Snap is on a mission to diversify its revenue sources — moving from a business model in which it largely chases ad revenue to one where it can also make money through subscriptions and, eventually, hardware. The company’s latest quarterly earnings report shows that, so far, the firm is having moderate success with that strategy.
In Q4, Snap’s revenue was $1.7 billion, which is up 10% year-over-year. Its average revenue per user was also up, slightly (to $3.62 from $3.44). The company’s net income was $45 million, up from $9 million the previous year, its earnings report shows.
The company has also continued to generate a significant amount of revenue from Snap+, the paid subscription service that the platform launched back in 2022. The service’s subscribers grew 71% year-over-year, reaching 24 million.
While those numbers might seem to suggest a company whose trajectory is headed in the right direction, the earnings report also shows the platform had slightly fewer daily active users last quarter — dropping from 477 million to 474 million. Those users fell away in North America and Europe, the report shows, while growing slightly throughout the rest of the world.
Reuters also reports that the company expects its revenue during the first quarter of this year to be below analysts’ previous estimates, as competition from Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok cuts into its advertising earnings.
During Wednesday’s earnings call, CEO Evan Spiegel focused on the company’s newer offerings, including its recent effort to charge users for Memories storage — a feature that lets users save and store their Snaps — and its plans to launch Specs later this year. The company has not launched a public-facing version of the augmented-reality glasses since 2019. In anticipation of that event, Snap recently announced the creation of a new subsidiary, Specs Inc., that is focused solely on further developing the glasses.
“Our long-term vision for augmented reality extends beyond the smartphone to a future when computing is more natural, contextual and seamlessly integrated into the real world,” said Spiegel. The CEO added that it was important to develop a “strong standalone brand” for Specs, as he said the hardware product could appeal “to a different audience segment” than the “core Snapchat audience.”
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That said, it sounds like the strategy behind Specs may not be entirely ironed out yet. Later in the conversation, Spiegel continued: “We’re so close to launch that the key here is really just, you know, nailing the launch and making sure that we deliver an extraordinary product. And then, you know, I think we have a lot of flexibility to think about how we want to capitalize [on] it moving forward.”
Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has reached a settlement in a high-profile social media addiction lawsuit just days before it was scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles.
The deal, revealed during a California Superior Court hearing, marks a significant turn in one of the first major legal challenges to how platform algorithms affect youth mental health.
While the specific financial terms of the settlement remain confidential, Snap informed the BBC that all parties involved were “pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner.”
The agreement removes Snap as a defendant in this specific case, though the company remains involved in other consolidated addiction lawsuits currently moving through the court system.
The lawsuit was brought by a 19-year-old woman, identified as K.G.M., who alleged that the intentional design of social media platforms created a compulsive need for use that severely impacted her mental health.
Despite Snap’s exit, the trial is still set to proceed on January 27 against the remaining three defendants: Meta (the parent of Instagram), ByteDance (TikTok), and Alphabet (YouTube).
The case is being closely monitored by legal experts because it challenges Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
While social media firms have historically used this law to shield themselves from liability for third-party content, plaintiffs now argue that the platforms’ actual design – including notifications and algorithm choices – is a defective product that causes harm.
Until this week’s settlement, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was expected to testify. Now, the spotlight remains on Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, who is still slated to take the stand as jury selection begins.
With the world’s first social media ban for teenagers under 16 now in effect in Australia, its initial political architect is celebrating a new less-digital era for millions of children — and sharing that the legislation was personally inspired by his wife, for their four children.
“She read a book called ‘The Anxious Generation,’ by Jonathan Haidt,” said Peter Malinauskas, the premier of the state of South Australia. “And I will never forget the night she finished reading the book and she put it down on her lap and she turned to me and said, ‘You better do something about this!’”
Within seven months, and with strong public support, that idea fast became law across the land, winning support from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Ten major apps including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit and Facebook have complied to bar everyone 16 and under from their accounts and from setting up new accounts.
“Heaven forbid they might talk to one another a bit more, pick up the phone and have a chat rather than just being obsessed with the screen,” said Maulinauskas.
The ban puts the onus of responsibility on social media companies rather than parents with a penalty of up to $33 million if found to be in breach. It allows for each company to decide how best to adhere, which must be “multi-layered,” using more than one kind of identity verification, which could include traditional methods including national IDs and passports but also artificial intelligence — controversial over possible inaccuracies — to scan facial features for age.
Malinauskas readily admits there will be growing pains.
“People will find ways around it and lots of things will go wrong, and that’ll be highlighted in coming days and weeks in Australia,” he said, “but on balance, this is a reform that parents want so they can do their job more easily.”
He says officials from North America, Europe and Asia have been speaking with him about advancing similar legislation in Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan. Malaysia is already on track to be the next country to ban those under 16 from social media in 2026.
Yet in Australia, the law already faces a legal challenge. The country’s High Court accepted a legal challenge from two 15-year-olds who assert the ban violates their freedom of communication. The case could be heard as early as February.
Malinauskas blames those companies for putting all children through “a global experiment” over the past decade with “social media addiction and overuse because many of these platforms have had addictive algorithms.”
“I’m really proud, really proud that we’ve been able to see South Australia and then Australia lead a reform that’s going to make a big difference to young people’s lives,” he said.
“And the reason why politicians are looking at it is because parents know something’s not right. You know, there is no better judge of what’s in the best interest of a child than a parent, right?”
According to the arrest affidavit, Sarah Bess, 18, and her fiance, Weston Owen, 18, had been living with the 62-year-old victim, who was identified in court Monday afternoon as Bess’s uncle. Bess and the victim had been out at a local bar Friday night with Owen who was the designated driver.
