It’s the second time in five days that Snapchat has had to apologize to its users.
Over the weekend, there was a spike in users of the photo-sharing service complaining about receiving spam messages through the app. The company apologized in a blog post, saying the spam was the result of the exponential growth of people using the app. It also clarified that it wasn’t related to the recent security breach that left the usernames and phone numbers of nearly 4.3 million Snapchat users exposed.
We want to apologize for any unwanted Snaps and let you know our team is working on resolving the issue. As far as we know, this is unrelated to the Find Friends issue we experienced over the holidays.
While we expect to minimize spam, it is the consequence of a quickly growing service. To help prevent spam from entering your feed, you can adjust your settings to determine who can send you Snaps. We recommend “Only My Friends”
So what does spam on Snapchat look like? Pretty much what spam looks like everywhere else, ads for diet pills, enhancing penis size, and promotions for cheap knockoff products. Here are a few users who took to Twitter to air their complaints:
I’ve been getting this spam non-stop on snapchat pic.twitter.com/EDYdLlwRQl
— Greg Marsch (@MarschEns) January 13, 2014
Does anyone else get random snapchat adds from random usernames that just end up being spam? #annoyed #whysnapchatwhy
— Maria (@mariaaaaamarin) January 13, 2014
I’m getting an insane amount of @snapchat spam today. What gives?
— Jacob Brody (@jacobbrody) January 13, 2014
At least one user thought it was all simply Snapchat’s way of testing a new advertising model, but given the content, and how much it’s upsetting its users, that seems highly unlikely.
Snapchat tests its advertising model by deliberately allowing (or sending) spam messages and blames all for “privacy leaks”. How clever!
— Melv Kim (@MelvKim) January 13, 2014
However, it’s still bad news if the increased spam is unrelated to the hacking, because this means it’s a natural consequence of Snapchat becoming bigger. And when things become bigger, they become less cool. Right now, rejecting that $3 billion buyout offer from Facebook isn’t looking like the smartest move for Evan Spiegel and co.
