Class-action lawsuit filed against Snapchat; but is flagging sexually explicit content such a bad idea?

Popular image-based messaging app Snapchat is in a bit of a trouble. On Thursday, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Snapchat which accuses it of exposing minors to sexually offensive content and/or explicit material using the Discover feature.

According to the lawsuit, filed interestingly by an unnamed 14-year old and his mother, since there aren’t any sort of warning mechanism or rating system for the content shared on Snapchat’s Discover feature, it is allegedly in violation of the Federal Communications Decency Act. An attorney with the law firm Geragos & Geragos which has filed the complaint and is seeking $5 million in damages, told Buzzfeed that ‘they are seeking a simple, common sense and much needed solution to the problem’.

The basic premise of the lawsuit is that Snapchat should have a mechanism in place to warn young consumers – read majority of its pre-teen crowd – about probable sexually explicitly content on the Discover platform before the content is consumed. Snapchat is yet to receive the legal notice, but it claimed that the platform would continue to support editorial independence of its Discover partners.

Some of the offensive content that was highlighted in the lawsuit includes Snapstories on Discover platform with these headlines: “10 Things He Thinks When He Can’t Make You Orgasm”, “People Share Their Secret Rules of Sex”, “23 Pictures That Are Too Real If You’ve Ever Had Sex With A Penis” and so on. Anyone who has been using Snapchat over the last year will vouch for the fact that coming across such stories isn’t anything new on the platform.

While majority of the Snapchat user base – around 68 percent is in the 18-24 age bracket , a large section of Snapchat users are in the pre-teens. This graph shows that in the US, around 23 percent of Snapchat audience in the 13-17 age bracket . Outside the US, where the app is gaining popularity, it is safe to assume that the pre-teen crowd leads the user base, as the older generation plays catch up. Snapchat’s app has an age limit of 13 years and over, although on the app store it is categorised in Apps appropriate for users who are 12 years and over.

It is hardly surprising that this lawsuit has come up. That Snapchat has a majority pre-teen to teen user base is a fact. The Discover feature has media content from partners such as Buzzfeed, National Geographic, Vice, Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan and many others. While a lot of the Discover partners publish rich high-quality content whose layout is somewhat controlled by Snapchat guidelines, it is pertinent to note that some publishers do publish content with a lot of sexually provocative material. As the adage goes, sex sells. But at the same time, Snapchat has stated that it does not decide on the editorial content in itself.

This brings up that whole publisher / platform debate back on the table. Is Snapchat a platform or a publisher? Should it or should it not screen content? These are questions which are open to debate. So long as Snapchat isn’t publishing the content on the Discover tab, I think it just makes sense for the app itself to let the publishers decide what should or shouldn’t go up in their Discover Snapstories. That’s just fair.

I’m old enough to take a call as to what content to see or not see. But when you have a significant under-18 user-base from your 150 million odd active daily users, issues are bound to crop up. Concerned parents and in the case of our subcontinent, concerned governments will try and rein in the app, to ‘protect’ pre-teens from falling prey to explicit content. Sure, these very teenage users can find much more hardcore content at the click of a button on the internet.

I think it isn’t a terribly bad idea to give a sort of warning to under-18 users, in case the content is indeed sexually charged or violent in nature. It shouldn’t be that difficult to implement. Furthermore, publishers on the Discover platform can themselves add in flags for content that they deem shouldn’t be visible of the under 18 user’s Discover tab. Yes, it does add a layer of censorship from the publisher’s side and sure, a lot of teenagers will just go ahead and consume these snapstories regardless. But hey, at least Snapchat will have that probable loophole covered.

One must note that this is a class-action lawsuit, which lets other users across the US join in, that could lead to some significant payout for the app if more parents do decide to join in.