Interviews with Bess and Owen summarized in the affidavit offer conflicting reports on what happened on the drive home from the bar, but the victim allegedly made a move or motion that Owen took as an advance on Bess.
After they returned to the residence, the victim went to sleep and Owen called his friend Kellar Weisgerber, 21, to help “teach (the victim) a lesson,” according to the affidavit. Bess also allegedly sent messages through Snapchat, which automatically delete after a short period of time, to another person asking how to torture and murder someone. Read the full story at our partner, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.
Melbourne, Australia — Technology giant Meta on Thursday began sending thousands of young Australians a two-week warning to downland their digital histories and delete their accounts from Facebook, Instagram and Threads before a world-first social media ban on accounts of children younger than 16 takes effect.
The Australian government announced two weeks ago that the three Meta platforms plus Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube must take reasonable steps to exclude Australian account holders younger than 16, beginning Dec. 10.
California-based Meta on Thursday became the first of the targeted tech companies to outline how it will comply with the law. Meta contacted thousands of young account holders via SMS and email to warn that suspected children will start to be denied access to the platforms from Dec. 4.
“We will start notifying impacted teens today to give them the opportunity to save their contacts and memories,” Meta said in a statement.
Meta said young users could also use the notice period to update their contact information “so we can get in touch and help them regain access once they turn 16.”
Meta has estimated there are 350,000 Australians aged 13-to-15 on Instagram and 150,000 in that age bracket on Facebook. Australia’s population is 28 million.
Account holders 16-years-old and older who were mistakenly given notice that they would be excluded can contact Yoti Age Verification and verify their age by providing government-issued identity documents or a “video selfie,” Meta said.
Terry Flew, co-director of Sydney University’s Center for AI, Trust and Governance, said such facial-recognition technology had a failure rate of at least 5%.
“In the absence of a government-mandated ID system, we’re always looking at second-best solutions around these things,” Flew told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
The government has warned platforms that demanding that all account holders prove they are older than 15 would be an unreasonable response to the new age restrictions. The government maintains the platforms already had sufficient data about many account holders to ascertain they were not young children.
Social media companies will face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars (about $33 million) if they are found to be failing to prevent people under 16 from creating accounts on their platforms.
Meta’s vice president and global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said she would prefer that app stores including Apple App Store and Google Play collect the age information when a user signs up and verifies they are at least 16 year old for app operators such as Facebook and Instagram.
“We believe a better approach is required: a standard, more accurate, and privacy-preserving system, such as OS/app store-level age verification,” Davis said in a statement.
“This combined with our investments in ongoing efforts to assure age … offers a more comprehensive protection for young people online,” she added.
Dany Elachi, founder of the parents’ group Heaps Up Alliance that lobbied for the social media age restriction, said parents should start helping their children plan on how they will spend the hours currently absorbed by social media.
He was critical of the government’s only announcing on the complete list of platforms that will become age-restricted on Nov. 5.
“There are aspects of the legislation that we’re not entirely supportive of, but the principle that children under the age of 16 are better off in the real world, that’s something we advocated for and are in favor of,” Elachi said. “When everybody misses out, nobody misses out. That’s the theory. Certainly we expect that it would play out that way. We hope parents are going to be very positive about this and try to help their children see all the potential possibilities that are now open to them.”
There was significant resistance to the legislation last year, however, including from some children’s advocacy groups.
The CEO of the Save the Children charity Mat Tinkler said in a statement a year ago, when the ban was approved by Australian lawmakers, that while he welcomed the government’s efforts to protect children from harm online, the solution should be regulating social media companies, rather than a blanket ban.
He said the government should “instead use the momentum of this moment to hold the social media giants to account, to demand that they embed safety into their platforms rather than adding it as an afterthought, and to work closely with experts and children and young people themselves to make online spaces safer, as opposed to off-limits.”
The Australian Human Rights Commission, an independent government body, also expressed “serious reservations” over the law before it was approved, saying last year that there were “less restrictive alternatives available that could achieve the aim of protecting children and young people from online harms, but without having such a significant negative impact on other human rights. One example of an alternative response would be to place a legal duty of care on social media companies.”
Snap and Perplexity AI have struck a $400 million deal that will bring the AI search engine directly to Snapchat sometime in “early 2026,” the two companies announced. With the partnership, Perplexity’s AI search engine will be a prominent part of Snapchat’s “chat” interface so users can “ask questions and get clear, conversational answers drawn from verifiable sources, all within Snapchat.”
The news was announced alongside the company’s third-quarter earnings. The company said that revenue from the deal — Perplexity is paying Snap $400 million for the integration — is “expected to begin contributing” to the company’s bottom line in 2026. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Evan Spiegel also hinted that Snap could pursue similar partnerships with other AI companies. “This collaboration makes AI-powered discovery native to Snapchat, enhances personalization, and positions Snap as a leading distribution channel for intelligent agents, laying the groundwork for a broader ecosystem of AI partners to reach our global community,” he wrote.
Snap, like its peers, has been leaning into generative AI in recent years. The company has its own LLM-powered chatbot, called MyAI, which uses models from OpenAI, Google and, soon, Perplexity AI. Snap has also introduced AI-powered lenses and creation tools, which have helped boost its Snapchat+ subscription service.
Spiegel also teased other AI-powered updates coming to Snapchat. He said the company is working on a new AI video generation feature called “AI Clips” that “will allow creators to generate short, shareable videos from simple prompts.” He didn’t say when the feature might launch.
Outside of Snapchat, Snap is also planning on launching a new version of its AR glasses, called Specs, sometime next year. Spiegel didn’t offer any new details about the device, which he has previously promised will be lighter-weight than the current version. He did, however, suggest the company was considering working with potential hardware partners. He said Snap would be “putting Specs into their own standalone, 100% owned subsidiary” to give the company more flexibility to pursue such arrangements.
