Snapchat Sued for Serving Sexually Explicit Content to Minors

[MacRumors]

Snapchat is facing a lawsuit over claims that the app is guilty of routinely serving sexually explicit content to minors without warning (via The Verge).

The lawsuit was filed this week by a 14-year-old boy and his mother in a district court in California. The plaintiffs argue that offensive content was shown in Snapchat's Discover page, where non-subscribed publications are delivered to user feeds.

The lawsuit says that by routinely including sexually explicit content without providing adequate warnings, the app's Discover feature is in violation of the Communications Decency Act:

Millions of parents in the United States today are unaware that Snapchat is curating and publishing this profoundly sexual and offensive content to their children. By engaging in such conduct directed at minors, and making it simple and easy for users to 'snap' each other's content from Snapchat Discover, Snapchat is reinforcing the use of its service to facilitate problematic communications, such as 'sexting,' between minors. Snapchat has placed profit from monetizing Snapchat Discover over the safety of children.

The lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, seeks civil penalties and a requirement that Snapchat includes an in-app warning about sexual content.

Publishers regularly create specialized content for the platform and Snapchat receives advertising revenue from these partners in return. Users can subscribe to specific publisher channels, but the Discover page brings exposure to publishers they have not subscribed to.

Snapchat claims its partners have editorial independence, but according to The Verge (also a content provider for Snapchat) the company reportedly exercises a heavy hand in guiding the look and feel of published stories.

Snapchat is rated in the App Store as appropriate for children ages 12 and over, noting that it may contain infrequent or mild sexual content, nudity, suggestive themes, profanity, and references to drugs and alcohol. That contrasts with Snapchat's terms of service, which restrict use to children 13 and older.

You can read the lawsuit here.

Article Link: Snapchat Sued for Serving Sexually Explicit Content to Minors

 

[John Mcgregor]

Snapshit is ****.

 

[RightMACatU]

Dang! Where were these apps when I was 14?

 

[DakotaGuy]

Snapshit is ****.

Maybe that's true, but it has caught on big time with the younger generations and I only see it getting bigger. It works the way the younger generations want to communicate.

 

[MH01]

Snapshit is ****.

End the thread mods. /s
[doublepost=1467978877][/doublepost]Snapchat have a responsibility to make sure appropriate content is served .

I don't use it, though if this in anyway has validity, they need to review how content is surfaced

 

[John Mcgregor]

Maybe that's true, but it has caught on big time with the younger generations and I only see it getting bigger. It works the way the younger generations want to communicate.

If some higher life form judged about us from this younger generation i'd say we have no hope. A younger generation i know sends a properly formulated message or email with no ******** emoji and grammar errors like it's supposed to be.

 

[nStyle]

If some higher life form judged about us from this younger generation i'd say we have no hope. A younger generation i know sends a properly formulated message or email with no ******** emoji and grammar errors like it's supposed to be.

...said every generation before you.

 

[John Mcgregor]

...said every generation before you.

To use proper grammar? Certainly.

 

[keysofanxiety]

To use proper grammar? Certainly.

A lot of people have always had bad grammar. There are now just more mediums for it to become apparent. Plus people from previous generations who go onto have children don't encourage them to articulate themselves appropriately -- and so the cycle goes on.

So I'm blaming the older generation

 

[alexgowers]

Snapchat is not a youth thing it's a 20s-40s thing. And i'm sorry but sex and bodies are not something that should be hidden from children by companies, it should be adults/parents/guardians who "protect the child" from what they consider offensive. You can't hold companies 100% to blame, any compensation they give to the child should be equal to what the parent is required to pay in compensation. It should cut both ways.

 

[LukasValine]

If some higher life form judged about us from this younger generation i'd say we have no hope. A younger generation i know sends a properly formulated message or email with no ******** emoji and grammar errors like it's supposed to be.

Why does everyone care so much about grammar? English is a stupid, hideous language. The sooner we abandon formal grammar rules the better.

 

[Kaibelf]

I guess she was too busy to use parental controls and have conversations with her kid, and wants to blame the world for not parenting in her stead.

 

[LordQ]

Well, the 'alternate' primordial use of Snapchat is sexting and nudes, if parents don't know that by now, they are very lost.

 

[gixxerfool]

Snapchat is not a youth thing it's a 20s-40s thing. And i'm sorry but sex and bodies are not something that should be hidden from children by companies, it should be adults/parents/guardians who "protect the child" from what they consider offensive. You can't hold companies 100% to blame, any compensation they give to the child should be equal to what the parent is required to pay in compensation. It should cut both ways.

I don't use SC, but I agree...to a point. If the apps settings are faulty and its not filtering it properly, then it is the apps fault. On the other hand, did the parents take the time to see if the settings allowed for a screen to keep the content off of discovery, then it's the parents all the way. My daughter has access to one app with a social function and we monitor what goes in and out and all the privacy settings are turned on. It's not hard to set these things anymore. Most parents are oblivious to what their kids do.

 

[adamjackson]

Is this the first time the've been sued for this? It can't be. I've been hearing about teens sexting using Snap chat for years which by default means that snapchat, a corporation hosts and distributes child pornography which means they should have been investigated a long time ago.

why did it take so long?

