For years, law enforcement officials and child safety experts have warned about child predators on Snapchat and dubbed friend-finding apps as “Tinder for teens.” Often, the apps are used for dating purposes or sexting, not “ friend-finding,” and can be filled with porn bots. In addition to the anonymous messaging ban, Snap will also now limit friend-finding apps to adult users ages 18 and up.įriend-finding apps are designed to connect users with strangers on Snapchat, can encourage people to share their personal information, and are a common avenue for child predators to reach younger, vulnerable Snapchat users. Considering this history, it was arguably irresponsible to permit this sort of activity on Snapchat in the first place, given its core demographic of teens and young adults. From the early MySpace days to the teen suicides linked to Ask.fm to the unfortunately well-funded anonymous apps like Secret and Yik Yak ( neither of which lasted), anonymity in the hands of young people has been tested and consistently failed. But over the years, time and again, it’s been proven that such apps cannot be used responsibly –but can result in devastating consequences. The draw of anonymous social apps is unquestionable, especially for young people. Sendit gains 3.5M downloads after Snapchat suspends top anonymous apps YOLO and LMK In a matter of months following the bans, Sendit had gained millions more downloads from teens who still wanted a way to post anonymous Q&As. One app that greatly benefited from the earlier ban on anonymous messaging apps YOLO and LMK, Sendit, is among those that will need to make changes in order to continue to work with Snapchat. The company also noted that developers who remove anonymous messaging from their apps can have their apps re-reviewed and remain a Snap Kit partner.
Only around 2% of developers will be impacted by the prohibition on anonymous messaging apps, while another 3% will be impacted by the new requirement to age-gate their apps.
APPTOPIA SENDIT KIT SNAPCHAT SNAP YOLO UPDATE
Snap says the policy update will impact a small subset of their community of over 1,500 developers. These changes are limited to third-party apps integrated with Snapchat and are not intended to address other child safety issues on Snap’s platform. Existing developers are being given 30 days to come into compliance with the new policies. Today, the company announced the results of its policy review and the changes it’s making.Įffective immediately for new developers building on its Snap Kit platform, Snap is banning anonymous messaging apps and will require anyone building friend-finding apps to limit those apps to users 18 and up. In response to the former, Snap banned the anonymous messaging apps that had facilitated online bullying and vowed to revamp its policies to address what sort of Snapchat-connected experiences could be built using its developer tools. Another lawsuit, related to another suicide, followed last month. After a bullied teen died by suicide, a grieving mother last year sued the platform where the abuse had taken place - Snapchat - for not doing enough to protect its younger users.
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