Well, that escalated quickly.
After announcing its new Friend Map feature yesterday, Instagram has been flooded with misguided complaints and concerns about how the new feature will expose people’s locations without them knowing, potentially putting millions of people at risk.
To recap, Instagram’s new Friend Map will show you where your friends are at any given time, while also highlighting places friends have been, via location-tagged Stories that they’ve posted.
Which is pretty much the same as the Snap Map, but Snapchat doesn’t have as many users, and as such, it didn’t see the same level of backlash that Instagram’s now seeing, with many users complaining that location sharing like this is unsafe, and could even get someone killed.
What’s important to note, however, is that the feature is opt-in, so it is not switched on for anyone without their knowledge.
As explained by Instagram in its announcement post:
“You can opt into sharing your last active location with friends you pick, and you can turn it off anytime. You can also open the map to see content your friends and favorite creators are posting from cool spots. No matter how you use the map, you and your friends have a new, lightweight way to connect with each other.”
Note the first line, “you can opt in” to sharing your location, but you don’t have to, and your location won’t be shown unless you manually switch it on.
But the wording may have been unclear, because Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has been forced to reiterate this point:
“Your location will only be shared *if* you decide to share it, and if you do, it can only shared with a limited group of people you choose. To start, location sharing is *completely off.* If you do decide to share your location, the three options are a custom list you make, your Close Friends list, or followers you follow back.”
So it’s not randomly exposing everybody to the world, and showing where you are, and what you’re doing at all times.
Mosseri has also clarified the process for Stories location-sharing:
“If you tag a location in your story, that story will show up on the map for 24 hours. As always with Stories, this only shows the place you tagged to your followers - it does not share your real-time or live location.”
Some users claim that location services was turned on by default, and is now showing their location in the app. But it is a manual setting, and the only way that this would be switched on may be if users have enabled such in the past, for Instagram’s other location-tagging features, and if they've shared a Story in public. In which case, as Mosseri notes, the map would show the location of that Story to your connections, but not your live location.
So, essentially, it may be possible that you’re showing on the IG map without you manually activating it for this exact purpose. But you can also switch location sharing off, both in the app and in your device settings.
Instagram has also built in some additional privacy features, like an option to hide selected locations from the map, even if you are sharing your info:
So to clarify, you’re not sharing your location to everyone on Instagram, and you have full control and capacity to switch it off. Friend Map sharing is not switched on by default, and the only way to activate location sharing is via manual control.
So if you don’t like it, don’t use it, and no one will know where you are in the app.
