Instagram wants you to look like a good person, but Facebook just wants your credit card

Shopping on Instagram has been getting bigger and bigger and Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that enabling more commerce on Instagram is a priority for the 2019. But, the company seems to be starting with a bit of a Trojan horse in order to remove a bit of friction, and the Trojan horse is a very interesting one: donating to charities through Instagram Story stickers.

To be fair, a Donation sticker to make it easy to give money to non-profits and charities is a good thing, and Facebook's version of the donation sticker has already raised more than $1 billion. Adding that option to Instagram should help a lot of good organizations in the long run. But, it's important to remember the end goal of Instagram and its parent company Facebook: to make money. So, getting people to add their credit cards to donate to a charity is also a good way to make sure that card is on file if Instagram serves up a product that they might want to buy.

Code to allow the creation of a Donation sticker in Instagram was found in the app and a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that those plans are in the works and could launch in the coming months. But, it's probably a good idea for users to remember the lengths Facebook has gone to collect user data in the past and the ways it has failed on user privacy before deciding to give them your credit card number.

source: TechCrunch