If you are a fan of Instagram, you could start seeing photos of missing children in your feed. Instagram will now show users details regarding local Amber Alerts in cooperation with organizations that find and rescue missing children.
Location data will allow Instagram to decide what users get which alerts. Data such as the user’s IP address, location services (if available), and listed city to select who receives a specific Amber Alert.
The alerts will display details about missing children, such as a description of the child, the abduction, location, photo, and any other information available, Emily Vacher, Facebook’s director of Trust and Safety, said.
An Amber Alert is an emergency response system issued by police when they believe a child has been abducted. The system has been credited with saving hundreds of lives. If you get an Amber Alert through Instagram, there is an active investigation close to you for a missing child, the company said.
Instagram’s parent company, META, announced the new Instagram system, which comes seven years after Facebook launched a similar program.
Amber Alerts are now only available on Instagram in the U.S. but are expected to be available in 24 more countries in the coming weeks.
META said the feature was developed alongside the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and several other sister agencies worldwide.
Michelle DeLaune, President and CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said, “Instagram is a platform based on the power of photos, making it a perfect fit for the AMBER Alert program. We know that photos are a critical tool in the search for missing children and by expanding the reach to the Instagram audience, we’ll be able to share photos of missing children with so many more people.”
AMBER is a backronym that stands for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.” The name of the alert system is a reference to Amber Rene Hagerman, a girl who was abducted and later found murdered in 1996.
