(Gray News) – Two U.S. senators have sent a letter to Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, urging the company to end Instagram’s new map feature.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, asked Zuckerberg to shut down the feature because they said it could put children at risk.
“We write to express our concern with the introduction of Instagram’s new map feature, which would allow individuals to share their location in real time with users around the world,” the letter says in part.
The new map feature rolled out earlier this week and includes a map of the U.S. showing where users are active. Users’ locations are updated every time they use the app.
Blackburn and Blumenthal argue kids could use the map feature to share their location with “dangerous individuals, including pedophiles and traffickers.”
Meta has said users must opt in to use the feature and that their location will not be shared unless they do so. However, Blackburn and Blumenthal reported some users said their locations were shared automatically.
“This addition is a cause of particular concern for us when it comes to children and teens that are active on Instagram,” the letter said.
Meta said that parents with supervision settings for their children’s accounts can control their location settings. However, the letter argues Meta’s parental controls are difficult to understand.
“Meta has made it difficult for parents to fully understand or utilize parental controls, leading to abuse, exploitation, and victimization of these precious children,” the letter said.
Blackburn and Blumenthal stated in their letter that Meta has routinely failed in protecting children online.
“Meta’s track record on protecting children online—even in recent days—is abysmal,” they said in the letter. “From deploying AI chatbots that engaged in sexually explicit conversations with minors to continuing to use kids as products, one can only assume that Instagram’s introduction of real time location sharing will be used to further addict children to social media.”
In their letter, they said Instagram’s map feature is the latest example of how Meta has failed to protect children online.
“Your company has repeatedly shown that it will always fail to protect children’s lives—unless we pass legislation like the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act,” the letter said. “Allowing the geolocation of minors on your platform is just the latest example of this sad reality.”
Earlier this year, Blackburn and Blumenthal introduced the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act. Along with protecting kids online, the act also aims to raise awareness of the “destructive harm” caused by social media platforms.
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