Adam Mosseri says ‘people are confused’ about how the Instagram map works – Engadget

Yesterday, Meta introduced a new map feature that’s almost identical to Snapchat’s Snap Map. The feature has quickly sparked a backlash, though, and not just because it’s yet another example of Instagram ripping off a Snapchat feature. While the map requires users to opt-in to share their location, many users were surprised and alarmed to see that their Instagram map was already populated with the locations of some accounts when it launched. That’s because the map automatically pulls in location info when someone has recently shared a Story or Reel with a location tagged. For example, I posted a Story that tagged San Francisco’s botanical gardens and it tagged me there on Instagram’s map even though I have my map location set to share with “no one.” This isn’t that different from how Instagram has worked in the past: location tags have always been visible to your followers, and the app has always had a map view that let people see public posts that have been tagged with specific places. My story post tagged me on Instagram’s map even though location is set to “no one” because I tagged a location (in this case San Francisco’s botanical gardens). (Instagram screenshot)
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