New Mexico’s top law enforcement officer and his counterparts from a majority of states this week called on the social media giant Meta to add guardrails to a newly launched Instagram feature allowing the company and anyone who follows a user on the app to see their location.
Instagram on Aug. 6 launched the new feature for all users in the U.S. called Map, which displays the user’s profile picture and location in real-time on a map visible to any mutual followers. It quickly faced backlash from privacy advocates who warn against sharing highly personal data with an intermediary like Meta.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and attorneys general from 36 other states sent a letter Wednesday to Instagram executive Adam Mosseri saying that without careful controls, the new feature raises public safety and data privacy concerns, especially for vulnerable users like children and domestic violence survivors.
“Unrestricted location-sharing features pose a particular risk for minors as they can be readily used by sexual predators to identify and geographically target children in the real world,” they wrote. “We know that dangerous individuals are already present on Instagram, and we have serious concerns that this feature will increase the likelihood of hands-on abuse and exploitation.”
The attorneys general are calling on the social media company to prohibit minors from enabling location-sharing; provide clear alerts to adult users about the feature, its risks and how their location data will be used; and allow adult users who opt in to easily disable the feature at any time.
Implementing those measures would demonstrate Meta’s “commitment to protecting the privacy and security of your users while still allowing those who wish to share their location to do so knowingly and with informed consent,” they wrote.
The New Mexico Department of Justice is also pursuing litigation against Meta and Snap Inc, which owns Snapchat, alleging the companies’ policies fail to protect children.
“Instagram is once again prioritizing engagement over safety and has enabled a potentially dangerous feature without first ensuring the safety of their users, especially kids,” Torrez said in a statement. “It is absolutely stunning that the company would allow children on the platform to enable a feature which would provide predators with even more information to target and abuse them.”
“Real-time location features should of course be intentionally built and give users control, which is why Instagram Map’s design already addresses the issues the attorneys general raise: it is off by default, everyone receives a notification explaining what the feature entails and can turn it off whenever they want, and with parental supervision, parents get a notification if their teen starts using it and can block their access to location sharing at any time,” a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Instagram has accounts designed for teens that are automatically equipped with built-in protections, the company says on its website. That includes limiting who can contact them and what content they can see.
Other attorneys general joining New Mexico in the letter are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
