Nearly 170 million people have gained access to Instagram’s new real-time location sharing feature, yet the platform’s much-hyped Instagram Map is strangely empty. In the quietest corners of the app, Meta and its users may be locked in an unspoken battle over privacy, trust, and the app’s core purpose.
Last Saturday, I did something I hadn’t done in nearly a decade something I’ve spent my career telling people to avoid. I gave Instagram access to my location.
Last week, millions of Americans were greeted with a pop-up inviting them to try the new Instagram Map, a feature that lets users share their exact, real-time location with mutual followers. In theory, you can show every mutual connection exactly where you are. But for many, Instagram’s history makes this level of intimacy feel unsettling.
Instagram promotes the map as “a new, lightweight way to connect.” In practice, a tour of the feature feels more defined by emptiness than connection. Users unintentionally broadcast their location, only to receive quick warnings from the few people who notice. This points to a deeper conflict: Who is Instagram really for now?
The concept itself isn’t new. Apple and Android devices have allowed location sharing for years. Snapchat’s Snap Map works almost identically, and in modern relationships, live location sharing is as common as it is controversial. In 2023, The New York Times dubbed the trend: “I Love You, Let’s Stalk Each Other.”
But Meta the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has a rocky track record when it comes to privacy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly apologized for mishandling user data, resulting in multi-billion dollar fines and lawsuits. Meta insists it is committed to protecting privacy, but regaining user trust remains a challenge.
Curious who would actually opt in to Meta’s latest social surveillance experiment, I adjusted my privacy controls and ventured into the map.
The first hurdle: Instagram doesn’t make the feature easy to find. Most people I asked didn’t even know where to look. Eventually, I found it tucked under a globe icon in the Messages tab. The app walked me through my options: share with all connections, “close friends,” or a handpicked group. A second pop-up asked if I was sure.
Once enabled, my face hovered over a pinpoint marking my exact New York apartment. For a moment, I felt a strange vulnerability. But the bigger surprise? I was almost completely alone. Out of hundreds of connections, only one other person across the country in Los Angeles was using it.
That person, an old coworker named Highland Hall, told me he was curious but unimpressed. “I thought it would be more interesting,” he said. When I told him he was the only dot on my map, he laughed and promptly turned the feature off after realizing it was showing his current location.
He’s not alone in his confusion. Over the weekend, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri spent hours on Threads (Meta’s answer to Twitter) responding to angry users. Many assumed Instagram was tracking them without permission because their public photos, videos, and Stories appeared on the map if they had tagged a location even without enabling live location sharing.
The result? Instagram’s newest social feature which was supposed to spark connection is, for now, a nearly empty digital landscape, where privacy concerns outweigh curiosity.
