🐿️ RIP(eanut): Peanut the Squirrel, a rescue with over half a million Instagram fans, was euthanized. New York authorities raided his owner’s home last week after anonymous complaints. It’s illegal to keep a wild animal as a pet in NY. An online petition got over 50,000 signatures, but that didn’t make a difference. Farewell, little guy.
Have kids in the family? New way to see who they're talking to and what they're looking at
Social media has come under fire for its invasive privacy practices. Among the biggest culprits is Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook recently rolled out new privacy settings to keep you informed of how you’re being tracked while also giving you options to limit tracking. Some of those settings have been making their way to Instagram. Tap or click here to rein in Instagram’s hold on your data.
The harmful effects of social media on young people are clear. The more time they spend on these platforms, the more exposed they are to bullying, dangerous trends, scams and predators. In response to public outcry, Meta added new controls to help parents regulate and monitor their children’s activity on Instagram.
Keep an eye on your kids
You have to be 13 or older to use Instagram or Facebook, but that’s not enough for Meta. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg told Congress that his company plans to build a version of Instagram for children under 13.
A petition was started to stop the development of the new platform, and it currently has more than 200,000 signatures. Zuckerberg’s plan has since been put on hold for what we hope will be indefinite. Tap or click here to add your name to the list.
On Tuesday, Meta announced new supervision tools to give parents better insight into what their children are doing on Instagram. The language indicates that it’s all being done for the safety of teenage users, but we all know that kids under 13 are using social media.
Here’s a breakdown of the new controls:
- Parents can send invitations to their teens to initiate supervision tools. Up to now, this only worked the other way around.
- Parents can set specific times during the day or week to limit their teen’s use of Instagram.
- If a teen reports an account or post, parents can see more information such as who or what was reported and why.
In addition to the new controls, teens will get “nudges” to switch to a new topic when they’re repeatedly viewing the same type of content on Explore. Meta says the nudge is “designed to encourage teens to discover something new and excludes certain topics that may be associated with appearance comparison.”
Meta is also building on the Take a Break feature, which launched last year. If someone scrolls for a certain amount of time, they’re asked to take a break from Instagram.
Go to the Family Center at familycenter.instagram.com/dashboard to send your teen an invite for supervision.
Instagram wants to know this private detail or you have to give up the app
Sometimes you get a message and can’t respond to it right away. Or you need time to think of a reply. Or you may not want to reply at all. For whatever reason, you don’t want the sender to know that you read it.
Your phone’s SMS apps have a built-in feature to let people know when you’ve seen their messages, but you can turn this off in some cases. The same applies to Instagram, but it’s not as straightforward as you think. Tap or click here for a trick that keeps what you look at on social media private.
400,000-plus signatures
On a petition delivered to the Kellogg’s HQ about its Froot Loops cereal. An ex-FDA food expert says those colorful rings are linked to organ damage, cancer, behavioral problems and worse. Need more proof? The Red 40 and Yellow 5 dyes in it are banned in other countries. Def not grape news.
Retail stores that are using AI to track you and those that refuse [Full list]
There is a line in the theme song lyrics to the sitcom “Cheers” where it says that the bar is “where everybody knows your name.” That might have been a fictional place, but it turns out that some stores are a place where everybody knows your face.