This story originally appeared on quartz.
Meta announced a new tool on Thursday for Instagram direct messages to protect children and teens from predators who try to elicit nude photos and “sextort” them.
“Financial sextortion” happens when online scammers ask people for nude photos and then threaten to publish those photos unless they are paid a sum of money. According to the FBI Victims are usually teenagers between 14 and 17 years. The agency said it had found an “alarming number of suicides among male victims” of financially motivated sextortion.
Meta already reports sextortion after it happens and the perpetrators’ accounts are deleted. However, the new tool takes steps to prevent the misuse of intimate images in the first place. The company said it uses technology to identify users who may be engaging in sextortion. Instagram DMs will soon have a “nudity protection” feature that will automatically blur out nude photos sent and received by teens under 18 and give those users the option to opt out of sending them their own intimate pictures and decide whether to send a nude photo or not To them.
“Companies have a responsibility to ensure the protection of minors using their platforms. Meta’s proposed device-side security measures within its encrypted environment are encouraging. We are confident that these new measures will increase reporting by minors and curb the spread of online child exploitation.” – John Shehan, senior vice president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Meta’s April 11 announcement
Meta has already launched several initiatives this year to protect young people and children from sexual predators later in life damning reports of rampant child trafficking on its platforms. Meta was too Heavily criticized at the end of 2023 about the use of encryption technology for Facebook and Instagram DMs – something insiders said helped predators, not victims. Now Meta is announcing new security features that hide “age-inappropriate content” and limit teens’ ability to receive messages from adults they don’t know.
Teens’ vulnerability to social media-related harms – oversexualization, bullying, sextortion – has come under intense scrutiny by regulators in recent years. And the end of March Florida has passed a law that completely bans children from using social media platforms under 14.