Instagram has started blurring nudity in posts to protect teens

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LONDON (AP) – Instagram says it is rolling out new tools to protect young people and fight sexual harassment, including a feature that automatically removes nudity from direct messages.

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The social media platform said in a blog post on Thursday that it is testing new features as part of a campaign to fight sex fraud and other forms of “video abuse” and make it harder for criminals to reach teenagers.

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Sexual blackmail or sextortion involves persuading a person to post revealing photos online and then threatening to release the photos unless the victim pays or has sex. The latest high-profile cases include two Nigerian brothers who pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teenage boys and young men in Michigan, including one who took his own life, and a Virginia sheriff's deputy who blackmailed and kidnapped a 15-year-old girl.

Instagram and other social media companies have come under fire for not doing enough to protect young people. Facebook parent company CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the parents of victims of such abuse during a Senate hearing earlier this year.

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According to the company, scammers often use direct messages to ask for “intimate pictures”. To counter this, it will soon begin testing nudity protection for direct messages, which will blur any images containing nudity and urge people to think twice before sending nudity.

“The feature is designed not only to protect people from seeing unwanted nudity in their posts, but also to protect against scammers who can trick people into sending nude photos to get them to post their own,” Instagram said.

This feature is enabled globally by default for teens under 18. Adult users will receive a notification prompting them to activate it.

Images with nudity will be blurred with a warning, giving users a chance to see it. They also get the ability to block the sender and report the chat.

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People sending direct messages with nude videos will receive a message reminding them to be careful when sending “sensitive photos.” They are also informed that they can opt out of sending the photos if they change their mind, but others may have seen them.

Instagram said it is working on technology to help identify accounts that may be engaged in sex-extortion scams “based on a series of signals that indicate sexist behavior.”

To stop criminals from contacting young people, it is taking measures such as not showing the “message” button on a teen's profile to potential sextort accounts even if they follow each other, and testing new ways to hide teens from those accounts.

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