Update, November 5, 2025, 3:08PM PT: Added more details from Snap’s earnings call.
Fans can unlock a Snapchat AR Lens that uses celestial tracking and transforms everyday phones into portable The Moon Man spotters.
We’ve also created a custom, one-of-a-kind, Snapchat-powered telescope — peer inside and you’ll see The Moon Man come alive.
The Outer Worlds 2 is available today for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, Battle.net, Steam, and PlayStation 5. It is an Xbox Play Anywhere title and available day one with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
What if we went where no brand has ever gone before?
That’s the question we asked ourselves as we geared up for The Outer Worlds 2. Because when your sequel is literally bigger, bolder, and more bizarre than the first, you’d aim higher. Much higher. You’d aim for the Moon.
So, in partnership with our friends at Snapchat, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Fans can unlock a Snapchat AR Lens that uses celestial tracking and transforms everyday phones into portable Moon Man spotters leading up to the full moon on November 6, 2025. Point your device skyward, and suddenly the Moon isn’t just a big glowing rock—it’s a playground for our larger-than-life mascot.
Whether you’re in Tokyo, Toronto, or Timbuktu, you’ll be part of the same global spectacle as The Moon Man takes over the universe’s oldest billboard. He’ll wink. He’ll smirk. He might stir up a little cosmic chaos. And with every shift of the lens, you’ll uncover new stories playing out across the lunar surface—mini-moments of mischief and mayhem only The Moon Man could dream up.
But we didn’t stop there. We also created a custom, one-of-a-kind, Snapchat-powered telescope. This physical installation isn’t just any telescope. Peer inside and you’ll see The Moon Man come alive. Inspired by the in-game items from Auntie’s Choice – we have created something befitting of the game.
For us, this partnership is about more than AR wizardry. It’s about taking something familiar—the Moon we all grew up with—and giving it a new personality, one that can only exist in this universe. By blending Snapchat’s technology using celestial tracking with The Moon Man’s cheeky smile, we’re letting fans interact with The Moon Man in a way that feels as absurdly fun as the game itself.
So, grab your phone, look up, and prepare to laugh at the cosmos. Because in The Outer Worlds 2, even the Moon has jokes—and we can’t wait for you to see them.
The Outer Worlds 2 is available today for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, Battle.net, Steam, and PlayStation 5. It is an Xbox Play Anywhere title and available day one with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
The Outer Worlds 2 Preorder Premium Edition
Xbox Game Studios
☆☆☆☆☆ 113
★★★★★
$99.99
Pre-order The Outer Worlds 2 Premium Edition now to get up to 5 days early access and the Commander Zane’s Anti-Monopolistic Battle Pack.
The Outer Worlds 2 Premium Edition includes:
– The Outer Worlds 2 base game
– Up to 5 days early access
– DLC Pass for 2 future story expansions*
– Moon Man’s Corporate Appreciation Premium Prize Pack
– Access to The Outer Worlds 2 Digital Artbook & Original Soundtrack
* Story expansions available as released
The Outer Worlds 2 is the eagerly-awaited sequel to the award-winning first-person sci-fi RPG from Obsidian Entertainment (just look at the exciting number of dashes in this sentence!). Time to clear your calendar – get ready for an action-packed adventure with a new crew, new weapons, and new enemies in a new colony! So much newness!
As a daring and most likely good-looking Earth Directorate agent, you must uncover the source of devastating rifts threatening to destroy all of humanity. Your investigation leads to Arcadia, home of skip drive technology, where the fate of the colony, and ultimately the entire galaxy, rests on your decisions – your strengths, your flaws, your crew, and the factions you choose to trust.
Explore a New Frontier
The Arcadia colony is engulfed in a factional war, as the Protectorate’s so-called benevolent rule is challenged by the rebellion of their religious order and a corporate invasion. As destructive rifts spread across the colony, each faction fights to control or close them for their own ends. Navigate diverse zones, uncover hidden lore, and shape the fate of a system on the brink!
Your Commander, Your Way
Build your character with the abilities and choices that reflect your playstyle. The colony reacts to your every move, crafting a narrative that’s yours to own -whether you’re a disciple of diplomacy, an astute strategist, a crusader for chaos, or something different altogether. And yes, you can dumb!
Enlist Your Companions
Recruit companions with unique traits, backgrounds and goals. Whether you choose to help them achieve their ambitions or steer them toward your own objectives, your influence shapes their growth (or death), making them an integral part of the immersive story you create together.
The Outer Worlds 2 Standard Preorder Edition
Xbox Game Studios
☆☆☆☆☆ 105
★★★★★
$69.99
Pre-order The Outer Worlds 2 now to receive the Commander Zane’s Anti-Monopolistic Battle Pack at launch.
The Outer Worlds 2 is the eagerly-awaited sequel to the award-winning first-person sci-fi RPG from Obsidian Entertainment (just look at the exciting number of dashes in this sentence!). Time to clear your calendar – get ready for an action-packed adventure with a new crew, new weapons, and new enemies in a new colony! So much newness!
As a daring and most likely good-looking Earth Directorate agent, you must uncover the source of devastating rifts threatening to destroy all of humanity. Your investigation leads to Arcadia, home of skip drive technology, where the fate of the colony, and ultimately the entire galaxy, rests on your decisions – your strengths, your flaws, your crew, and the factions you choose to trust.
Explore a New Frontier
The Arcadia colony is engulfed in a factional war, as the Protectorate’s so-called benevolent rule is challenged by the rebellion of their religious order and a corporate invasion. As destructive rifts spread across the colony, each faction fights to control or close them for their own ends. Navigate diverse zones, uncover hidden lore, and shape the fate of a system on the brink!
