logo
Instagram's Map is here, and this is how you can turn your location off

Instagram's Map is here, and this is how you can turn your location off

The Verge18 hours ago
It's only been a couple of days since the Instagram Map launched, and from the looks of our social feeds, people are not happy about it.
Responses have ranged from being mildly annoyed that Instagram is ripping off Snapchat's Snap Maps instead of offering a default feed that only contains your friends' posts, to high alert outrage about possibly privacy implications and doxing, as well as how domestic violence victims or others could be put at risk of stalking via the app.
Meta says the feature is an 'opt-in' only way to share your active location with the friends you choose, or a way to browse the content friends and creators are posting, organized by the locations tagged to their posts and Reels.
If the only thing you want to do is turn Instagram Maps location sharing off, here's Instagram's instructions on how to make sure the feature is disabled within the app (on both Android and iOS):
If you haven't enabled location access for Instagram, Meta says that the map feature is disabled by default, and you won't be able to access the settings since it doesn't have access to that data.
According to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, people are seeing location-tagged posts and Reels that are also included in the map UI, and assuming that indicates a live-tracked location.
'Your last reel is showing up on the map, not your current location. Your live location is not being shared, and it will never be unless you decide to share it,' writes Mosseri. In another post, he promised, 'We'll get out a few design improvements as quickly as possible,' potentially by next week.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
See All by Richard Lawler
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
See All How to
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
See All Instagram
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
See All Meta
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
See All News
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
See All Privacy
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
See All Tech
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Bipartisan senators push back on new Instagram map feature over privacy concerns
Bipartisan senators push back on new Instagram map feature over privacy concerns

The Hill

time5 hours ago

  • The Hill

Bipartisan senators push back on new Instagram map feature over privacy concerns

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Friday urged Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to end its new map feature on Instagram. In a letter, first obtained by NBC News, the bipartisan lawmakers argued that the new tool, which shares Instagram users' last active location with followers, could endanger children. 'For years, we have sounded the alarm regarding real time location sharing on social media platforms — specifically when it comes to underage users — and we again urge you to protect children's safety instead of potentially exposing their location to dangerous individuals online, including pedophiles and traffickers,' the senators wrote. The Hill has reached out to Meta for comment. Users must opt in to use the tool and can opt out at any time, according to an Aug. 6 release from Meta. They can also select which followers can see their locations. Parents that have supervision over their child's account can also control the location settings and will receive a notification if the child changes it. But the congressional duo on Friday cited examples of some consumers reporting that their location was shared without consent. 'This addition is a cause of particular concern for us when it comes to children and teens that are active on Instagram,' the senators added. Instagram head Adam Mosseri on Thursday said that the company is working to issue design improvements 'as quickly as possible.' Both Blackburn and Blumenthal have long expressed concerns over child safety on Meta social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. In April, the senators wrote a letter to the company warning that 'the company is failing to protect underage users from sexually explicit discussions with a new class of AI-powered digital chatbots.' Blackburn and Blumenthal also sponsored the Kids Online Safety Act last year, which passed the Senate last summer. It did not pass the House, and they reintroduced the legislation in May. 'We urge you to immediately abandon Instagram's map feature and instead institute meaningful protections for children online —they deserve nothing less,' the senators wrote in the Friday letter.

Why Big Tech's AI Billions Are Being Rewarded Unevenly
Why Big Tech's AI Billions Are Being Rewarded Unevenly

