Instagram wants to know your birthday — and soon, it will no longer give users a choice in the matter.
Amid its ongoing efforts to create a safer experience for younger users, Instagram will begin asking everyone to provide their birthdays if they haven’t already.
This will be used to ensure they’re being served appropriate features. In March, for instance, Instagram began preventing adults from sending messages to users under age 18 who don’t follow them. And more recently, it began defaulting new accounts of under-16 users into private settings, as well as only showing targeted ads to users over 18.
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Going forward, Instagram will show users notifications asking them to share their birthdays a handful of times — including when they see warning screens on posts that may be sensitive or graphic — though at a certain point, the notifications will no longer be suggestive but mandatory. Of course, users can always lie — and Instagram says it’s developing systems to address this with artificial intelligence, including looking at birthdays greetings that users may receive.
“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,” the company said, without providing further details.