Your Commander, Your Way
Build your character with the abilities and choices that reflect your playstyle. The colony reacts to your every move, crafting a narrative that’s yours to own -whether you’re a disciple of diplomacy, an astute strategist, a crusader for chaos, or something different altogether. And yes, you can dumb!
Enlist Your Companions
Recruit companions with unique traits, backgrounds and goals. Whether you choose to help them achieve their ambitions or steer them toward your own objectives, your influence shapes their growth (or death), making them an integral part of the immersive story you create together.
While most of the U.S. was sleeping, Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a major disruption at one of its largest locations. If you were sleeping, you probably didn’t even notice. If, however, you were up and trying to use ChatGPT, Snapchat, Reddit, Fortnite, or even Amazon, you definitely noticed.
According to the AWS status updates, the company reported “increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region.” The root cause was later identified as issues with DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in that region, and the incident rippling into other AWS services.
I’m not going to pretend that I understand what all of those words mean, but what I do understand is this: the internet is much more fragile than most of us think about on a regular basis. 
A ripple across the internet
What started inside a single AWS region quickly became global. Major consumer and enterprise platforms reported outages. For example, Coinbase and other crypto/banking services noted impact. 
An Inc.com Featured Presentation
AWS first posted a notification at 3:11 a.m. ET, stating it was engaged in mitigation and investigation. By about 5:27 a.m. ET they announced “significant signs of recovery” though they warned that the backlog of requests to the affected services could mean that it would take time for everything to get back to normal.
For a disruption that only lasted a little over two hours, however, the impact was much larger—both for companies that depend on cloud computing, and for Amazon. I’ll explain:
Everything is connected
This outage illustrates a truth many users don’t recognize: the internet is more fragile than it seems. So many services that appear independent run the same foundational infrastructure. The beauty of cloud computing providers like AWS is that individual companies don’t have to spin up their own infrastructure. Instead, they can just buy it from Amazon.
More importantly, because so many companies are doing just that, the overall expense for those companies is far less than if they tried to do it themselves. That seems like a huge win—until something goes wrong. A single error or failure in one region of a major cloud provider can ripple through to millions of users and thousands of services.
To be clear, Amazon is very good at this. There is a reason so many companies depend on AWS—because it’s generally very reliable, with better than 99.99 percent availability.
Which leads to another important point—the internet isn’t the only thing more fragile than we might think. For AWS, nothing is as fragile as trust.
Trust matters most
I’ve written many times that trust is your most important asset. If you want to build a platform that others depend on, they have to believe you’ll be more reliable than if they did it themselves. For most companies, that’s obviously true. Most companies don’t power huge swaths of the internet the way AWS does. It’s a no brainer
That’s why Amazon’s response matters so much. Within minutes of identifying an issue, AWS updates its Service Health Dashboard, a public status site that details affected regions, and services, and explains how the company is working to mitigate effects. Those updates are often timestamped and written in plain, operational language: “We are investigating increased error rates in the US-EAST-1 Region.”
As the incident unfolds, AWS posts incremental updates rather than waiting for a full explanation. The key lesson here is that communication itself is part of the recovery process.
When service stabilizes, AWS issues a “Post-Event Summary,” outlining the technical cause, the scope of impact, and steps taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This practice isn’t exclusive to AWS, but it’s definitely unusual in big tech. Many companies prefer to issue vague, after-the-fact statements or none at all.
AWS treats the visibility of its operations as essential as its infrastructure. Amazon’s entire cloud business depends on trust from developers, startups, governments, and Fortune 500s who run their critical business on AWS.
Every update is a signal that Amazon understands how much is at stake and that it’s willing to expose its process to public scrutiny. Transparency won’t erase the frustration of having your online store or streaming service go down, but it does reassure customers that AWS takes reliability seriously enough to narrate its own failures in real time.
Not only that, but the biggest concern when services go down is that it’s some kind of attack. If you’re AWS and you know that’s not the case, you let people know as quickly as you can, even if it means admitting there was a mistake or that something failed.
In the long run, that candor may be what keeps customers from looking elsewhere—because if your job is to be the backbone of the internet, trust may be the most fragile thing of all. Because in the cloud era, what you lose most during failure may not just be access for a few minutes—it might be the confidence that you still belong on the backbone of the internet.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
A Ralston Valley High School student was arrested in connection with a threatening Snapchat photo reported to police the same day a gunman shot and seriously wounded two Evergreen High School students.
Hours after the Sept. 10 shooting, Arvada police officers started investigating hundreds of Safe2Tell reports about a photo of a rifle and ammunition with the words “Be ready rv” that was sent to multiple students on Snapchat.
Investigators contacted the student suspected of the post, who is a juvenile, that night but did not have evidence to pursue criminal charges, police said Wednesday.
Police linked the photo to a French social media post from 2024 and determined the threat was not credible, although 1,100 students did not attend school the next day.
Officers continued investigating the student suspected of making the post and found digital links to the incident, including internet searches for “snap with gun be ready,” “survivors of columbine,” “worst school shooting in america” and the names of the Columbine High School shooters.
The student’s search history also contained questions about what would happen if a minor made a school shooting threat, if it was a federal offense and if there was a way a police officer could come to their house and talk to them.
The student was arrested Tuesday and charged with interference with staff, faculty or students of education institutions, a misdemeanor.
ARVADA, Colo. — A student was arrested Tuesday in connection with a social media threat directed toward Ralston Valley High School in Arvada.
The Arvada Police Department said its officers and school resource officers (SROs) began their investigation after receiving hundreds of Safe2Tell reports in the hours after the Evergreen High School shooting on Sept. 10. According to the department, the reports were related to a social media threat directed toward Ralston Valley High.
