Snapchat is limiting pal suggestions for teen accounts | Engadget

Snapchat is altering up its pal advice characteristic following requires elevated security on the app. The firm is making it more durable for grownup strangers to search out teenagers in its app by limiting pal suggestions in its “Quick Add” characteristic. 

Now, the app received’t present the accounts of 13 to 17-year-olds in Quick Add until they’ve “a certain number of accounts in common,” in keeping with Snap. While the change received’t stop adults and teenagers from connecting in any respect, it may make it tougher for strangers to search out teenagers they don’t already know. In a weblog publish, the corporate mentioned the change was a part of its work to “combat the fentanyl epidemic” and hold drug sellers from discovering “new ways to abuse Snapchat.”

The firm has confronted scrutiny over its dealing with of drug sellers on its platform in current months. Lawmakers and security advocates have pushed Snap to do extra to maintain sellers off of Snapchat following experiences of linked to medication purchased via the app. Snap additionally mentioned Tuesday that it has improved its capability to proactively detect “drug-related content” on its platform, with 88 p.c of “drug related content” now being “proactively detected” with AI. The firm additionally notes it has staffed up the staff that works straight with regulation enforcement companies and has “significantly improved” its response time to regulation enforcement requests.

At a Senate listening to final fall, Snap’s VP of Global Public Policy Jennifer Stout mentioned the corporate was new parental management options that will make it simpler for fogeys to watch their kids’s exercise within the app. Those updates nonetheless have but to launch, although the corporate hopes to make them out there “in the coming months.”