Instagram will soon require you to share your birthday, for safety

[Shawn Knight]

Editor's take: Facebook is taking additional steps to help it “create safer, more private experiences for young people” on Instagram. Namely, you'll be required to share your birthday. Failing to do so will result in losing access to Instagram. And don't plan on lying, cause Instagram will know.

Pavni Diwanji, VP of youth products at Facebook, said in a recent blog post that they’ve started asking people to share their birthday with Instagram if they haven’t done so previously. Instagram actually started down this path in late 2019 when it first started asking users to share their birthday with the company, but it wasn’t mandatory.

That’ll soon be changing.

Diwanji said users that haven’t yet shared their birthday will start to see notifications for the information when opening Instagram. “…if you haven’t provided us with your birthday by a certain point, you’ll need to share it to continue using Instagram,” Diwanji added, but didn't mention a specific deadline.

Furthermore, Instagram will start showing warning screens placed on age-sensitive posts. These warnings aren’t new, as they’ve accompanied sensitive or graphic posts for a while, but now you’ll have to supply your birthday in order to see them if you haven’t already shared it.

Diwanji said birthday information is necessary to power new features designed to protect young users. It’ll also be used to help Instagram show users more relevant ads.

For those who are simply planning to supply a false birthday, Instagram may be one step ahead of you. Diwanji said they’re now using artificial intelligence to “estimate” how old uses are based on things like “Happy Birthday” posts.

“In the future, if someone tells us they’re above a certain age, and our technology tells us otherwise, we’ll show them a menu of options to verify their age,” Diwanji added.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/91027-instagram-soon-require-you-share-birthday-safety.html

 

[Austinturner]

Facebook is being facebook, they just can’t help themselves.

 

[Robkaminski]

Lets be honest here.. Facebook/insta already know your birthday even if you haven't told them yet.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Only 3 people lie about their age:

#1 minors who otherwise can't sign up
#2 predators searching for prey
#3 women

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Only 3 people lie about their age:

#1 minors who otherwise can't sign up
#2 predators searching for prey
#3 women

Sexist.

 

[brucek]

And here's a list of people who most want your exact DOB:
1. Identity thieves

 

[veLa]

What's so safe about putting my date of birth in a database?

 

[p51d007]

ANY account online save for my healthcare provider & bank, I put down my birthday
as one day before, and one year after my real birthday.

 

[hahahanoobs]

If I lie about anything online it's my birthday and last name. I personally would not change that for anything other than government sites. It also doesn't help that the people running those kind of sites don't care about anyone.

 

[Nobina]

I was born on 1/1/1901, I swear.

 

[envirovore]

I like how during the rollout of the internet to the general public everyone followed the "use all fake info for everything" rule with the understanding that it just made sense.

Then facebook comes along and somehow convinces everyone to think its just fine to do the opposite, then they wonder why they get their house broken into when posting vacation pics for the world to see.

 

[ZedRM]

Only 3 people lie about their age:

#1 minors who otherwise can't sign up
#2 predators searching for prey
#3 women

Not true, I'm none of those and I will not give IG or FB my true birthdate. It's none of their business and they can kiss my hairy bum.

 

[ZedRM]

I was born on 1/1/1901, I swear.

Me too! Me too!!

 

[ziffel66]

Sure, no problem. 01/01/1950, same as everyone else.

 

[Uncle Al]

Yep, we are going to start seeing 1/1/1900 used extensively .... at least we can just buy one cake!

 

[Avro Arrow]

I almost never use Facebook and I NEVER use Instagram. This is why.

 

[Vanderlinde]

This has nothing todo with safety really. The date of birth is for advertisers to more aim at interest + age. Obviously to thrive more advertisers through instagram, since the app is fully dependend of showing or required to show an ad every 2 posts.

The app is completely bloated, as it would fall apart the moment ads would be blocked.

 

[bexwhitt]

"for safety"

 

[Vanderlinde]

"for safety"

Safety is bullocks.

Their moderation is for 75% dictated by AI. I mean I had a ex gf who managed to ramp up to 15 profiles under my name using my pics and still she was able to continue month in month after nummerous reports. I dislike IG as a whole and since it's part of FB it's really up to no good with "your data".