A photo showing a rifle, ammunition and a magazine lying on a table was shared with multiple students via Snapchat, according to police. Text over the photo said “Be ready rv” and included a purple demon emoji.
Arvada PD said officers contacted the suspect the night of Sept. 10, but there was “no evidence at the time to substantiate criminal charges without digital evidence.” According to the department, the photo originated from a French social media video posted in 2024, and there was no credible threat to Ralston Valley.
About 1,100 students chose not to attend school on Sept. 11 due to the threat, according to Arvada police.
SRO Nicole Deering continued the investigation, interviewing multiple students, parents and faculty members. Arvada PD said the investigation “ultimately focused on a current student.”
A forensic exam was conducted on the student’s device. Arvada police said investigators found a “significant amount” of evidence connecting them to the original threat.
The following search history was discovered on the student’s device, according to Arvada PD:
“snap with gun be ready”
“eric harris”
“survivors of columbine”
“worst school shooting in america”
“where are dylan klebold and eric harris buried”
“what aould.happen if you madr a shooting threat at a school as a minor”
“is there a way a police offiver can come yo my hoise and talk”
The student allegedly used different digital devices to search “is if a federal offense to make a school shooting threat.” Investigators also searched the student’s Snapchat records and found “additional evidence.”
The student was arrested on Tuesday for interference with staff, faculty or students of educational institutions, a misdemeanor. Arvada PD did not release their identity.
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Snap is imposing a new storage limit on Snapchat‘s Memories feature, which has racked up impressive numbers since its introduction in 2016. According to Snap, users have saved more than one trillion Memories across its platform, and it’s now introducing “Memories Storage Plans” for users who exceed 5GB of Memories.
In a press release, Snap detailed that the introductory storage plan allows up to 100GB of storage for Memories for $1.99 a month. Snapchat+ subscribers, who pay $3.99 a month, will get up to 250GB of storage, while Snapchat’s highest-tier Platinum subscribers will get 5TB included with their $15.99 monthly cost.
Snap said that a “vast majority” of its Snapchat users won’t notice any changes since they’re far from hitting the 5GB limit. For users who hold onto thousands of Snaps, the company is now rolling out these storage plans. To ease the transition from unlimited storage to paid options, Snap will give anyone exceeding 5GB of Memories a year of temporary storage. These new storage subscriptions follow Snap’s latest paid option for its Lens+ subscription, which costs $9 a month.
Snapchat has introduced a couple of new features it says are “highly requested” by its users. The first is “Infinite Retention,” which as its name implies will allow you to keep a chat history like you could on a messaging app and prevent your messages from disappearing. “We’ve often heard from our community that Snapchatters want to save their chats forever and wish they could build streaks with their favorite groups,” its announcement reads.
The app has been testing the feature since 2024, and now it’s being rolled out broadly. You could already save messages in the app by tapping on them inside the chat, but this one makes things easier. It’s a setting you’ll just have to switch on or off for each conversation. If you enable the setting, the other person in the conversation will get a notification that you did, and they will be able to switch it off if they want. You can, for instance, switch Infinite Retention on for a close friend but keep it off for acquaintances.
In addition, Snapchat is rolling out Group Streaks that will let you contribute to a collective Streak with your friends. To keep up individual Streaks, you’ll have to send and receive at least one photo or video Snap with a friend every day. Group Streaks are easier to keep going, since several people can participate. You can also restore a Group Streak within a week in case it ends.
Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Engadget’s parent company Yahoo, joined the board of directors at Snap on September 12, 2024. No one outside of Engadget’s editorial team has any say in our coverage of the company.
New Mexico’s attorney general has against , accusing the company of failing to protect children from sextortion, sexual exploitation and other harms on . The suit contends that Snapchat’s features “foster the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and facilitate child sexual exploitation.”
The state’s Department of Justice carried out a months-long investigation into Snapchat and discovered a “vast network of dark web sites dedicated to sharing stolen, non-consensual sexual images from Snap.” It claims to have found more than 10,000 records related to Snap and child sexual abuse material “in the last year alone,” and says Snapchat was “by far” the biggest source of images and videos on the dark web sites that it examined.
In its complaint [], the agency accused the app of being “a breeding ground for predators to collect sexually explicit images of children and to find, groom and extort them.” It states that “criminals circulate sextortion scripts” that contain instructions on how to victimize minors. It claims that these documents are publicly available and are actively being used against victims but they “have not yet been blacklisted by . . . Snapchat.”
Furthermore, investigators determined that many accounts that openly share and sell CSAM on Snapchat are linked to each other through the app’s recommendation algorithm. The suit claims “Snap designed its platform specifically to make it addicting to young people, which has led some of its users to depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, body dysmorphia and other mental health issues.”
The Snapchat complaint follows a similar child safety suit that the . Engadget has contacted Snap for comment.
“Our undercover investigation revealed that Snapchat’s harmful design features create an environment where predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement. “Snap has misled users into believing that photos and videos sent on their platform will disappear, but predators can permanently capture this content and they have created a virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold and stored indefinitely. Through our litigation against Meta and Snap, the New Mexico Department of Justice will continue to hold these platforms accountable for prioritizing profits over children’s safety.”
Mostly, that didn’t pan out. Though the move generated fawning “age of the influencer” pieces from outlets like The New York Times and Bloomberg, neither consumers nor advertisers (who NBCUniversal said could create sponsored posts with the influencers, should they desire) seem to have responded all that well to the network’s “Paris Creators Collective,” which spent the past two weeks bopping around between Olympic events.
Instead, what caught the public’s attention was content from athlete creators like USA rugby team star Ilona Maher, who gained almost 2 million new followers in the past couple of weeks thanks to her witty fit checks and Love Island–like references to the “Olympic Villa.” Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen became famous for his love of a gooey chocolate muffin served in the Olympic Village, while other fans consumed seeminglydozensofnationalkitunboxingvideos made by athletes from all around the globe.
