Instagram Canada

Instagram is expanding its age-verification tools to users in Canada.

Specifically, users between the ages of 13 and 17 will be subject to the new tools. The company will use two ways to verify a person’s age, which will only be triggered if a user attempts to change their date of birth on the app from under 18 to over 18, according to CTV News.

The two ways Instagram will determine if the user is above or below 18 are by:

Analyzing identification through a driver’s licence or ID card
Through a video selfie

If a user decides to verify their age by the video selfie method, Instagram will use facial age estimation technology to estimate their age. Instagram says it has already tested the tool in the U.S., U.K., India, and Brazil since June 2022, and it has stopped 96 percent of teens from falsely changing their date of birth.

“When we know if someone is a teen (13-17), we provide them with age-appropriate experiences like defaulting them into private accounts, preventing unwanted contact from adults they don’t know and limiting the options advertisers have to reach them with ads,” Instagram said in a news release.

Instagram uses facial age estimation technology by Yoti, a U.K.-based digital identity company that processes the image/video to estimate the user’s age. The company clarified that its tech is not the same as regular facial recognition technology, and images are deleted by both Meta and Yoti and not stored on servers. Similarly, the company deletes video selfies from its servers within 30 days.

However, others have pointed out concerns regarding AI bias when analyzing videos. A recent Western University study found that AI not only can have the same biases as humans but can even exaggerate them in some cases. The study found that such AI sometimes falsely estimates the ages of older adults in comparison to younger ones, “and it would often overestimate the age of smiling faces.” Additionally, researchers said, “there were more inaccuracies with female faces in comparison to male faces.”

“Our results showed AI is even less accurate and more biased than human observers when judging a person’s age – even though the overall pattern of errors and biases is similar,” said research author Melvyn A. Goodale from Western University, in a news release.

This comes soon after TikTok’s new update that limits teens to access 60 minutes of screen time a day on the app.

Image credit: Instagram

Source: Instagram Via: CTV News

Back in January, we reported how Meta-owned Instagram was testing bringing back chronological feeds, a layout that it phased out more than five years ago. Yesterday, the Menlo Park, CA-based company announced that it has brought back the layout in favour of an algorithmically assembled feed.

📣 Chrono Update 📣

Today, we’re launching two new chronological views for your Instagram Feed – Following and Favorites. These options give you more choice and control over what you see in the app.

Let me know what you think 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/MBmPUUoGCV

— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) March 23, 2022

Instagram first talked about bringing back the layout back in December, and almost four months in, the company is rolling out the feature globally. “We want you to be able to shape Instagram into the best possible experience, and giving you ways to quickly see what you’re most interested in is an important step in that direction,” reads the company’s blog post about the new feeds.

This doesn’t mean that the regular home feed has been completely phased out. Once the update has been rolled out for you, you’ll see a new dropdown next to the Instagram logo on the top left of the app (as seen in the screenshot below). From here, you can switch between three types of feeds, namely, “Following,” Favourites” and your regular home feed.

The ‘Following’ feed would show you what others have shared in a reverse chronological order, which means, you’ll see the most recently uploaded content first, the second most recently uploaded content second and so on. The feed will show content from everyone you’re following.

The “Favourites” feed works similarly to the “Following” feed, with the only difference being that it will show you what people you have ‘favourited’ are sharing. You can add 50 accounts to your favourite list, according to the photo-sharing platform, and the people/accounts you add to the list won’t be notified about it.

The re-introduction of chronological feeds is sure to please the OG Instagram users, while how new users who’ve never experienced Instagram this way react is yet to be gauged.

The feature hasn’t rolled out for any of us at MobileSyrup.

Image credit: Instagram

Source: Instagram