Snapchat

Snapchat Disables Controversial ‘Solar System’ Function in Response to Negative Publicity

Evan Spiegel Snapdsc04002
Less than a week after The Wall St. Journal reported on how a Snapchat feature dubbed “solar system” was adding to teens’ anxiety, the company has responded by adjusting how the feature works. The ranking system for paid subscribers today shows you how close you are to your Snapchat friends by displaying your position in their solar system. However, instead of removing the feature, as it did with the dangerous and controversial speed filter, which it was sued over for “negligent design,” Snap is simply turning the Solar System feature off by default. A more relevant stat would be how many Snapchat+ users have used Solar System or viewed the feature. The Solar System feature was only one of Snapchat’s friend ranking systems.

Undercover Project: Facebook Monitored Snapchat Traffic Without Users’ Knowledge, According to Confidential Documents

Mark Zuckerberg Meta Facebook Snapchat Project Ghostbusters
In 2016, Facebook launched a secret project designed to intercept and decrypt the network traffic between people using Snapchat’s app and its servers. The goal was to understand users’ behavior and help Facebook compete with Snapchat, according to newly unsealed court documents. The newly released documents reveal how Meta tried to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors, including Snapchat and later Amazon and YouTube, by analyzing the network traffic of how its users were interacting with Meta’s competitors. Given that Snapchat encrypted the traffic between the app and its servers, this network analysis technique was not going to be effective. Later, according to the court documents, Facebook expanded the program to Amazon and YouTube.

“New Feature on Snapchat: Parental Controls for ‘My AI’ Chatbot for Teens”

Snapchat Parental Controls
Snapchat is introducing new parental controls that will allow parents to restrict their teens from interacting with the app’s AI chatbot. The changes will also allow parents to view their teens’ privacy settings, and get easier access to Family Center, which is the app’s dedicated place for parental controls. Parents can now restrict My AI, Snapchat’s AI-powered chatbot, from responding to chats from their teen. As for parents who may be unaware about the app’s parental controls, Snapchat is making Family Center easier to find. Parents can now find Family Center right from their profile, or by heading to their settings.

Gen-AI Background Editing Tool Now Available on Instagram

Alexander Shatov 71qk8odibko Unsplash
Instagram introduced its generative AI-powered background editing tool to U.S.-based users Wednesday. Meta’s lead for generative AI Ahmad Al-Dahle posted on Threads saying that the tool will let users change the background to their images through prompts for Stories. Earlier this week, Snapchat released a new tool for its paying users that let them create and send AI-generated images. Earlier this year, the social network rolled out the ability for Snapchat+ users to populate prompt-based backgrounds. At the same time, the company also launched a standalone AI-image generator called Imagine with Meta, powered by its own model called Emu.

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