People have also fallen for hip figures, like Olympic shooters Kim Yeji and Yusuf Dikeç or Stephen Nedoroscik, the bespectacled American gymnast who really should work on getting a Warby Parker endorsement deal if he hasn’t landed one already. People have also gone nuts (again) for the reportedly highly valuable Olympics commentary of Snoop Dogg, who NBCUniversal officially brought on board for the first time for these Games.
The videos that NBC’s influencers are posting, on the other hand, don’t seem to be hitting—or going viral, at least. Part of that could be due to the limitations handed to the creators, who weren’t allowed to post videos of the actual events.
The resulting videos feel a little thin, with commentary that’s less biting or immediate than what’s been making the rounds elsewhere. (After all, if NBCUniversal flies you to Paris and puts you up, you’re probably not going to comment on how goofy the Australian breakdancer’s moves were or how you couldn’t see squat from your expensive seat at the Opening Ceremony.)
Snapchat is working to make it harder for teenagers to be contacted on the app by people they don’t know, its latest effort to stop the sexual and financial exploitation scam known as sextortion.The company on Tuesday announced a set of new safety features, including expanded warning pop-ups that appear when a teen receives a message from someone they don’t share mutual friends with or have in their contacts. Now, teens will also receive a warning message if they receive a chat from a user who has been blocked or reported by others or who is from a region where the teen’s other contacts aren’t located, “signs that the person may be a scammer,” Snapchat said in a blog post Tuesday.Related video above: FBI warns of growing sextortion threat targeting young peopleAnd Snapchat will now prevent the delivery of friend requests for teens to or from an account that they don’t share mutual friends with that is also located in regions often associated with scammers.In addition to expanding Snapchat’s broader suite of youth safety measures, the new features are aimed specifically at preventing financial sextortion, a worrying and growing type of scam across social media where bad actors gain the trust of young users, convince them to send sexual or explicit photos and then demand payment in exchange for keeping the pictures a secret.”These features were designed to better protect teens from potential online harms and to enhance the real-friend connections that make Snapchat so unique,” Snap’s Global Head of Platform Safety Jacqueline Beauchere said in an exclusive statement to CNN ahead of the announcement.Video below: FBI agent shares tips for parents to prevent sextortionLaw enforcement officials have in recent years warned of an uptick in online sextortion scams, in which bad actors, typically located overseas, target children and teens, often with profiles that appear to belong to friendly fellow teenagers. In some cases, sextortion has resulted in suicides.Meta in April also announced new features aimed at combating sextortion, including informing users when they’ve interacted with someone who engaged in financial sextortion. And the chief executives of Meta and Snap, along with other social media leaders, were called to testify earlier this year in a Senate subcommittee hearing about their efforts to protect young people from online exploitation.Also among Snapchat’s announcements on Tuesday are improvements to the app’s blocking tools, which will prevent users from simply creating new accounts to get around a block. Now, when a user blocks another account, any new accounts created on the same device will also automatically be blocked.Snapchat is also introducing more frequent reminders to all users, including teens, about their location settings on the app’s “Snap Map” feature, which is toggled off by default but which users can update to share their location live with friends. The company said it will make it possible for users to update their location settings, remove their location from the map and customize which friends they share their location with – all in one spot on the app.The updates build on Snapchat’s existing teen safety features, which include a “Family Center” where parents can supervise the behavior of 13- to 17-year-old users, and mechanisms for removing age-inappropriate content.Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 (or 800-273-8255) to connect with a trained counselor or visit the NSPL site.
Snapchat is working to make it harder for teenagers to be contacted on the app by people they don’t know, its latest effort to stop the sexual and financial exploitation scam known as sextortion.
The company on Tuesday announced a set of new safety features, including expanded warning pop-ups that appear when a teen receives a message from someone they don’t share mutual friends with or have in their contacts. Now, teens will also receive a warning message if they receive a chat from a user who has been blocked or reported by others or who is from a region where the teen’s other contacts aren’t located, “signs that the person may be a scammer,” Snapchat said in a blog post Tuesday.
Related video above: FBI warns of growing sextortion threat targeting young people
And Snapchat will now prevent the delivery of friend requests for teens to or from an account that they don’t share mutual friends with that is also located in regions often associated with scammers.
In addition to expanding Snapchat’s broader suite of youth safety measures, the new features are aimed specifically at preventing financial sextortion, a worrying and growing type of scam across social media where bad actors gain the trust of young users, convince them to send sexual or explicit photos and then demand payment in exchange for keeping the pictures a secret.
“These features were designed to better protect teens from potential online harms and to enhance the real-friend connections that make Snapchat so unique,” Snap’s Global Head of Platform Safety Jacqueline Beauchere said in an exclusive statement to CNN ahead of the announcement.
Video below: FBI agent shares tips for parents to prevent sextortion
Law enforcement officials have in recent years warned of an uptick in online sextortion scams, in which bad actors, typically located overseas, target children and teens, often with profiles that appear to belong to friendly fellow teenagers. In some cases, sextortion has resulted in suicides.
Meta in April also announced new features aimed at combating sextortion, including informing users when they’ve interacted with someone who engaged in financial sextortion. And the chief executives of Meta and Snap, along with other social media leaders, were called to testify earlier this year in a Senate subcommittee hearing about their efforts to protect young people from online exploitation.
Also among Snapchat’s announcements on Tuesday are improvements to the app’s blocking tools, which will prevent users from simply creating new accounts to get around a block. Now, when a user blocks another account, any new accounts created on the same device will also automatically be blocked.
