Facebook — home plate to rampant harassment , misinformation , and foreign election interference — is coming for your kid . The fellowship announced a Modern app on Monday for tyke as immature as six years erstwhile . The app , Messenger Kids , is a messaging service that gives parents bureau over who their kids can chat with .
Once a parent add together someone to their child ’s contact list through the main Facebook app , kids can video chat as well as get off photos , videos , and textual matter , or plunk something from “ a program library of kid - appropriate and specially chosen GIFs , frames , stickers , masks , and drawing tools , ” according toFacebook ’s promulgation post .
Parents have to be Facebook friends with the parents of any kid that their kid need to talk to , a Facebook product manager said at a press briefing , according toBuzzFeed . The app give parents control over how long their kids can practice the app . What ’s more , Messenger Kids includes a tool that lets kids describe when someone is being “ mean , ” and , fit in to the product manager , both world and machine at Facebook will be hold in the space for unfitting cognitive content . When detected ( or if , give Facebook’sshoddy moderating account ) , such content will be scrubbed from the app .
A Facebook spokesperson said in an email to Gizmodo , “ We ’ve built automated systems that can detect things like nudity , violence , and small fry exploitatory imagery to aid limit that content from being shared on Messenger Kids . We also have blocking and report mechanism , and have a consecrated team of human reviewers that review all capacity that is report . ”
As for why Facebook is launching the app , the company tell in electronic mail that “ many of us at Facebook are parents ourselves , and it seems we were n’t alone when we realized that our kids were get online earlier and earlier , ” citing an outside survey from Dubit that found that 93 % of six to 12 - class - old in the US have access to tablets or smartphones .
While parent might love Messenger Kids , it remains to be seen if children will require use an app that their parents ascertain . My surmisal is , credibly the infernal region not — not when so many tike have their own personal devices that connect to the internet . They ’ll likely turn to other apps that permit them to chat with whoever they want without run away it by mom or dad first .
Even if kids do end up flocking to the fresh app , there are still privacy concerns to view . Facebook is not resistant tosecurity breachesand the social web has a story ofexperimenting on its users . Parents would be misguided to believe that they have the ultimate authority over their child ’s experience . In realness , Facebook does .
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