Today: Mar 28, 2024

Spoof: All private Snapchats leaked to public website

Jene Thomas Special to the Southern News

            As of Wednesday, March 26, 2014, any snapchat photo sent to the opposite gender will be automatically sent to all their friends. You may not want to participate in this week’s Thong Thursday, popularly promoted by the Twitter account Collegefession, where college students admit to all sorts of provocative activities at their respective colleges.

            For those who are unfamiliar, snapchat is a mobile app that allows you to take a photo of yourself, add any caption and send it to anyone on your friend’s list. You specify how long you want the photo to be seen, anywhere between one to ten seconds, before it self-destructs and is no longer visible. Pretty cool, huh?

            Well not anymore since those photos no longer self-destruct.

            Now, the photos are being saved in the system and be sent out via social media. The funny thing, though, is that the only time the photo does not self-destruct is when it is sent to the opposite sex. So if a girl just wants to send a silly face to her girlfriends, she is free to do so without any fear of them being shared, unless the friends decided to share them on their own terms. On the other hand, if a girl wants to snap a picture to a guy, she can almost guarantee that everyone on his friend’s list will receive the same picture.

            One would think that this is just a bug in the system. After talking to snapchat CEO, Jack Johnson, this is not the case. When the subject was brought up, Johnson said ,“We no longer want to be responsible for the sexting that takes place on snapchat. After working with IT, any snapchat sent to the an opposite gender will be sent to everyone in that friend’s list.”

            So to be clear, the creators of snapchat have taken away the one factor that separated them from any other photo sharing media outlet.  Now a small percentage of photos on snapchat include risque or indecent material. It is just a place for young adults to make fools of themselves without judgment. That was the fun part. Send a stupid face for all of five seconds and then have it vanish into the abyss. What makes them any different from Instagram or Twitter now if photos are just going to be shared? Where is the privacy?

            The snapchat community is outraged.

            Snapchat users all across the country have expressed this disapproval of the new update. Performer Miley Cyler had this to say to Johnson and the creators of snapchat, “Who are you to send my snaps to everyone? If I want to show my [privates] to the world, it will be on my terms. We can’t stop and we won’t stop.”

            Cyler is no stranger to showing it all as she has been seen performing half naked in performances but there are others who are a bit more shy. There has been a 39% decline in snapchat over the last few days.

            If Johnson’s objective was to decrease the amount of users, well, he surely succeeded. But in terms of “sexting,” boys will be boys and girl will be girls. If girls, and guys, want to send those kind of photos to each other, they will. To be honest, I’d be surprised if the guys never showed their friends any of their photos before. On the iPhone, you can screenshot any image, even one that last 1-10 seconds. The only difference is now it is not a secret. You will be fully exposed. If you are okay with that, more power to you.

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