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Menlo Park (dpa) - Instagram is expanding its youth protection measures.
Among other things, Facebook's photo and video platform wants to use artificial intelligence to recognize when children under the age of 13 register against the rules.
To protect against unwanted contact requests, adults will in future be prevented from writing to users under the age of 18 by direct message if they are not already following them.
The changes apply worldwide, as Instagram announced on Tuesday.
In addition, Instagram wants to encourage young people to register to keep their accounts private.
This means that content is only visible to other users who have been confirmed.
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"We encourage young people to choose a private account and explain when registering what the difference is between a private and a public account," said Instagram manager Alexander Kleist.
Tests have shown that this significantly increases awareness of the difference between the profile types.
Young users who opt for a public account will later be informed by Instagram that the service recommends private profiles for them.
According to the rules of the platform, Instagram may only be used by children aged 13 and over.
When you register you will be asked for your age, but it happens again and again that younger children give the wrong age.
"Most of them are honest, but there are also people who trick and give the wrong age," said Kleist.
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Instagram is already trying to find such users with the help of various data points.
However, the platform keeps a low profile on the details: "We don't want to go into too much detail because we don't want to give people instructions on how to trick the system."
Youth advocates had often urged Instagram to do more to prevent adults from writing to children with false profiles.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210316-99-845996 / 2