Meta announced earlier this week that AMBER alerts will soon be rolled out to Instagram in 25 countries. With AMBER alerts users in these regions will soon get notifications of missing children in the area.
The feature was already present on Facebook, and Meta said that it has helped find hundreds of children since it was introduced in 2015. AMBER alerts for Instagram was developed in partnership with various organisations like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US and the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children.
“We know that the chances of finding a missing child increase when more people are on the lookout, especially in the first few hours. With this update, if an AMBER Alert is activated by law enforcement and you are in the designated search area, the alert will now appear in your Instagram feed,” Ins5tagram said in a blog post announcing the upcoming feature.
How it will work
AMBER alerts will also be specific to the search area, which means if a user receives one, it suggests that a search for a missing child is in progress in their vicinity. Instagram said that it will use information like the city you list on your profile, your IP address and location services (if turned on) to determine if an AMBER alert should be sent to you or not.
“The alert will include important details about the child such as a photo, description, location of the abduction and any other available information that can be provided. People can also share the alert with friends to further spread the word,” Instagram mentioned in the post.
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Which countries will get AMBER alerts?
The list of 25 countries that is getting support for AMBER alerts includes Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Ukraine, the UK, the United Arab Emirates and the US. Instagram did mention in its post that it is working on bringing the feature to more regions in the future.
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