Instagram Installs Amber Alerts Feature In Feed For Disbursement Help For Missing Children

Amber Alerts appear in Feed when there is information about missing children around you. (photo: doc.instagram)

JAKARTA – Amber Alerts is an important tool in helping to find kidnapped children. They are authorized by law enforcement and broadcast via TV, text messages, and other means.

Now, Instagram will also be pushing Amber Alerts to users' feeds with the feature rolling out in the US, June 1st and will be available in a total of 25 countries in the next few weeks. This feature shows how apps like Instagram have become the basic communication infrastructure in the modern world.

Adding Amber Alerts to Instagram makes sense for a few reasons. First, the younger generation may ignore text messages but browse Instagram regularly. Second, while text alerts require people to click on links for more information and photos of missing children, Instagram alerts will include this info directly.

It seems that the alert will not be issued as a notification, it will only appear in the user's regular feed.

Reported by The Verge, Facebook previously added Amber Alerts to its News Feed in 2015. However, if you haven't seen one, it shows how rare and focused these alerts are. Law enforcement has fairly strict guidelines about the context needed to issue it, such as the many requirements that become the need for descriptive information about victims and abductors as well as information about suspect vehicles. This information is only sent to people who are considered to be near the location of the abduction.

As Instagram said when announcing the news of the integration, “If you get one, it means there is an active search for missing children nearby. To find out who these alerts are shown to, we use a variety of signals, including the city you listed in your profile, your IP address, and location services, if you have them enabled.”

Instagram says the feature will be available in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, UAE, and USA.