Snapchat update
More news from social media on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This night, in fact, the Snapchat App announced the temporary deactivation of the “heat map” of the Snap Map for Ukraine. This way the platform will no longer show how much content was made in the war-affected territory. From what has been announced, it is only a “safety precaution”. Despite this, in fact, Snapchat will guarantee users a curated Feed with the contents sent by Ukrainians. But let’s try to understand why the choice to limit the functions of the Snap Map on the territory.
Snapchat: App limits the functions of the Snap Map in Ukraine
“As a safety precaution we have temporarily disabled the Snap Map ‘heat map’ of public Snaps in Ukraine. We will continue to offer curated stories composed of Snaps sent to Ukraine ”. So the Snapchat App announced its decision on Twitter limit the functions of the Snap Map, which shows – via a color code – how many users are sharing public content in a given geographical area. A useful option to understand where the most active users on the platform are concentrated. Therefore, in a war scenario in which Russia could use any tool to monitor the movements of Ukrainians, Snapchat has decided to disable the heat map function on the territory.
As a safety precaution we have temporarily disabled the Snap Map’s “heatmap” of public Snaps in Ukraine. We will continue to offer curated Stories comprised of Snaps submitted in Ukraine.
— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) March 5, 2022
On the other hand, it is certainly not the only platform that has adopted a similar strategy to safeguard Ukrainian citizens. Two huge tech giants like Google ed Applein fact, they have already moved to disable real-time traffic information in Ukraine. And that’s not all. Snap itself took a number of well-targeted actions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to reports from the company, it has stopped showing ads in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. And he has stated that he will not sell ads to Russian companies. In short, it is not difficult to understand which side the company is lining up on, so to speak.