Meta Makes a Show of Measures to Protect Kids
July 29, 2022
A pair of articles reveals a bit of Zuckbook adulting. Isn’t it amazing what some bad press can provoke? First up, The Verge tells us “Instagram Will Start Nudging Teens Away from Content they Continuously Browse Through.” While this move does not specifically protect against harmful content, it is meant to discourage teens from obsessing on one topic by proposing alternatives to explore. Notably, suggestions will exclude something that already has Meta in hot water—content that promotes appearance comparison. Another Instagram effort has its “Take a Break” feature suggesting teens go do something else if they have been perusing Reels “for a while.” (Just how long a while is left unstated.) Writer Emma Roth also tells us:
“Lastly, Instagram is making some adjustments to its existing parental controls. The platform will now let parents send invites to their kids asking to gain access to parental supervision tools, something only teens were previously able to initiate. Parents can also see information on what types of posts or accounts their child reports, as well as gain more control over the time their teen spends on Instagram.”
As much as Instagram has been shown to cause harm to young people, the VR metaverse is already proving to be even worse. Mashable reports, “Meta Expands Parental Controls, Including Virtual Reality Monitoring.” The update lets parents block certain apps, view their kid’s friends list and activity, and require parental approval for purchases. It can also disable a headset feature that otherwise lets kids access blocked content on their PCs. All of this is accompanied by an informative “parent education hub” for guidance on using the parental controls (a feature the kiddos are bound to find very helpful.) Writer Chase DiBeneditto elaborates:
“Following the launch of Meta’s Horizon Worlds — a VR ‘creator space’ for users to connect and build virtual worlds — and it’s new ‘safety-focused’ features, users and researchers alike expressed concern that young users would still be easily exposed to unmoderated hate speech and harassment. Meta later added a ‘garbled voices’ filter to Horizon Worlds that turned the voice chats of VR strangers into unintelligible, friendly sounds, and a ‘personal boundary’ feature to hopefully block harassment by uninvited users. Then in May, Meta announced new locking tools to block specific apps from a user’s Quest headset in response to concerns that teens and children with unsupervised access were being exposed to inappropriate virtual reality spaces.”
Meta has certainly gone to a lot of effort to appear like it is protecting kids as it profits off them. If we are lucky, some of these PR defense tactics will actually do some good.
Cynthia Murrell, July 29, 2022
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