Instagram’s new location-sharing update is raising privacy concerns, with users reporting their whereabouts were shared without their knowledge despite Meta saying the update is opt-in.
Experts warn that location-sharing features are linked to a higher risk of tech-based coercive control.
The controversy follows other recent privacy issues for Meta, including a lawsuit over the misuse of sensitive health data from a women’s health tracking app.
What are these poor instagram users supposed to do? NOT using Instagram?? That’s insane
Why are people giving any Meta app Location Permissions? …or even installing that shit to begin with?
nobody needs to install it nowadays, because it comes preinstalled on all phones. and lots of people just mindlessly allow every kind of permission
And all their friends and crushes use it.
Is it really preinstalled on all phones? Not on iphones and neither on my Samsung S22 or my Pixels.
Android is the devil when it comes to it. My S22+ certainly did have “Meta App Manager” and “Meta Package Installer” hidden as system services, which could only be removed using ADB.
That’s because they’re both flagship phones, budget phones have a ton of bloatware installed on them (including cheaper Samsung phones)
Can confirm I had to remove “Meta App Manager” off my old S22+ as of ~6 months ago
maybe flagship phones are different, but I don’t think I ever had such a device in my hands. I regularly help people with affordable phones, and as far as I can tell each had them preinstalled
“recent privacy issues”… all facebook companies were surveillance companies from inception. supporting any of them is supporting a surveillance capitalism behemoth for now 20+ years.
True. Facebook from its inception as Facemash was a way for creepy, misogynist slimeballs to ogle and “rank” women they went to school with against their consent by harvesting public databases. “It was just a prank bro.” —Mark ‘Real Human’ Zuckerberg
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People still use instagram, that’s bad.
Contacted a bunch of people to tell them to turn this off. None of them knew. Hope they get the absolute fuck sued out of them
Its a feature my kids dealt with between themselves and their friends years ago(yes, on Instagram). This is the same generation that randomly lets friends borrow their phones and even post as eachother on various platforms.
I’m not saying its a non-issue, but those ignorant of it are truly ignorant, not-so-much newsworthy.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here…
Privacy isn’t something that corporations or the government gives to you. It’s something that you have to create and protect for yourself.
Installing a meta app on your phone comes with an agreement (which you read, right?) where you give up all of the privacy of your phone in exchange for apps that make you feel bad about your income, life and relationships while also being misinformed and angry about current events. It’s such a terrible deal where you lose everything in order to send pictures to your friends slightly more efficiently (Signal Stories work just as well but are end to end encrypted)
It’s like letting a narcissist live with you who constantly berates, insults and lies to you in exchange for them occasionally telling you how
your friendsrandom people that you really don’t care about are doing.Signal Stories gets so much hate (and I don’t really like it either) but it’s the only form of private social media.
Although the apps come preinstalled and unremovable on many phones.
For Android, Universal Debloater is your friend.
https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation
When developer mode is possible at least.
I’m just shocked that people are still shocked…
This has been a WhatsApp thing for ages…
I don’t use Instagram, so I’m out of the loop. What’s going on? As far as I remember people were always allowed to mark thier location in post.
AFAIK the new update makes it so your current location is shared with every post, by default, rather than just being something you can do if you feel like it
Not just with every post. It updates your position every time you open the app.
Oh gosh, that’s even worse than I thought. Nothing like getting doxxed by your social media app; glad I left insta some time ago.
Meta is trying to fuse the Snapchat into Instagram?
This is “innovation” these days. Just taking what others have found success in and adding it to your platform.
They’ve been doing that since they added Instagram stories years ago.
There was a time Facebook chat would share precise locations with every message by default. None of the people who sent me their location along with a message knew they were doing that when I told them.
I knew a girl who once worked on a supposedly clandestine “special ops” tv show. She messaged me halfway through shooting explaining how disillusioned she was with the whole affair. I asked if, that notwithstanding, whether she had a lovely time in Costa Rica … she was horrified that I knew her location as all public releases of the tv show had them being “special ops” in Africa somewhere.
As you pointed out, Facebook Messenger let that cat out of the bag.
Shocked I tell ya. /s
So happy to have deleted all meta apps including whatsapp!
Isn’t this the same thing Snapchat did years ago?
Still does. This article should have been a PSA about an on-going issue with multiple apps, but they insisted on a villain to blame as somehow being worse than others. All of these apps will randomly and repeatedly ask to enable such things; They have done so for years and years.
That they haven’t done, in my experience. I deleted Snapchat a while ago, but I don’t recall it prompting me repeatedly to enable location. I’m still on Instagram now, and I’ve had the location permission off probably forever, and I’ve never noticed it asking for it.
Snapchat is not one I expected to be an exception, but I don’t use it and I prevented my kids from using it until they turned 16(ish?). Took that long for them to demonstrate anything like critical thinking and self-restraint re: social media.
Didn’t Snapchat have this for ages? I don’t get what’s so surprising
You’re not surprised. I’m not surprised. People who end up with this feature enabled without having fully understood it or intending to turn it on are surprised.
I’m not sure how much of this is people not thinking things through and how much is Meta being scumbags. There’s probably a little of both.
Corpo will take everything they can, it is the end users problem and they need to manage it.
Expecting corpo to do anything that benefits you in any way is naive in 2025.
As if the normie forgot what an arms length translation and caveat emptor means.
These companies are your enemies people, act like it
If they wanted to add some feature where you can see where people were located on a city scale then whatever, although I still don’t see the point. But taking it down to the literal building that the person is in is fucking bonkers.