Forbes

time5 hours ago

  • Forbes

Why Big Tech's AI Billions Are Being Rewarded Unevenly

On July 30, Microsoft's market cap briefly soared past $4 trillion after the company reported another earnings beat. CEO Satya Nadella credited Azure's AI-driven growth and surging demand for copilot, telling investors the company was 'well-positioned to lead in the new era of AI-infused productivity,' according to its Q4 earnings call transcript. A day later, Meta's stock surged more than 8% after it reported ad revenue growth of 17% year-over-year and outlined new AI-powered tools for advertisers, details also captured in the Q2 earnings call transcript. On the other side of the divide, the mood was far less exuberant for Amazon and Apple. Both beat Wall Street's earnings expectations, but their stock moves were muted — and in Amazon's case, 'shares slipped despite reporting $147 billion in revenue. Apple unveiled 'Apple Intelligence' for iPhones, iPads and Macs, but offered few specifics on rollout or monetization. The contrast wasn't about who spent the most on AI. It was about which companies could convincingly connect that spending to measurable business results. That shift — from hype to proof — is redefining how the market judges AI investments. And that split is getting much harder to ignore across the industry. The AI Accountability Era When I asked what the recent earnings call by these four tech behemoths meant for the AI industry, Shekhar Natarajan, CEO of Orchestro, described it in blunt terms, calling it the new reality. 'Microsoft and Meta won because they mastered the art of AI storytelling with receipts,' he told me. 'Microsoft essentially turned OpenAI into the world's most expensive enterprise sales tool — every Azure deal now comes with an AI fairy tale that CFOs actually believe. Meta took the opposite approach: they made AI so invisible that advertisers don't even realize they're paying premium rates for algorithmic wizardry.' In contrast, he said, Amazon and Apple are 'AI rich, narrative poor.' Amazon 'built the most sophisticated AI infrastructure on the planet and somehow made it sound boring,' while Apple 'spent billions making Siri slightly less embarrassing and called it revolutionary.' That, Natarajan argued, is no longer enough. 'We've entered what I call the 'AI accountability era' — where investors have figured out that 'synergies' and 'transformation' don't pay dividends, but revenue does. The market essentially said: 'Cool demo, where's the recurring subscription model?'' This shift is merciless for companies still leaning on AI as a catch-all talking point. 'The next 12–18 months will be a bloodbath for AI tourism — expect pivots from 'AI-powered everything' to 'AI-profitable something specific,'' Natarajan noted. What Investors Reward Now Guy Dassa, AI expert and investment partner at OurCrowd, agrees the earnings gap isn't about AI spend levels, but about visibility and execution. 'The market is no longer rewarding AI spending in a vacuum, it's rewarding clarity, execution, and monetization,' he explained. Microsoft tied its AI investments directly to Azure's revenue growth and to customer adoption of copilot across office and enterprise workflows. Meta demonstrated that AI-driven ad targeting and content recommendations are keeping users engaged and advertisers spending more. Amazon and Apple, Dassa said, were 'more opaque' — investors heard about model development and branding, but saw little in the way of measurable revenue attribution. 'Yes, we're entering a post-hype phase,' he added. 'The narrative is shifting from potential to performance. Investors are asking: Where is the revenue? Where is the efficiency gain? Where is the user growth? Companies can no longer get by with vague promises or flashy demos — they need to show productized AI, enterprise adoption, or embedded monetization.' According to IDC, companies are now generating an average of $3.50 in value for every $1 spent on AI, with more than 90% of initiatives delivering measurable returns within 18 months. In practical terms, Dassa explained, that means investor decks will focus less on model size and more on use case adoption, margin expansion and defensible infrastructure. 'AI is no longer a strategy; it's an execution layer,' he added. The New AI Differentiator If 2023 was about who had the biggest model, 2025 is about who can deploy one seamlessly at scale. 'Here's the dirty secret nobody talks about: Building great AI models is now table stakes,' said Natarajan. 'Every teenager with a GitHub account can fine-tune GPT. The real money is in the unglamorous stuff — who can serve a model in 50 milliseconds instead of 500, who can handle inference spikes without melting their data centers.' That's where infrastructure maturity becomes visible in market performance. Dassa noted that Microsoft's lead in enterprise AI is underpinned by Azure's GPU access, inference optimization and integration pipelines — capabilities it has been quietly scaling for years. Meta's advantage comes from running AI models across one of the most extensive proprietary stacks in tech, tuned for ad delivery at global scale. 'Meanwhile,' Dassa noted, 'companies without robust infrastructure or with unclear integration plans are struggling to convince investors they can translate models into money.' The analogy Natarajan draws is to the internet boom of the late 1990s. 'Everyone focused on websites while the real winners were building CDNs and payment processors,' he said. 'Today's AI infrastructure leaders are tomorrow's Cloudflares and Stripes.' AI Execution Needs People Capital spending alone won't win the next phase of AI adoption. Kieran Corbett, venture partner at Geek Ventures, put it plainly: 'CAPEX for CAPEX sake will no longer be tolerated by shareholders, tangible growth and execution is what will be rewarded by further capital. Where so much of this AI spend is now being spent on is the talent race to enable effective execution and this doesn't look like it'll slow down.' In other words, execution isn't just about GPUs and data centers. It's about whether a company can attract and retain the talent to turn its AI investments into differentiated products, integrated workflows and sticky revenue streams. That talent race is intensifying, particularly for engineers who can bridge the gap between research and deployment. And for public companies, the stakes are higher than just quarterly earnings calls. Miss the execution mark now, and it's not only market cap that suffers, but also the competitive positioning for the rest of the decade. Time To Build Real Stuff Microsoft and Meta didn't simply benefit from favorable market winds this quarter. They earned investor confidence by pairing clear AI narratives with visible revenue impact, backed by infrastructure and teams that can deliver at scale. Amazon and Apple may close that gap in future quarters, but Q2 sent a message the market won't soon forget: the AI free ride is over. As Natarajan put it, 'We funded your AI fantasy camp. Time to build an AI business.'

