The program will start on June 1, and, according to the official appeal, will open in 25 countries in the coming weeks.
Since 2015, AMBER Alerts on Facebook has been successfully helping the authorities find and quickly find missing children. From now on, the system will work on Instagram.
The feature was developed in partnership with organizations such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the National Crime Agency in the UK, the Attorney General’s Office in Mexico, the Australian Federal Police and more.
“We know that the chances of finding a missing child increase as more people search, especially in the first few hours. With this update, if law enforcement activates AMBER alerts and you’re in a specific search area, alerts will now appear in your feed Instagram “, – it is said in the message.
It also became known that the notification would contain important information about the missing child: a photo, a description, the location of the abduction and any other available information that could be provided.
“People can also share notifications with friends to further disseminate information.
These alerts are rare and specific to the search area. If you receive one, it means that there is an active search for a missing child nearby. To know who to show these alerts to, we use a variety of signals, including the city you specify in your profile, your IP address, and location services (if enabled), “the company said in a statement.
“We know that photos are an important tool in the search for missing children, and by expanding our Instagram reach, we will be able to share photos of missing children with a large number of people,” said Michel DeLon, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited children.
AMBER’s Instagram alerts will be fully available over the next few weeks in 25 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands Zealand, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.