Snapchat Sued for NSFW Discover Content on Kids' Phones
Explicit content has led to calls for new in-app age warnings.
Snapchat has been hit with a class-action lawsuit over the content on its in-app Discover pages. The section features articles from chosen partners, including Buzzfeed and Vice, but the lawsuit, filed on Thursday, has raised concerns that minors can access explicit content with no restrictions.
A 14-year-old boy in Los Angeles was skimming through Snapchat on July 1, when he came across a Buzzfeed article titled “23 Pictures That Are Too Real If You’ve Ever Had Sex With A Penis.” He then swiped through to a Vice story called “What It Is Really Like to Let People Finger You in Public,” before showing his mother the stories, who was then motivated to file a lawsuit.
The lawsuit lists a number of explicit stories shared on the Discover network, all from a three day period. The ones called out by name, in court documents uploaded to Scribd by The Verge, include:
- 10 Things He Thinks When He Can’t Make You Orgasm
- I Got High, Blown and Robbed When I Was A Pizza Delivery Guy
- F#ck Buddies Talk About How They Kept It Casual
- People Share Their Secret Rules for Sex
- Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Penis Tattoos
- 14 Sex Problems Only Lesbians Will Understand
The lawsuit is concerned that Snapchat makes no effort to differentiate between content suitable for adults and content suitable for kids. This, according to the filed documents, is a violation of federal and state consumer law.
“We haven’t been served with a complaint in this lawsuit, but we are sorry if people were offended,” a Snapchat spokesperson told Inverse. “Our Discover partners have editorial independence, which is something that we support.”
Snapchat has been slowly boosting its Discover offerings, adding a subscription feature so users can stay up-to-date, as well as bringing in new messaging features to keep people on the app and scrolling through content. The lawsuit, however, wants the app to add new warnings over content, something that the court documents claim is currently missing from the redesigned Discover pages.
Update 7/8 9:30 a.m. ET: Article has been update to include comments from a Snapchat spokesperson
