Instagram is looking to improve its understanding of how people from marginalized communities use the app, and the challenges that they may or may not experience, via a new survey, in conjunction with YouGov, which will prompt some users to answer an optional question about their ethnicity. Some users will be prompted to provide info about their race/ethnicity. The data is being collected by YouGov via ‘individual, de-identified responses’ – it’s essentially rinsed through more privacy protection filters to ensure that it can be linked back to a real person’�s Instagram identity. But then again, Meta has shared sensitive information with academic organizations in the past, which has then led to misuse. The new prompts will be shown to US users from today This is a step in the right direction for Instagram as it seeks to better understand the needs of marginalized communities. However, there are still concerns about how this data will be used and who will have access to it.

July 31, 2022 10:45 AM