The article talks about the greater increase in security and guidelines being tightened on the photo/video sharing based social media app called Snapchat. The company aims to help control the illicit content being posted by editorial partners in hopes of limiting fake and contentless news. Furthermore they hope to decrease the amount of clickbait articles being made by the likes of Daily Mail which will also help to increase the quality of content being posted through their application. Finally, the company hopes to change the way illicit content is posted to different age groups essentially "age-gating" the content being posted.
- Snapchat is tightening up its guidelines for publishers on its Discover service
- The changes are intended to “empower our editorial partners to do their part to keep Snapchat an informative, factual and safe environment for everyone”
- The app bars children from under 13 from making accounts, but allows 13- to 17-year-olds on the service
- The Daily Mail, for instance, has attracted user complaints for frequently posting semi-nude images as its “cover” on the service.
- In July 2016, Snapchat faced a lawsuit over sexualised Discover stories. It was eventually settled out of court.
- Snap also plans to give publishers a tool in February that will allow them to age-gate content, presenting different stories to users over and under 18
I personally think it is interesting and good that the company is focusing on this subject. The application is used by pretty much all young people in this era, and essentially it can be argued that the majority of the users of Snapchat are young people. It is crucial for the company to control and limit the way these news institutions are communicating with the young audiences as Snapchat is the gateway for many institutions to try and reach out to the younger demographics. However, it can be argued that this idea of "age-gating" can be severely misused as it invokes a sense of ageism, as it should not be abused.
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