Ryan Chriscoe BLOG 5

RYAN CHRISCOE 

BLOG 5 

Hey blog fans its Ryan here back with another interesting blog that depicts and breaks apart social media and communication. Today we are going to be examining something that I can guarantee all of us have seen and even accepted to it but I can almost guarantee that about 99.99% of you have never even read it and probably ignore it and hit accept, well haven’t you ever been curious to exactly what your accepting and what is your responsibility to it as a consumer of a social media platform. For this I really wanted to pick a platform that I constantly find myself going to and using and really being an active user on and that is snapchat. 

I know you have all seen that little yellow icon with the white ghost on it.

Well it is time to break that apart and really understand their Terms of Service. The reason I choose this is one because like I said I am a very active user of their platform but it is also a very controversial app and I believe that it would have a very in-depth terms of service due to the fact that forever people have been using this app in court cases and trying to figure out all of the legal precedent for an app that makes your picture disappear after It was sent to another user and they click through it. 

So by navigating the snap.com webpage you are able to get to the terms of service page 

and the top looks like this. This introduces us to all of the categories and breaks everything down for us as readers of the page but also allows us to easily navigate it all. With all the 22 categories they are as follows;

1.     Who can use the services

·      This simply states that you must be over the age of 13 to use this service. And that you are agreeing to a contract between yourself and snapchat 

2.     Rights we grant you 

·      This gives us an overview that snapchat is giving us a license to access their app and that it cant be taken away 

3.     Rights you grant us

·      This look at how you grant them the right with your stories and how they can be used in public stories and that they have the right to do so and it also briefly discuss your bitmoji

4.     The content of others 

·      This discusses that snapchat has the right to review and remove any content but they are not responsible for the content that others share

5.     Privacy 

·      This tells us to read the privacy policy and that we have consented to them collecting, sharing, and using our data 

6.     Respecting others’ rights 

·      This discusses that in using their services you cannot harm other people or users with in their platforms and that 

7.     Respecting copyright 

·      This discusses that by being a member of snapchat you agree to not violate copyright laws of others. 

8.     Safety

·      This discusses to the users that they shall and will not promote illegal activity across their platform

9.     Your account 

·      This alerts us to the fact that we are respsonible for our on acct and that as users we are also responsible to seeing that the acct stays safe.

10.  Memories 

·      This describes what memories is as a cloud based storage service 

11.  Data Charges and Mobile Phones 

·      This states that you the user are responsible for any data charges you might occur in the app

12.  Third-Party Services 

·      This states that if you use a third party service that the service is responsible and not snapchat.

13.  Modifying the Services and Termination 

·      This gives snapchat the right to change the services at any time and to terminate them at any time 

14.  Indemnity 

·      This is a bunch of legal terms that I have no idea what they mean J

15.  Disclaimers 

·      They basically say they try their best to make sure everything is working and good but that they can make no promises to succeed at everything

16.  Limitation of Liability 

·      Basically talks about they are not liable for things they didn’t do

17.  Arbitration, Class-Action Waiver, and Jury Waiver

·      Speaks that if you sue snapchat and it cant be settled in small claims court then it goes to arbitration

18.  Exclusive Venue 

·      More legal terms that make no sense to the average human lol 

19.  Choice of Law 

·      This just states that the laws of California govern this document 

20.  Severability 

·      This states that if any of the terms are not able to be enforced then they will be removed from the document

21.  Additional Terms for Specific Services 

·      This just states that you agree to all future terms of snapchat by agreeing to old terms 

22.  Final Terms     

·      THE END 

Through going through all of the twenty-two pieces to this document its really

interesting to me to see that so much of this document to the average human is almost really impossible for them to understand, and it just makes it feel like there is a lot being hidden in this document and that anyone who is trying to really know what they are agreeing to might actually really struggle to be able to adapt and understand without having some legal background. But one thing that I really found interesting to not be included in this is whether or not someone is viewing our images as we are sending them. I am going to be very honest right now we all know that people in my generation who grew up with snapchat use this app to send inappropriate pictures to others and significant others, so with that in mind it draws me to want to know if anyone is seeing those pictures as we send them to other people. But also something that strikes me is that snapchat has been in the news a lot recently about the issue of underage children sending nude pictures and they have had a lot of backlash regarding that and I find it really interesting that nothing about that is mentioned in the terms of service. 

            But after reading this and really dissecting it I can decide if I will be more keen to read the terms of services or to just continue to click accept like we have always done when those pesky boxes pop up when you are signing up for a new social media platform that you have never used before. But until then I am going to keep snapping.