There are a lot of troll accounts, fake profiles, and all kinds of spams and scams on social media platforms. One way of ensuring that their users are actual people is to have different kinds of verification methods. Instagram is now adding video selfies as a method to ensure that new users are not just bots or spam accounts created for various nefarious reasons. Those signing up for the photo and video sharing platform will now have to upload these videos as proof that they are real people.
XDA Developers says that Instagram has already started requiring video selfies as a way to verify user identity. This will only be applicable for those new users signing up and existing users will not be asked to send one, at least for now. When you sign up, you’ll receive a notification asking you to send a short video where you need to turn your head in different directions. Submitting the video will help them “confirm that you’re a real person and confirm your identity.”
Of course a major concern here is privacy. Meta (formerly Facebook), which owns Instagram of course, assures users that the video selfies will not become visible on the platform at any time and they will delete it after 30 days. They will not be using biometric data as well and will not use face recognition technology with these selfies. All it will do is help the AI algorithms in confirming that you are who you say you are and that you’re an actual person.
Instagram actually introduced video selfie verification late last year but rolled it back immediately due to some technical issues that they faced. Since then, they have been working on this and it looks like they have fixed what was wrong in the first place as they’re now rolling it out to more users already. Some dating apps like Tinder and Bumble have been using photos taken from different angles to verify identification but video selfies seem to be more robust.
So if you’re soon planning to sign up for Instagram or you’re creating a different account, expect that you’ll have to take a simple video selfie. We’ll find out later on if existing users will have to verify their identity as well through this method.