Do Not Keep These ‘High Risk' Apps On Your iPhone Or Android
Do Not Keep These ‘High Risk' Apps On Your iPhone Or Android

Forbes

time7 hours ago

  • Forbes

Do Not Keep These ‘High Risk' Apps On Your iPhone Or Android

While TikTok has generated the most headlines when it comes to allegations of your data being secretly sent to China, it turns out that a much bigger threat could have been been hiding on your phone all this time. And this one is much more dangerous. It has taken a spate of porn bans — first in the U.S. and now in Europe to flush out this risk. As much as smartphone users need their TikTok fix, porn is an even bigger draw. And tens of millions of users are suddenly masking their internet traffic for the first time, pretending to be somewhere they are not to bypass those bans. This is done by way of virtual private networks or VPNs. The same technology that failed to circumvent TikTok's short-lived U.S. ban in January. But for porn, VPNs work just fine. vpnMentor saw a 'staggering' 6,000% surge in U.K VPN use after restrictions came into effect. The same explosive growth seen in the U.S. and France. Many of the installed VPNs were free apps topping App Store and Play Store charts. But many of these have a nasty, hidden secret. As Top10VPN's Simon Migliano warns, "despite being made aware of glaring privacy failures and opaque corporate structures, Google and Apple continue to permit these high-risk apps on their platforms.' A month ago, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) issued a report into free VPNs, warning that 'millions of Americans have downloaded apps that secretly route their internet traffic through Chinese companies.' It reported on this same threat in April. 'Apple and Google app stores continue to offer private browsing apps that are surreptitiously owned by Chinese companies… six weeks after they were identified.' 'In light of these findings," Migliano warns, "I strongly urge users to avoid Chinese-owned VPNs altogether." He says 'the risks are too great' to keep them on your phone. As BeyondTrust's James Maude told me 'if you aren't paying for a product, you are the product. These VPNs are a perfect example of the hidden costs of free apps where users seeking privacy are potentially unknowingly feeding data to a foreign nation state." Google told me it is "committed to compliance with applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws. When we locate accounts that may violate these laws, our related policies or Terms of Service, we take appropriate action.' While Apple says it enforces App Store rules but does not differentiate its handling of apps by the location of their developers, albeit VPNs are prohibited from sharing data. My advice is to open either the App Store on your iPhone or the Play Store on your Android, and then search for 'free VPN.' You should delete any apps listed as installed on your phone that highlight that 'free VPN" tag, unless they are linked to blue-chip, western technology firms that provide other security offerings. Meanwhile, here's the TTP list of Chinese apps you should search for: Apple App Store: Google Play Store:

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store