Attorney General Ford Calls on Instagram to Strengthen Location Privacy Protections

Carson City, NV — Today, Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford announced he is urging Instagram to make immediate changes to its newly implemented location-sharing feature. AG Ford has joined a bipartisan coalition of 37 attorneys general in sending a letter to Instagram Head Adam Mosseri outlining serious public safety and data privacy concerns about the feature, which allows users’ precise locations to be displayed on a map.

“Social media companies have a responsibility to their users to ensure they remain safe while using these platforms,” said AG Ford. "Tools such as this location-sharing feature have the capability to harm social media users, especially our children and other vulnerable populations. I urge Meta and Instagram to release this feature responsibly and to inform their userbase of the protections they can access.”

In the letter, the coalition of attorneys general, led by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, emphasized the heightened dangers for vulnerable users, including children and survivors of domestic violence, noting that such tools can be exploited by predators, stalkers and other malicious actors.

The letter calls on Instagram to ensure that minors cannot enable location-sharing features; send a clear alert to all adult users explaining the feature, outlining its risks and providing full disclosure of how Instagram will use their location data; and provide a simple-access control to disable location sharing at any time for adults who choose to opt in. The attorneys general stressed that Meta and Instagram must prioritize user safety over product novelty, and that implementing these measures will protect user privacy while allowing informed adults to choose whether to share their location.

AG Ford has made protecting Nevada’s children from the dangers of social media one of his main goals while in office. In early 2024, the Office of the Attorney General filed civil litigation against five popular social media platforms — TikTok, Snapchat and three Meta-owned platforms, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger — alleging the algorithms used by the platforms have been designed deliberately to addict young minds and prey on teenagers’ well-understood vulnerabilities.

In June 2025, the Office of the Attorney General filed a civil action against social media platform YouTube, as well as its corporate parents Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., alleging that through deliberate product design choices and public misrepresentations, YouTube has created a highly addictive and harmful platform that directly targets Nevada’s youth.

In signing onto the letter, AG Ford joins the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

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