Instagram has defended new features aimed at protecting teens from sextortion attempts on the platform, following criticism that they don't go far enough.
Parent company Meta said on Thursday that new tools - which include preventing screenshots or screen-recordings of disappearing images and videos - are part of "ongoing efforts" to stop criminals tricking teens into sending intimate images to scammers.

This makes the NSPCC say it is "a step in the right direction".

But Arturo Béjar, former Meta employee turned whistleblower, told the BBC there are easier things Instagram can do to protect young people from unwanted contact.

"The most impactful thing they could do is make it easy for a teen to flag when they think the account asking to follow them is pretending to be a teen," Mr Béjar said.

"The way the product is designed, by the time they need to report for sextortion the damage is already done."

Meta said its tools, developed using user feedback, give teens clear and straightforward ways to report inappropriate behavior or harassment.

It said it also offers dedicated mechanisms for flagging unwanted nude images and prioritises such reports, adding it is inaccurate to suggest people cannot report accounts pretending to be teens as it has options to report fraud or scams.

Richard Collard, associate head of child safety online policy at the NSPCC, commented: "There are questions as to why Meta are not rolling out similar protections across all their products, including on WhatsApp where grooming and sextortion also take place at scale".

UK communications regulator Ofcom has told the biggest social media companies they face fines unless they protect children from harms including violent content.
What is sextortion?
Sextortion-thieving means cheating people into producing sexually explicit material, which the perpetrators then use to blackmail their victims-has become the most common way that intimate image abuse manifests.

Sextortion scams on social media platforms have increased, according to law enforcement around the world, and most of the victims are teenage boys.

UK-based Internet Watch Foundation says that, as of March, 91 percent of the sextortion reports it received in 2023 involved boys.

Shamed, stressed, and isolated victims of sextortion crimes - those who are harassed and told images will be shared publicly if they don't pay blackmailers - have been so moved to take their own lives.

Parents of teenagers who have died after being targeted have called on social media firms to do more to stop it.

Ros Dowey, the mother of 16-year-old Murray Dowey, who took his life in 2023 after being targeted by a sextortion gang on Instagram, said in the past that Meta was doing "nearly enough" to protect and safeguard their children when using its platforms.

'In-built protections'
According to Meta, the new safety features and campaign are designed to build on tools already available to teens and parents on the platform.

Meta's global safety lead, Antigone Davis, said the new Instagram campaign is to equip kids and parents with information on how to identify attempts at sextortion if they avoid its tools designed to detect it.

"We have put in built-in protections so that parents don't have to do a thing to try and protect their teens," she told BBC News.

That said, this is the type of adversarial crime where whatever protections we put in place, these extortion scammers are going to try and get around them.

It will hide people's follower and following lists from potential sextortion accounts, and let teens know if they are speaking to someone who seems to be in a different country.

Sextortion expert Paul Raffile told the BBC in May, sextorters try to find teen accounts in following and follower lists after searching for high schools and youth sports teams on platforms.

Instagram will also prevent screenshots of images and videos sent in private messages with its "view once" or "allow replay" mechanisms - which can be selected by users when sending an image or video to others.

Those will not be able to open any of these kinds of media on Instagram web.

But Mr Béjar said it might give people a false sense of security: attackers could photograph an image that is on a screen using a separate device.

Meta said the feature is more than protections offered by other social media platforms that tell users when their images or videos have been screenshotted, but do not prevent it.

Mr Béjar, who has called on the platform to create a button letting teens straightforwardly report inappropriate behaviour or contact, added that nude images sent to younger teens should be blocked, rather than blurred.

He further said that younger users deserve clearer, stronger warnings about sending such images compared to what is currently offered.
Meta says its nudity protections were designed, in liaison with child protection experts, to educate people about the risks of seeing and sharing such images in a way that will not shame or scare teens by disrupting conversations.

The company is already starting to move under-18s into Teen Account experiences on Instagram, where stricter settings will be enabled by default – with parental permission necessary for younger teens to turn them off.

But some parents and experts say that safety controls for teen accounts further shift responsibility for spotting and reporting potential threats onto them.