Snapchat Revised Its Attitude to Spicy Images and Fake News

The company decided to change the procedure for publishers on Snapchat Discover service. Now posting of semi-nude images without editorial value are banned, and procedure to prevent the spread of fake news is clarified.

Snapchat faced some difficulties in toeing the line between keeping age appropriate for younger (13-17-year-old) users and allowing publications on Discover editorial freedom, because a basic way to appeal to the millennial user base is using risqué images. For example, users complained about the Daily Mail frequently posting semi-nude images as its “cover” on Snapchat.

Thanks to the prominence of Discover features in Snapchat’s app, even users who use it only to talk with friends and family can see the cover story. Last summer, the company faced a lawsuit over sexualized Discover stories and eventually settled out of court.

According to new rules, such stories will require news justification or other editorial value before being posted to Discover. Snapchat’s parent company, Snap, is also going to provide publishers a tool to age-gate content, showing different stories to different user categories. Along with the new procedure for publishing questionable images, Snapchat Discover will also start addressing the urgent issue for most social networks: unchecked and fake news publications. Publishers will now have to start fact-checking the stories, no matter whether they are published directly in the app or just linked to from it.

The company explains that it grants publishers editorial independence, but follows up with them if their readers complain about their sourcing, accuracy or other factors.

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SaM

From Extratorrent