Isabel Schnaidt Blog #5

Snapchat

To learn more about the terms and conditions of social media platforms, I decided to turn to Snapchat. To me, this platform is one of the more mysterious ones due to the ephemeral character of its content. As Shah (2016) said, Snapchat’s immediate nature transforms the mundane into the unmissable. This made me wonder: what do we overlook on this instantaneous platform? To find out, I decided to take a look into their Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and Privacy Policy.

Snapchat's ghost logo is very representative of how quickly its content disappears

Terms of Service

In the beginning of their Terms of Service, Snapchat specifies that the Terms are a legally binding contract between the user and Snap Inc., so the user should read them carefully. This made me nervous as a user of the service who had never read the terms, but I read on.

The first thing that surprised me was in their section on who is permitted to use their services. I thought it was very odd that they specified that convicted sex offenders cannot use Snapchat, so I Googled it, and actually found that banning sex offenders from social media is a common practice that I just had no idea about. But, the Supreme Court actually argued in 2017 that sex offenders should be allowed to use social media, since it has become such a vital part of obtaining information and functioning in society. They even argued that a North Carolina law banning them from several social media platforms violated the First Amendment, demonstrating how integral social media has become to our lives.

After moving on, the next thing I noticed was that the service provides significantly fewer rights to the user than the user provides to the company. Snapchat users just get the ability to use the service within community guidelines. The Terms specify that this includes the use of a Bitmoji, but clarify that Snap Inc. reserves the right to use any Bitmoji Avatar for any purpose, including promotional reasons. They also mention that Snap Inc. can use any “Public Content” (stories viewable by anyone) for anything they wish, as well as put advertisements on any user content.

These are some examples of Bitmojis

As I read the terms, I realized that the way that Snapchat utilizes user data and advertises on our content to make a profit is an example of exploitation. Since the user generates profits through their usage of the platform, but Snap Inc. controls these profits without compensating the users, the user is exploited (Fuchs, 2017, p. 16). However, the way that this is phrased in the Terms of Service is much more positive, framed more like we are giving them permission to borrow what we own.

One more interesting thing that I noticed in the Terms of Service is that the user is not allowed to share their password. This interested me because I’ve heard a lot of stories of teenagers letting their friends use their Snapchat accounts to keep their streaks going when they may not be able to use their phone. This makes me wonder if these users know that they’re breaking rules and don’t care, or if they have no idea, since most people don’t read the Terms of Service. I also wonder what the point of this rule is, since Snapchat is a free service, unlike Netflix, which warns against password sharing to increase their profits.

Community Guidelines

Next, I took a quick look at Snapchat’s much shorter Community Guidelines, which are the rules for Snapchat users. The first thing I noticed was that they prohibit the promotion and distribution of pornographic content, but don’t specify what this means. Sending nudes on Snapchat has been frequently debated, but I’m not sure if the rules are prohibiting that, or if it’s more intended to target sex workers who sell or post nude pictures to more than one person. If it is a private message between two people, I don’t know how Snapchat would be able to learn that you are breaking the rules.

The other big thing I noticed from the Community Guidelines is that they prohibit hate speech and misinformation, but don’t contain any information about how this is monitored and enforced. Just because something is technically against the rules does not mean it still doesn’t happen. For example, harassment is against Facebook’s Terms of Service, but they still failed to take action when users harassed and threatened Clementine Ford for speaking up against revenge porn (Salter, 2017, p. 4). Additionally, misinformation is often rampant on social media, so I wonder how they fight against it.

Clementine Ford faced significant harassment for this Facebook post, but she was the one that the website took action against, not her harassers

Privacy Policy

Finally, I took a look at Snapchat’s Privacy Policy. Here, they provide three categories of information that they collect. The most notable was “information we get when you use our services.” A lot of this was unsurprising to me, though the amount they collect for “usage information” seemed strangely invasive, including things like how often you talk to people and how quickly you respond to them. Additionally, the amount of information collected by cookies seemed a bit excessive. When talking about the cookies, the Privacy Policy explains that they can be turned off, but recommend against it, even specifying that most other websites have cookies on as a default. The way they phrased that seemed almost defensive to me, like they were preemptively fighting against accusations of taking too much data.

The next section is about how they actually use our information, and linked to another page. I think that this section was intended to seem as pleasant as possible, even using cute little graphics with hearts in them to illustrate their points. They framed Snap Inc.’s usage of our data as beneficial to the user, including reasons like “to personalize your experience & give things context.” However, they did not say how they benefit from our data or how they profit off of us. I think that this was an attempt to build credibility and appear dedicated to helping the user, while glossing over the darker aspects.

This is one of the graphics the site uses when discussing how they use our information

Another interesting aspect of the Privacy Policy was Snap Inc.’s emphasis that they are not responsible for how their third party integrations use our data, because they have separate privacy policies. This stood out to me because some of these third-party tools are so well-integrated into Snapchat that I would not have been able to guess that they operate by different rules. For example, the games in Chat are apparently third party integrations, even though I definitely thought that they were part of Snap Inc. To me, this seems like a place where these third-party tools could collect more user data than the actual app itself, since they don’t play by the same rules.

Bitmoji Party is one of the games in Chat, and is apparently a third party integration

The last thing I thought was notable in the Privacy Policy is how long they keep information. Snap Inc. claims that Snaps and Chats are automatically deleted from their servers as soon as they are opened, though Story posts are kept for longer. This surprised me, because I thought that they were able to store Snaps and Chats for much longer than that, based on what I heard from word of mouth. This was the most positive surprise that I encountered in Snapchat’s Privacy Policy.

Overall Findings

In the beginning of Snapchat’s Privacy Policy, they state that it is “blissfully free of the legalese that often clouds these documents.” While this may have been true to some extent, it was still long and difficult enough that I imagine that most Snapchat users don’t bother reading it.

Additionally, this more informal style was less “neutral” that one might expect. Instead of just stating facts, it often came across as an attempt to convince the reader of the company’s values and ethics, with frequent reassurances despite providing the users with very little rights. There was also less “unpleasant” information that I would expect, like no description of how Snap Inc. makes its profits. The order of information also seemed to have strategic purpose, since information about how to control our data was located at the end of the Privacy Policy. I think that these attempts at subtle manipulation would normally go unnoticed unless you’re looking for it, like I was.

I don’t read the Terms & Conditions on most sites. It takes forever, and I feel like I don’t understand anything that I read. However, I think I really should. Even though I won’t stop using Snapchat, this exercise has shown me how easy it would be for social media platforms to sneak something in to the Terms & Conditions that could hurt me later.

As a free service, Snapchat users are the commodity being sold.

References

Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.

Salter, M. (2017). Crime, justice, and social media. London, England: Routledge.

Shah, S. (2016, May 14). The history of social networking. Digital Trends. Retrieved from https://www.digitaltrends.com/