Snapchat Discover Takes a Hard Line on Misleading and Explicit Images – The New York Times (Jan 23, 2017)

There’s a certain irony in the fact that Snapchat is now trying to remove some of the lewder images from its Discover tab, when its early reputation (somewhat undeservedly) was that of an app that existed specifically so that users could send each other such images of themselves. But this is the sort of thing we see as apps and services that have been allowed to run relatively unfettered begin to ramp up efforts to court advertisers in preparation for an IPO, which is exactly what Snap is doing. Cleaning up the Discover tab should provide some more comfort to advertisers about the context in which their ads will be seen, though there’s nothing in these guidelines about racy images that are relevant to the Stories behind them, which I’d say many of the images I see in the Discover tab arguably are. The other side of this effort could be increased user controls around the content they see on the Discover tab, since some users would prefer not to see those images or the Stories behind them at all – balancing the needs of publishers, advertisers, and users is always the hardest balancing act for any ad-backed business.

via Snapchat Discover Takes a Hard Line on Misleading and Explicit Images – The New York Times

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