Instagram wants video selfies to prove you’re human

If you use Instagram, you know that the network is full of all kinds of bots whose sole purpose is to spam or advertise. It looks like the social network wants to take action and is starting to ask some people questions. To introduce yourself through a video selfie.

In fact, the network asked several users to take a selfie video to prove that there really was a human behind the account. As you can see in the tweets, the feature requests a video to be posted It has a face from every angle.

Instagram is requiring video selfies for some users

In another screenshot, Instagram posted this video will not be used for anything else It must be stated as an ID and deleted after thirty days. In any case, it’s surprising that something like this has come up, as Meta (formerly Facebook) announced that it no longer uses facial recognition.

The arrival of this feature surprised users, but Instagram assures that this is nothing exceptional. On Twitter, the social network claims to have developed this tool a year ago to verify that a real person, and not a bot, is behind an account. This is in addition to the date of birth verification already in place. Meta states that this ID is required If an account posts tons of content or follows tons of other accounts. However, this explanation does not seem very convincing because users have only recently noticed the emergence of video selfies. Additionally, authentication seems to occur randomly and not in specific situations. Therefore, its use still remains very unclear.

The problem is that we only have Meta’s word on the matter. Requesting an authentication video can be problematic because no one can be sure, even if the company promises to delete the content after a month. We know that Facebook is not very quick to fulfill all its promises.

In any case, Instagram seems to be looking to improve things in terms of security lately, like paying more attention to teen usage or adding moderators to live video streams. Time will tell whether all this will be enough to make the network safe for everyone.