Meta testing new ways to corral teens into teen accounts, if they lie about age | Hacker News Reader

Meta testing new ways to corral teens into teen accounts, if they lie about age

nbcnews.com

6 pointscormorant10 comments

It says that teens will but put into "private accounts that can be messaged, tagged or mentioned only by people they already follow".

Is there a way that I, too, can have a private account that can only be messaged, tagged, or mentioned by people that I already follow? I am not a teen and don't want to be falsely classified as a teen but I would very much like to have that kind of account.

Full headline (too long for HN): "Instagram to automatically put teens into private accounts with increased restrictions and parental controls"

Sub-head: "Meta says it’s testing new ways to corral all teens into the accounts, even if they lie about their ages."

Several paragraphs discuss AI-based "age-prediction tools". Excerpt:

> The age prediction tools, scheduled to go into testing in the U.S. early next year, will scrutinize behavioral signals such as when an account was created, what kind of content and accounts it interacts with, and how the user writes. Those who Meta deems could be teens will then be asked to verify their ages.

Can you edit the title to fit, instead of just truncating the last word please?

Edited the title to be a shortened-to-fit version of the sub-headline (which I found the most interesting)

The current post title suggests it's done when they do lie about their ages.

I took out the word "even" (and other words) to make it fit. Sorry. That's the best I came up with without entirely making up my own title.

Yes, we have an ongoing problem with HN guidelines requiring us to use the original headline even if it's misleading and/or needs some editorializing. Better would be:

"IG to automatically put teens into private accounts with increased restrictions and parental controls" (the full original title) or even:

"IG to automatically infer teens' age and assign them private accounts with increased restrictions and parental controls" (slightly editorialized full original title, emphasizes the "automatically infer age" part over the "even if they're lying" part)

Second, the proposed rollout is only immediate for new accounts not existing accounts, however, those will only be processed next year.

Needing to trim the title forces unfortunate tradeoffs. No editorializing, I mostly agree with due to drawbacks of opinionation in a large group.

But not even 'editorializing' where that is not injecting opinion, but simply correcting a misleading headline (as in this case)? (I only used the word 'editorializing' in this broader sense that HN people do. They key part of this particular story that was lost is that Meta/IG will use AI to infer users' age, specifically to detect when they are under-18. Thus "automatically infer age" part over the "even if they're lying" part seems an objectively better fixed headline.)

They can deduce age from their vocabulary, no cap.

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