticing someone to transmit graphic photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or does sexual favors.
Recent high-profile incidents include two Nigerian brothers who pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teenage boys and young men in Michigan, one of whom committed suicide, and a Virginia sheriff’s officer who exploited a teenager and kidnapped her.
Instagram and other social media platforms have come under fire for failing to adequately protect young people.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms, apologized to the parents of victims of such abuse during a Senate hearing earlier this year.
Meta also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, but the nudity blur feature will not be introduced to communications made through those sites.
Entertainment: Also Read Tom Holland Sets the Record Straight on Relationship Rumors with Zendaya
Instagram claimed scammers frequently use direct messages to request “intimate images.” To address this, Instagram will soon begin testing a nudity protection feature for direct messages that blurs any photographs containing nudity “and encourages people to think twice before sending nude images.”
The statement stated that the feature is not just to protect users from seeing unwanted nudity in their DMs but also to protect them from scammers who may send nudes to scam people into sending their images in return,”
The option will be enabled by default for all teens under 18. Adults will receive a notification inviting them to activate it.
Images containing nudity will be obscured with a warning, allowing users the choice of viewing them. They will also have the ability to block the sender and report the chat.
People who send direct messages with nudity will receive a notice asking them to exercise caution while sending “sensitive photos.”
They’ll also be told that they can ‘unsend’ the photographs if they change their minds, but there’s a risk others have already seen them.