regulations
Auto Added by WPeMatico
Instagram will require users to provide their birthday
Instagram will begin prodding users to share their birthday with the service, if they haven’t already done so. The company today announced it will now start popping up a notification that asks you to add your birthday to “personalize your experience.” But the prompt can only be dismissed a handful of times before becoming a requirement. The move is a part of Instagram’s larger goal to create new safety features aimed at younger users, the company explains. This includes the teen privacy protections introduced earlier this year, as well as Instagram’s longer-term plan to launch a version of its service aimed at users under the age of 13.
This March, Instagram rolled out new features that made it more difficult for adults to contact teens through its app. Then in July, the company announced a larger series of changes to the default settings for new users under the age of 16. It will now default these users’ accounts to “private” and limit their accounts from being suggested elsewhere in the app. It also now restricts adults whose accounts are flagged as “potentially suspicious” from being able to reach out to other minors or interact with their posts.
Starting this week, Instagram says users who have not yet shared their birthday will begin to see pop-up notifications when they open the Instagram app.
These notifications will appear a handful of times, but at some point, users will no longer be able to dismiss the message by tapping “Not Now.” Instead, everyone will ultimately be required to share their birthday to continue to use Instagram.
The company will also now request you to share your birthday information when you come across a post with a warning screen. These screens, which hide content that’s flagged as sensitive or graphic, are not new. But Instagram has never before asked for a user’s birthday before displaying the hidden content.
Image Credits: Instagram
The birthday entry form itself is not complex. You simply scroll to choose the month, day and year of your birthday.
Of course, kids are commonly known to lie on these entry forms in order to bypass restrictions when signing up for apps. On this front, Instagram has developed AI technology to help it identify accounts were kids may have lied. For instance, it may be able to infer someone’s birthday based on comments left on “Happy Birthday” posts, where the user’s age may be referenced. The company also hints at further plans in this area, noting how it will later require users to verify their age when Facebook’s technology determines a mismatch between the age the user submitted and what appears to be their real age, based on other signals.
That technology is still in the “early stages,” says Instagram, but will involve a menu of options that will allow someone to verify their age.
The need to have users’ birthdays on hand isn’t only meant to power the recently launched teen protection features. Instagram is also working to bring its app to younger users — a decision that’s been met with a hostile response from legislators and consumer advocacy groups alike. In addition, age remains an important data point for ad targeting. Even as Instagram pulled back on the ability for marketers to target teens using interest data or their activity on other apps, it will continue to allow ad targeting based on age, gender and location across age groups.
The company is now one of several to have rolled out added protections for younger teen users, ahead of regulations that would force them to do so. Over the course of this year, TikTok, YouTube and Google have also announced changes to how younger teens can use their services and how they can be targeted by ads, in anticipation of a regulatory crackdown. While each has crafted its own set of teen safety features independently, the changes have largely addressed making the default settings for new teenage users more restrictive.
Instagram says the new birthday pop-up notifications will begin to appear this week on the mobile app and will continue to roll out over the weeks ahead to reach more users.
Powered by WPeMatico
How to delay your Form Ds (or not file them at all)
Building a startup is incredibly tough. There are the constant ups and downs, the moments of sheer ambiguity and terror. And so, few moments in a startup’s life are as triumphant — and crystal clear — as closing a round of funding. Yes, yes, raising venture capital shouldn’t be celebrated as a milestone, and the focus should always be on product and users … but it just feels so damn good sometimes just to feel that sense of euphoria: I built something, and now others are giving me potentially millions of dollars to shoot for the stars.
Unfortunately, that clarity is increasingly vanishing. First, “closing a round” is rarely as sharp a distinction as it used to be. Seed rounds (and even later-stage rounds) are often raised over extended periods of time, with many partial closings conducted as new angels and seed funds come to the (cap) table.
Then there is also the growing disconnect between raising capital and the actual announcement of that fundraise. Founders are trying to remain under stealth for longer periods of time to hide from competitors, and they want to message their news in a careful manner.
All of which means that the Form D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission when closing an exempt fundraise (aka venture rounds) is no longer as simple a process as it once was.
Lawyers will state publicly that startups should always file their legally mandatory paperwork (that’s probably also a good rule for life). The reality, though, is pretty much the opposite when you talk to startup attorneys in private.
Here’s the secret about Form D filings today: the norms in Silicon Valley have changed, and Form D filings are often filed late, not at all, and many startups are advised to lie low in the hopes of avoiding stricter SEC scrutiny. What was once a fait accompli is now a deliberative process, with important decision points for founders.
Extra Crunch contacted about two dozen startup attorneys, from the biggest firms in the industry to the one-person shops with a shingle out front. Getting straight answers here has been tough, if only because no lawyer really wants to say out loud that they actively recommend their clients violate government regulations (there is that whole law license thing, which apparently lawyers care about).
Practically all of these conversations were done off-the-record and not for attribution, since as one lawyer said, “the last thing I need is the damn SEC sending our firm a nastygram.” Other firms wholly swore us off from even discussing their Form D cultures.
Full disclosure: I am not an attorney, and while I had attorneys read over this draft, this does not constitute legal advice, particularly specific legal advice for your specific startup and situation. Get inspiration from this analysis, but always (really, truly, always) consult qualified legal counsel to answer legal questions about your startup.
With that said, here is our guide to the new world of venture capital securities filings.
Powered by WPeMatico
2-factor authentication is a great thing to have, and more and more services are making it a standard feature. But one of the go-to methods for sending 2FA notifications, SMS, is being left in the dust by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.