Snapchat is also introducing more frequent reminders to all users, including teens, about their location settings on the app’s “Snap Map” feature, which is toggled off by default but which users can update to share their location live with friends. The company said it will make it possible for users to update their location settings, remove their location from the map and customize which friends they share their location with – all in one spot on the app.
The updates build on Snapchat’s existing teen safety features, which include a “Family Center” where parents can supervise the behavior of 13- to 17-year-old users, and mechanisms for removing age-inappropriate content.
Editor’s Note:If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 (or 800-273-8255) to connect with a trained counselor or visit the NSPL site.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Snapchat Inc. will pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by California’s civil rights agency that claimed the company discriminated against female employees, failed to prevent workplace sexual harassment and retaliated against women who complained.
The settlement with Snapchat Inc., which owns the popular disappearing-message app by the same name, covers women who worked for the company in California between 2014 and 2024, the California Civil Rights Department announced Wednesday. The settlement is subject to court approval.
The agreement resolves a more than three-year investigation over claims that the Santa Monica, California-based company discriminated against female employees when it came to pay and promotions, the department said in a statement.
The bulk of the settlement money will go to employees who faced discrimination at Snapchat Inc., California officials said.
“In California, we’re proud of the work of our state’s innovators who are a driving force of our nation’s economy,” said Kevin Kish, director of California’s civil rights agency. “This settlement with Snapchat demonstrates a shared commitment to a California where all workers have a fair chance at the American Dream. Women are entitled to equality in every job, in every workplace, and in every industry.”
Snapchat Inc. said it disagrees with the agency’s claims but that it decided to settle to avoid costly and lengthy litigation.
“We care deeply about our commitment to maintain a fair and inclusive environment at Snap, and do not believe we have any ongoing systemic pay equity, discrimination, harassment, or retaliation issues against women,” the company said in a statement.
Snapchat Inc. grew from 250 employees in 2015 to over 5,000 in 2022. But the growth didn’t translate to advancement for female employees who “were told to wait their turn, were actively discouraged from applying for promotions, or lost promotion opportunities to less qualified male colleagues,” California officials said.
In particular, women in engineering roles, which account for about 70% of Snap’s workforce, found barriers when trying to advance from entry-level positions, according to the complaint.
California’s civil rights agency also said in its lawsuit that women were sexually harassed and that when they spoke up, they faced retaliation that included negative performance reviews and termination. Male managers routinely promoted male employees over more qualified women, the agency said.
“Women were told, both implicitly and explicitly, that they were second-class citizens at Snap,” the agency said in its lawsuit.
The settlement will require the company to hire an independent consultant to evaluate its compensation and promotion policies and retain an outside auditor of its sexual harassment, retaliation, and discrimination compliance. The company will also have to train its staff on preventing discrimination, retaliation and sexual harassment in the workplace, officials said.
Snapchat Inc. also agreed to provide information to all employees about their right to report harassment or discrimination without fear of retaliation.
Spontaneous “meetup” and “pop-up” gatherings in outdoor commercial areas and parking lots have dogged area police for the past several years.
Seven people were shot at a pop-up gathering at 100 Lindberg Ave. in Methuen early Sunday. An eighth person suffered a head injury after falling while trying to flee. Authorities said two of the people injured were listed in critical condition.
It’s not the first time a local car meetup has ended in violence. Earlier this spring, a person who went to a similar party on Glen Street in Lawrence was shot. Police learned about the shooting after the victim was taken to an area hospital for treatment.
Fueled by social media posts and indicators, including Snapchat notifications, the meet-ups are attended by young people between roughly 16 and 20 years old. These people are too young to get into clubs, so they meet at outdoor locations to listen to music, dance, drink, vape and smoke marijuana, police said.
Methuen Police Chief Scott McNamara said during a press conference Sunday morning that officers have been monitoring “hot spots” for these “spontaneous meetups.”
Those attending are coming from all over Essex County “and beyond,” District Attorney Paul Tucker said during the press conference.
Police sources said the meetups are primarily fueled through the Snapchat application, which allows messages and photos to be posted and later automatically deleted and locations to be “pinned” or illuminated on maps.
Those who attend often drive souped-up or lowrider vehicles with powerful stereo speakers installed. Others are driving dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles that are illegal to operate on streets and roads. These drivers often congregate in large groups, hoping it gives them anonymity despite the chaos these events often create, police said.
In September, local police and state troopers seized 19 bikes and issued more than 50 citations in a crackdown prompted by complaints about reckless and dangerous operation of motorcycles, dirt bikes and off-road vehicles on public ways.
Local police regularly collaborate with the Massachusetts State Police airwing to pinpoint the meetup gatherings and errant drivers, officers said.
Loud music from pop-up gatherings triggers noise complaints from the immediate area and also from surrounding communities, police said. McNamara said he wanted to stress in the wake of Sunday morning’s incident “that there is no ongoing threat to the larger community.”
“The threat is compartmentalized to the smaller population of people who continue to engage in this type of high-risk behavior,” the chief said.
Staff Writer Jill Harmacinski may be contacted at jharmacinski@northofboston.com and followed on X/Twitter @EagleTribJill.
Sadly, people aren’t always as nice as they could be, and that’s where you need to turn to the various blocking and reporting features on the digital platforms you frequent. Overall, these features work well and effectively put up barriers between you and those you don’t want to hear from.
Video Chat – From Sci-Fi to Sci-Fact
But what happens when you want to unblock someone? Maybe you’ve had a change of heart—perhaps enough water has gone under enough bridges to make you ready to think again. Or maybe you think you might have accidentally blocked someone you didn’t mean to. Whatever the reason, it’s worth reviewing your block lists once in a while.
This is quite a significant undertaking, considering all the different accounts you’re probably signed up to, but it only takes a few minutes each time—and you don’t need to do it all that frequently.
