Instagram To Ask Users For Their Race, Identity
Instagram is beginning to prompt users in US to know about their race and identity. The initiative has been taken up by the Meta-owned platform to better understand different experiences people may have on Instagram.
The social media platform aims to roll out this optional survey over the next few months across the US. Users will see a prompt for their race or ethnicity, which will lead them to a survey hosted by YouGov.
The responses from Instagram users will be received by partner research institutions including Texas Southern University, University of Central Florida, Northeastern University, and Oasis Labs. They will receive will receive the split, de-identified responses from YouGov.
“The method used by Meta to analyze how people of different races and ethnicities interact with Instagram is very secure”, said Dr Zhishan Guo, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCF, one of the research universities partnered with Meta.
“User responses are encrypted and split apart, with distributed algorithmic computations and data storages at different institutions, so no one can link survey responses to Instagram accounts”, he added.
The information collected through the survey will be used to understand the experiences different communities have on Instagram. The survey will also look to understand how the social media’s technology impacts different groups and if any changes could be made to promote fairness.
“For example, the analysis we conduct with this information might help us better understand experiences different communities may have when it comes to how we rank content”, explained Instagram blog.
