Among the innovations launched at the beginning of August on Instagramone of those that attracted the attention most, arousing more than some doubts as regards the “privacy” issue, is undoubtedly the “map” option.
Instagram Map
After obviously drawing inspiration from Snapchat, exactly as happened nine years ago for the “Stories”, the Developers of Meta have implemented a function that allows users to share their own position With some selected contacts: unlike what happens with Snap Map, however, the system does not update the location in real time, but it only does it when the application is opened. “Share your position with friends and look at what happens around you on the Instagram map “reads the X post, “And if you are a parent and you have set the supervision for your teenage son, you can decide if he can share his position and with whom”.
A relevant new element is given by “Notes“which can be inserted on the map, or short messages to be affixed to specific places to provide a review of your experience: what can happen, for example, for a place to recommend to friends or for a monument or a location that has affected the particular way the user for its beauty. Almost as if it were a sort of interactive tourist guide, which is enriched with information according to the profiles with which it is connected through the social member.
The privacy problem
All that glitters is not gold, and many have already launched the alarm for the repercussions that such a function can have on people’s daily life. In the Instagram MAP, two types of interaction: an active sharing, which shows the places tagged in posts or stories, and a passive that allows contacts to know where the app the last time, even just to check the content.
And it is precisely this aspect that generates greater concern: the alarm at the Washington Post is launched Tracy Chou, the creator and responsible for “Block Party”, an application that deals with the management of privacy on social media. The risk that you run in these cases is to share information that we usually keep only for us, as can happen for a private appointment of any kind: “This mechanism pushes oversharing, making it difficult to manage who sees what”explains the expert. Without considering that, by crossing the data, anyone could trace the most popular places and locate the home address, that of work or the school attended, with the risks that this could bring.
At the moment the function is under the exit phase only the United States, but it could soon be distributed in Europe. If you want to deactivate the map, simply click on the “Settings” and select “Nobody” in the option “who can see your position”. It is also possible to deactivate geolocation for the app directly from the privacy menu of the mobile phone.
The replica of Meta
“The position will be shared only if you decide to do it and only with a limited group of people you have chosen”said Adam Mosseri, thus reiterating that sharing is deactivated by default and that the user will choose who to provide such information.
In addition, the developers specified, the position will be kept for a maximum of 3 days, and all data will not be used for advertising purposes. Nonetheless, users are numerous to continue to manifest all their perplexities on social media, underlining the risks that could derive from involuntary sharing.