Snapchat released a new privacy policy with its most recent update that states the app now has the rights to reproduce, modify and republish any of your content.
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On top of that, Snapchat’s new terms also give it the right to access, review, screen and delete any user’s content “any time and for any reason”, including if the service feels that the content is violating Snapchat’s terms and conditions.
Snapchat has previously been embroiled in privacy issues including leaks of thousands of user photos.
First launched in 2011, the social networking app became popular among young people in particular for its “disappearing” photo messages that can’t be viewed again once they have been opened.
“In most cases, once we detect that all recipients have viewed a message, we automatically delete it from our servers”, the old policy read. Still, many others were likely more focused on the slow-motion, fast-forward, and rewind filters included in the app update the new terms of service and privacy policy were tucked into.
But for all the sweeping rights to user content that Snapchat claims for itself, the terms say the user is exclusively responsible for whatever content is uploaded to Snapchat’s servers.
We will use this license for the limited objective of operating, developing, providing, promoting, and improving the Services; researching and developing new ones; and making content submitted through the Services available to our business partners for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication outside the Services.
Snapchat’s new TOS-the entire support section is worth a gander-also includes an arbitration clause that effectively bars users from mounting a class-action lawsuit against the company, unless their suit meets a number of explicitly stated conditions.
Moreover, Snapchat says it can use a user’s name, likeness and voice published through Live Story for public broadcast without giving compensation to the user.
Snapchat users expressed their outrage on Twitter.
When looked at the other social media networks, the modified terms are not very different from that of other social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, although Facebook only extends its rights to content publicly posted on its platform. SteFano Langone says, “I love Snapchat”.
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Just because your fun snap from Disneyland (or private photo sent to a significant other) is deleted in seconds does not mean the content is gone forever.
