Meta Is on the Prowl for 'Suspicious Adults' Messaging Teenagers

Meta says it is taking additional steps to help protect the youth on its platforms. Now, anyone under the age of 16 years old can enroll in new privacy settings that are meant to limit who can see their Facebook profile. Likewise, Meta says it's also testing the removal of the messaging button on teen's Instagram profiles when viewed by an adult. From a report: In a company press release, Meta further detailed its initiative to add safeguards to its Facebook and Instagram products that will hopefully protect teenage users from "potentially suspicious adults." The major overhaul in this initiative was Meta setting new privacy defaults for teen Facebook profiles.

Any new users under 16 (or under 18 in certain countries) will automatically be enrolled in the new settings, which includes restricting who is able to view your friends list, tagged posts, pages and people you follow, as well as who is allowed to comment on your posts. Pre-existing teenage users will not be automatically enrolled in the new settings, but can opt in whenever they want. On both Instagram and Facebook, teen users will also now be able to report a user immediately after they have blocked them in both app's messaging interface. Users will first be greeted with a prompt that asks if they know the person they are messaging, and will then be able to block, restrict, or report the user depending on the platform. The dialogue box also explains what blocking and reporting will do, and guides the user to more detailed information pages. Further reading: Meta Sued in UK To Stop Personal Data Collection for Ads.

Good first step, but stopping new accounts?

[Scoth]

While it's great that they're at least doing something about adults messaging teens, what's to stop an adult with bad intentions from signing up their own new teen account? The article and statements don't seem to address that.

Granted I've created exactly one Facebook/Meta/etc account many years ago and haven't tried recently, so maybe there's some extra hoops to prove identity you have to go through now.

Re: Good first step, but stopping new accounts?

[e3m4n]

Best plan is to keep your teen off these Pedo platforms to begin with.

Re:

[Joce640k]

While it's great that they're at least doing something about adults messaging teens,

Are they?

This smells like a PR move to me... "What can we announce this month to make us look more virtuous?"

("less evil")

Two decades...

[drew_92123]

...too late.

Hi I'm Chris Hansen want to have an chat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi I'm Chris Hansen want to have an chat?

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the horror, adults and teenagers COMMUNICATING with each other!

Good thing no one can just lie about their age, both kids and adults. Oh wait.

Re:

[Putins Boyfriend]

It'll definitely reduce the amount of dudes leaving suspicious comments on girls social media.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[gosso920]

Anthony Weiner is quaking in his jackboots.

Meanwhile over on Twitter

[rsilvergun]

Somebody posted an entire episode of SpongeBob SquarePants because their copyright detection system is busted and they fired all the people who would fix it. I suspect the systems that would catch pedos are also busted.

Re:

[Pascoea]

Who would have thought that firing half your people would cause troubles? I like what Musk has been able to do with Tesla and Spacex, but I think he fucked up big time on the whole Twitter thing. Unless he's doing the "4-d chess" thing, and intentionally burning it to the ground. If that's the case I'll lend him a book of matches.

Re: Meanwhile over on Twitter

[daten]

Are you sure he's "burning it to the ground" or maybe he's putting out the dumpster fire?

How is firing a bunch of woke freeloading staff and making the company profitable again a bad move?

Re:

[Pascoea]

Tucker Carlson told him.

Re:

[Pascoea]

So you're telling me they had a running list of "woke freeloaders" ready to go on day 1 that he used to carefully consider which people could be let go without causing any issues? Give me a friggin break. He apparently watched "Horrible Bosses" and used that level of analysis to "trim the fat" [youtube.com]

If you want to leave your prejudice outside and have a discussion: Let's talk about exactly how a company successfully identifies 50% of their employees as "dead weight", makes sure they don't hold any critical know

Re:

[suutar]

I read it was one of the Fast and Furious movies. Wouldn't surprise me if both happened...

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Somebody posted an entire episode of SpongeBob SquarePants because their copyright detection system is busted and they fired all the people who would fix it. I suspect the systems that would catch pedos are also busted.

Apparently there are 6 critical infrastructure systems at Twitter who had all the staff quit (critical as in "serving tweets") so those are generally coasting.

Supposedly there are lots of people who cannot quit - everyone they're supposed ot send their resignation to quit already, so they're

I think the bigger story

[Ickyban]

is the mere existence teens on Facebook. FB is like poison to the younger crowd.

Re:

[Areyoukiddingme]

I think the bigger story is the mere existence [of] teens on Facebook.

I miss the early days of the Internet, when men were men, women were men, and little girls were FBI agents.

Obligatory Piperchat

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Obligatory Piperchat reference, "Now Carl, you said the new sign in page made you nervous. Did anyone else feel nervous?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] C'mon, everyone knows that the interwebs pipes is full of pedos masquerading as minors, lolz, Facebook included, & the pedos know that companies aren't going to spend the money that's necessary to effectively police them. In fact, haven't Facebook's algorithms historically been better at detecting & shutting down police accounts than pedos'?

Re:

[classiclantern]

My pre-teen grand kids lied about their age when they signed-up 10 years ago. I have been lying about my age since 1997. This sounds like PR bullshat to me.

wasn't their "AI" supposed to save us?

[BeaverCleaver]

So they're going to remove the messaging button for adults to message teenagers? That seems like an admission that their platform is full of perverts.

It also seems like an admission that the "AI" and "algorithms" that they keep touting as our saviour against misinformation, bullying, toxic culture and sundry other "bad" uses of the platform are ineffective bullshit.

Re:

[MancunianMaskMan]

So they're going to remove the messaging button for adults to message teenagers?

Except in Alabama... protected by the state constitution

Give ya momma some love!

[devslash0]

"Stop, mum. You'll get arrested."