Social apps
Blocked contacts on Instagram.Screenshot: Instagram
On the Facebook website and inside the Facebook mobile app, you can click your profile picture (top right), then Settings & privacy, Settings, and Blocking. You can view and edit lists of people you’ve blocked outright or just asked to see less of in the news feed.
Instagram
When it comes to Instagram, in the app, tap your profile picture (bottom right), then the three horizontal lines (top right), then Blocked. If you’re using Instagram on the web, click More (bottom left), then Settings and Blocked.
Twitter/X
On the social network formerly known as Twitter (now called X), if you load up the website, you can click the three dots on the left, then Settings and Privacy, Privacy and Safety, Mute and Block, and Blocked Accounts. In the mobile app, tap your profile picture (top left), then Settings & Support to get to Settings and Privacy.
Snapchat
Head into the mobile app, and tap your profile picture (top left): Then it’s the gear icon (top right), then Blocked users. While there is an official Snapchat interface on the web you can access with your account, it does have its limitations—and you can’t access your blocked Snapchat contacts from a web browser.
Tiktok
In the mobile app, tap Profile, then the three horizontal lines (top right), then Settings and Privacy, Privacy, and Blocked accounts. As with Snapchat, while you can get at your TikTok account on the web and access a limited number of settings, you can’t see a list of people you’ve blocked in a browser.
Messaging apps
Finding blocked contacts on WhatsApp.Screenshot: WhatsApp
iPhone and iPad
If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, it’s the same block list for the Phone app, Messages, and FaceTime. Open up Settings in iOS, then choose Phone and Blocked Contacts, Messages and Blocked Contacts, or FaceTime and Blocked Contacts. It’s the same list in each case, and you can add new people to it as well as take people off it.
On Android, the situation varies slightly depending on your phone, but on Pixel devices, the blocked list is synced between the Phone and Messages apps. You can tap the three dots (top right) from the Phone app, then Settings and Blocked numbers. From Messages, you can tap your profile picture (top right), then Spam and Blocked to see messages you’ve blocked; tap the three dots (top right) and Blocked numbers to view those as well.
WhatsApp
When it comes to WhatsApp, even after all these years, the mobile app interface is still different depending on which type of phone you have: If you’re on Android, tap the three dots (top right of the Chats tab), then choose Settings, Privacy, and Blocked contacts. On iOS, it’s Settings, then Privacy, and Blocked.
Signal
As for Signal, you can get to your list of blocked contacts by tapping on the three dots in the top right corner of the Chats tab, then picking Settings, Privacy, and Blocked. The next screen lets you add another contact to your blocked list, or unblock a contact that you’ve previously put there.
Telegram
The last messaging app we’ll cover is Telegram, which, like WhatsApp, has a different interface on different platforms. On Android, tap the three horizontal lines (top left), then Settings, Privacy and Security, and Blocked Users. On iOS, you switch to the Settings tab, then pick Privacy and Security and Blocked Users.
Email apps
You may have blocked contacts in your email app, too.Screenshot: Apple Mail
Your email clients are the final group of apps you want to check for blocked contacts. In Gmail on the web, click the gear icon (top right), then See all settings and Filters and blocked addresses. Scroll down to see email addresses that have been blocked and unblock them if needed.
Gmail
Strangely enough, you can’t get to these email addresses through the Gmail app on mobile—you can only get to the contacts blocked through your Google account, which covers services such as Google Chat, Google Photos, and Google Maps. These blocked users are separate from Gmail, and you can also find a list in your Google account on the web.
Apple Mail
If Apple Mail is your email service of choice, in the macOS client you can open the Mail menu and choose Settings, then switch to the Junk Mail tab and click Blocked to see email addresses you aren’t receiving messages from. On iOS, this list is actually shared with the Phone, Messages, and FaceTime apps—you can see it if you tap Mail and then Blocked from iOS Settings. The list isn’t available via iCloud on the web.
Outlook
In the default Outlook app for Windows, you need to click on the gear icon (top right), then choose Email and Junk email to find your blocked senders and domains. The layout is exactly the same if you open Outlook on the web to get to the same feature, but the list of blocked email addresses isn’t available through the Outlook mobile app.
Suppose you’re using a different email application. In that case, whether through a desktop client or a web interface, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find the options for blocked senders or junk emails—if there’s a regular correspondent who you haven’t heard from for quite some time, this might be why.
Federal officials are searching for more potential victims of a Texas man who recently pled guilty to cyberstalking women for almost three years in Colorado, Texas and Arizona.
Hugo Iram Cardona Jr., 21, used a scheme involving two-factor authentication — an electronic authentication method — to hack into the Snapchat accounts of at least 15 young women, then steal their intimate photos and videos, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas reports.
The Odessa man reached out to his victims on social media platforms like Instagram and “demanded that they ‘apologize,’ or he would publicly release the content,” according to the federal government office. He also pressured most of the young women into video chatting with him “while engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”
Cardona has pled guilty to three counts of cyberstalking and is scheduled for sentencing on June 3. Each count could result in up to 10 years in prison.
Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations and El Paso Police Department are trying to uncover any additional potential victims. The offenses likely took place between Aug. 15, 2020, and June 1, 2023.
Cardona used several phone numbers from the TextNow phone service to contact his victims, along with various Instagram accounts. His handles included: “idkprii85,” “designoiram,” “juniorrriram,” “urfavpapi,” “urdvddyjunie” and “juniorrhernandez.” He’s also linked to the following Snapchat accounts: “juniepri,” “asap_juniorrr” and “juniorrriram.”
Anyone who was in contact with Cardona using those accounts or phone numbers during the three-year period are asked to fill out a victim questionnaire. Officials say that victim identities will remain private and case-related information is kept confidential.
