Instagram will start asking for your demographic information such as your race and ethnicity.
The Meta-owned company said on Thursday that it will start inquiring about the race and ethnicity of some US users in order "to better understand how people from different communities are affected by the app," as per CNET.
Instagram's move aims to give them a fuller understanding of the various kinds of experiences people have on the app, as per Engadget.
Instagram Wants to Ensure that it Offers a Great Experience to All Communities
According to a blog post of Instagram, the survey will be optional. Furthermore, Adam Mosseri said that all responses will be encrypted.
In the blog post, Instagram reasoned out that: "If we don't know people's race or ethnicity, we're limited in our ability to assess how our products impact different communities."
Mosseri, in a video posted on Twitter, also said that it is in the company's interest to make sure Instagram offers a great experience to all communities.
He added that they will make sure that Instagram is fair and equitable as an experience to people from various communities.
In June 2020, Mosseri vowed to check how Instagram affects communities differently, particularly in terms of harassment, verification, content distribution and algorithmic bias.
Moreover, Instagram said that it will be improving its efforts to address the challenges that minorities face on the platforms. It said that it would look at potential racial bias in its algorithm and products.
This move came after Facebook was pressured by the community to deal with hateful content on its site when a white police officer killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man.
Later on, the Equity team was created by the company. It is focused on "ensuring fairness and equitable product development," as per CNET.
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How the Survey Will Work
Instagram is not the one hosting the survey itself. YouGov, a research and polling company, will be the one to collect the data.
The survey will work by asking a random group of US users regarding their race and ethnicity.
There will be a prompt near the top of your feed. This will bring you to a YouGov survey.
According to Instagram, participation in the survey is optional. Also, your responses in the survey won't have an effect in your experiences in the app.
Once the you have completed the survey, the data will be sent to Instagram's research partners. Instagram's partners will then "share an aggregated analysis of the data" with the company.
YouGov will work on encrypting the de-identified responses. It will then split the information among several research institutions.
What Instagram will receive are only aggregated data. Instagram and its research partners, Texas Southern University, University of Central Florida, Northeastern University and Oasis Labs, will not be able to draw relationship between the responses and the individual users.
According to Zhishan Guo, an assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at UCF, the responses cannot be linked to Instagram account as they are encrypted and split apart.
After 30 days, YouGov will delete the responses. Moreover, the research partners are also opted to delete the data on request.
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