After going through a whole lot of criticism for not taking its abuse and harassment insurance policies significantly, Snapchat has now banned nameless messaging options from third-party apps that combine with its platform.

The change comes after a lawsuit final 12 months sought to carry Snapchat accountable for misuse of its platform linked to the dying of a young person who was being bullied on two Snapchat-connected apps.

Here’s what Snap stated on its new insurance policies through a blog post:

First, we’ll prohibit apps that facilitate nameless messaging from integrating with our platform. During our overview, we decided that even with safeguards in place, nameless apps pose dangers for abuse which might be not possible to mitigate at a suitable stage. While we all know that the majority Snapchatters used these nameless integrations in enjoyable, participating, and completely acceptable methods, we imagine some customers may be extra inclined to have interaction in dangerous conduct – akin to bullying or harassment – if they’ve the shroud of anonymity. Under our new coverage, we won’t permit third-party apps to make use of a Snapchat integration to facilitate communication between customers with out registered and visual usernames and identities. Our overview was holistic and examined the privateness and security of built-in apps nicely past nameless messaging. Today we’re additionally asserting that friend-finding apps won’t be allowed until they’re age-gated and restricted to Snapchatters over 18. This change will higher defend youthful customers and is extra in step with Snapchat’s use case – communications between shut buddies who already know one another.

As a platform that works with a variety of builders, we need to foster an ecosystem that helps apps defend consumer security, privateness, and wellbeing, whereas unlocking product innovation for builders and serving to them develop their companies.

We imagine we will do each, and can proceed to recurrently consider our insurance policies, monitor app compliance, and work with builders to higher defend the wellbeing of our group.