Snapchat New Features: In-App Warnings, Stronger Friending Protections And More; Details Here
Snapchat maker Snap Inc said that creating a safe and positive experience for Snapchatters is a top priority for the company.
Popular social media app Snapchat has announced new features to protect 13 to 17-year-olds from potential online risks.
In a statement, Snapchat maker Snap Inc said that creating a safe and positive experience for Snapchatters is a top priority, which is why the company is always trying to do more to help keep the community safe.
"As a messaging platform for real friends, our goal is to help Snapchatters communicate with people that matter to them and to ensure that the content they view on our app is informative, fun and age-appropriate, the statement said.
According to the company, these features, which will begin to roll out in the coming weeks, are designed to:
1) Protect teens from being contacted by people they may not know in real life;
2) provide a more age-appropriate viewing experience on our content platform, and
3) enable us to more effectively remove accounts that may be trying to market and promote age-appropriate content through a new strike system and new detection technologies.
Snapchat New Features: All You Need To Know
In-App Warnings: This new feature will send a pop-up warning to a teen if someone tries to add them as a friend when they don't share mutual contacts or the person isn't in their contacts. This message will urge the teen to carefully consider if they want to be in contact with this person and not to connect with them if it isn't someone they trust.
Stronger Friending Protections: Snapchat already require 13-17-year-olds to have several mutual friends in common with another user before they can show up in Search results or as a friend suggestion.
"We are raising this bar to require a greater number of friends in common based on the number of friends a Snapchatter has - with the goal of further reducing the ability for teens to connect with people they may not already be friends with," Snap Inc said.
Across Snapchat, we prohibit illegal and harmful content such as sexual exploitation, pornography, violence, self-harm, misinformation and much more, the company said.
New Strike System for Accounts Promoting Age-Inappropriate Content
To help remove accounts that market and promote age-inappropriate content, Snapchat has launched a new Strike System.
Under this system, Snapchat immediately removes inappropriate content that it proactively detects or that gets reported. If Snapchat sees that an account is repeatedly trying to circumvent their rules, they will ban it.
Know more about these new features by clicking here.
"We are committed to making sure Snapchat is a place where you can be creative and stay safe and above all, the safety and well-being of our community in India, which includes over 200 million users, is our top priority," PTI quoted Snap Inc. Head Public Policy-South Asia Uthara Ganesh as saying.
According to Statista, India has the highest number of Snapchat users, and a large number of its users are Gen Z or millennials who were born after 1996.