 

[Corrode]

Comedy Central is my favorite Snapchat channel and I've always wondered how they're able to show some of that content to everyone. It's highly explicit. (Also hilarious)

 

[AlliFlowers]

My high school students LIVE on Snapchat. They snap as they walk down the halls between classes, when they think the teacher isn't looking, when they doll their hair.... I recently started using it, mostly because the animated filters are so good. But I never look at their curated content. That's like reading the paid ads on Facebook.

As to the 14 year old being exposed to sex, why is his mother not curating his content?!

 

[John Mcgregor]

Why does everyone care so much about grammar? English is a stupid, hideous language. The sooner we abandon formal grammar rules the better.

10 points for sarcasm.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Why does everyone care so much about grammar? English is a stupid, hideous language. The sooner we abandon formal grammar rules the better.

I agree the language is stupid and hideous, but abandoning formal grammar rules would make things worse, not better.

English has way too many ambiguous parts. English has way too many words with way too many meanings. The solution isn't throwing out formal grammar, but refining it (or throwing it out entirely and coming up with a new one entirely). But that's never going to happen. So suck it up and accept the crappy grammar, and the fact that many people don't even know the existing rules.

---

Can we see what it is that the mother is objecting to? In my limited experience with snapchat, I've never seen anything that I would describe as porn (in the sexual sense, not in the "food porn" or any other sense.) I've never seen anything that seems any worse than what I see in TV ads.

 

[5105973]

Well, the 'alternate' primordial use of Snapchat is sexting and nudes, if parents don't know that by now, they are very lost.

Well as a parent I did not know that. But I assume everything these days is used for sexting and nudes. It saves time and energy having to keep up with all the crap coming at kids from everywhere.

It's a shame there aren't many safe harbors for kids anymore. But it is what it is. And so my husband and I diligently sift through the kids' communications. The tricky part is dealing with the fact we can't control what a kid sees and hears at a friend's house if the friend's parents aren't as diligent and tech savvy. So we have to do a lot of talking about our expectations and what we deem appropriate or inappropriate and downright stupid and degrading and self destructive online activity and how we expect our child to react to peer pressure. And we have to do so in a way that doesn't scare a kid off from confiding in us. My daughter sees me as a "cool mom" so I'm let in on a lot. For now. My position is always as precarious as that of a cop working with a mob snitch and requires as much finesse.

Despite all that effort, we'd have to be incredibly naive and stupid to think some stuff isn't getting past us once in awhile. We were kids once, too...

 

[thisisnotmyname]

This mother is so concerned about her son being exposed to sex that she allows him to have snapchat. Case dismissed.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Well as a parent I did not know that. But I assume everything these days is used for sexting and nudes. It saves time and energy having to keep up with all the crap coming at kids from everywhere.

It's a shame there aren't many safe harbors for kids anymore. But it is what it is. And so my husband and I diligently sift through the kids' communications. The tricky part is dealing with the fact we can't control what a kid sees and hears at a friend's house if the friend's parents aren't as diligent and tech savvy. So we have to do a lot of talking about our expectations and what we deem appropriate or inappropriate and downright stupid and degrading and self destructive online activity and how we expect our child to react to peer pressure. And we have to do so in a way that doesn't scare a kid off from confiding in us. My daughter sees me as a "cool mom" so I'm let in on a lot. For now. My position is always as precarious as that of a cop working with a mob snitch and requires as much finesse.

Despite all that effort, we'd have to be incredibly naive and stupid to think some stuff isn't getting past us once in awhile. We were kids once, too...

We were kids once, but (depending on how old you are) being exposed to this sort of thing was hard work (I'm pre internet and smart phones btw.)

So we were allowed to be kids. Now you get a very small window of opportunity to not have this stuff rammed down your throat (so to speak).

I'm not sure it's helping a generation to grow up where porn and sexting are on tap whenever you want it. With their views on women especially.

 

[ConnYoungy]

GOOD. I'm sick of all that discover ******** clogging the stories page

 

[macduke]

I was annoyed the other day when I got an email from Twitter saying I had a new follower. The email included their photo, which was fully nude. I was especially annoyed because I was at work when this email came in. I don't prefer to see that stuff anyway, as I try to keep a pure mind towards my wife, which is my preference.

 

[Exile714]

We were kids once, but (depending on how old you are) being exposed to this sort of thing was hard work (I'm pre internet and smart phones btw.)

So we were allowed to be kids. Now you get a very small window of opportunity to not have this stuff rammed down your throat (so to speak).

I'm not sure it's helping a generation to grow up where porn and sexting are on tap whenever you want it. With their views on women especially.

I would say Millenials had an easier time gaining access to pornographic materials than the current generation of kids. These days, porn filters and app-download restrictions are more available to parents and much harder to defeat. Plus, schools and parents are generally more proactive in keeping kids within a bubble of safety at all times, which makes it harder to find time to access those materials. In the 90's and early 2000's, that wasn't the case and those kids were exposed to much, much more.

So let's look at your argument about how kids who are exposed to pornographic material affects kids' treatment of women. Millenials are much more likely to show anger towards social injustice (especially toward perpetrators of sexual violence) as well as economic inequality for women in the workplace. If access to pornography truly had such a negative effect of n generations of kids, surely Millenials would be the proof.

Now before anyone goes and says "well, such and such Millenial commited this or that sexual assault" I'm going to point out two things: 1) you can't judge a generation based on the actions of an extreme minority, and every generation has sexual predators. 2) the reason we hear so much about those cases is because the stories resonate with certain audiences, and we have Millenials on social media to thank/blame for the increased focus on gender issues.