Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has joined a bipartisan coalition of 37 states urging Instagram to strengthen its privacy and safety protections for users of its new location-sharing feature. According to the attorneys general, Instagram can put users at risk by showing their precise location on a map that is viewable by others, which creates potential risks for individuals, including children and survivors of domestic violence. Bird says, “This new location-sharing service poses unacceptable and serious risks for the most vulnerable users, who should be able to use Instagram without putting their lives in jeopardy.” Instagram boasts an estimated two billion monthly users worldwide, about 175 million of which are in the U.S. The letter to Instagram’s parent company, Meta, calls for restrictions that block minors from enabling location sharing, notifying adult users about the feature’s risks and data uses, and making it easy for users to disable the tool. The letter is led by attorneys general from New Mexico and Georgia. Read their full letter below.
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