Attorneys General call on Instagram to make changes to new location-sharing feature

CHARLOTTE — Attorneys General are warning Instagram to make changes. Changes, they say, will help protect children and victims of violence.

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and 37 bipartisan attorneys general have called on Instagram to make immediate changes to its new location-sharing feature, citing potential dangers to children and victims of violence.

The attorneys general are concerned that Instagram’s new feature, which displays users’ precise, real-time locations on a map interface, could be exploited by sexual predators and criminals to target children and victims offline.

“Our children’s safety comes first,” said Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “Instagram needs to do some clean up on its location-sharing feature so we can keep children and victims safe — and it needs to do so now.”

The new feature, rolled out by Instagram over the past weekend, tags users’ locations with their posts for 24 hours. This has raised alarms among the attorneys general, who argue that it represents an overreach in how Instagram collects and uses data.

The coalition is urging Instagram to disable the feature entirely for minors, send alerts to all users explaining the feature and its data usage, and provide an easy way for users to opt out of location sharing.

Users concerned about their privacy can disable the feature by navigating to the Messages tab, clicking on “Map,” and adjusting their location-sharing settings to “no one.”

Jackson sent the letter alongside the Attorneys General of New Mexico, Georgia, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, and West Virginia.

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