Instagram Kicks Off Research Into How Different Communities Experience Its App

Instagram teamed up with YouGov on a survey aimed at helping it learn more about the ways people in different communities experience the application and changes it can make to further promote fairness. The platform explained in a blog post Thursday, “When we established the Equity team, we wanted to understand how people from historically marginalized communities experience Instagram. For the past two years, we prioritized extensive research to better understand the concerns raised by these communities, and we made significant improvements in our products as a result. However, if we don’t know people's race or ethnicity, we’re limited in our ability to assess how our products impact different communities.” Starting Thursday, a “random assortment of people” on Instagram in the U.S. may see a prompt asking them to share their race or ethnicity, and clicking on it will take them to the survey by YouGov, which will collect Individual, de-identified responses, encrypt them and split them into parts that will be sored across partner research institutions. Instagram will only have access to aggregated information, so it will not be able to connect individual people or their Instagram accounts to individual responses. Those partner research institutions—University of Central Florida, Northeastern University, Oasis Labs and Texas Southern University—will share an aggregated analysis of the data they receive with Instagram, and the platform stressed that neither Instagram nor the institutions will be able to connect responses to individuals or specific accounts. Instagram said one example of how the research may be used is to better understand the experiences different communities have on its app in terms of how it ranks content, and it stressed that participation in the survey is optional, and people’s experiences on the platform will not be limited in any way, nor will any of the information that is collected be used in its ads system. Meta director of responsible artificial intelligence Esteban Arcaute and vice president and deputy general counsel civil rights Roy L. Austin Jr. went into far more details about how the data will be safeguarded and used in a separate blog post. YouGov CEO Stephan Shakespeare said in Instagram’s main blog post, “Our mission is to provide the most honest and accurate data through transparent, fully-permissioned interactions with consumers around the world. We are excited to use this capability to help Meta better understand the experiences different communities have and build more equitable products.” UCF assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Zhishan Guo added, “The method used by Meta to analyze how people of different races and ethnicities interact with Instagram is very secure. User responses are encrypted and split apart, with distributed algorithmic computations and data storages at different institutions, so no one can link survey responses to Instagram accounts.” And Texas Southern University vp for research and innovation Michelle Penn-Marshall said, “Texas Southern University is proud to join the Meta civil rights team to be positioned at the intersection of technology and urban research. Our faculty and team members in TSU's Division of Research and Innovation, along with our other schools and colleges, will collaborate to ensure that this partnership is a success to benefit communities of color.”

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Instagram Kicks Off Research Into How Different Communities Experience Its App

YouGov is conducting the survey and partner research institutions are the University of Central Florida, Northeastern University, Oasis Labs, Texas Southern University

David Cohen

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David Cohen