14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, Snapchat updated its privacy policy and terms of service, and as these things always went in the past, users (who are not lawyers) overreacted and misunderstood the whole thing.
The company did release an official statement two days later, but in the meantime, everyone was already up in arms about Snapchat's nerve to even propose such a new policy in the first place.
What was so terrible, you ask? Maybe text like this: "you grant Snapchat a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed)."
That piece of text and many more other paragraphs, when put together, painted a gloomy picture.
The problem, for many users who don't regularly read privacy policies and terms of service, is that almost all companies have such terms of service to begin with. From Facebook to Twitter, from Google to Flickr, they all have them, mainly to allow the company to use user-generated data in other services or for promotional services.
The new terms of service were added because of Snapchat's Live Stories feature
In Snapchat's response to this whole issue, the company made it clear that the policy applies only to publicly shared posts.
"First off, we want to be crystal clear: The Snaps and Chats you send your friends remain as private today as they were before the update," said a Snapchat representative. "Those messages are automatically deleted from our servers once we detect that they have been viewed or have expired."
The company then goes on to detail that the new privacy policy and terms of service were introduced to cover Snapchat's Live Stories feature. Because Live Stories are public snaps shown all around the world, the company only wanted and needed the legal consent from its users to do so without getting in any kind of legal trouble.
So if you decided to stop using Snapchat, think again. All private snaps will continue to be private and belong to you alone.
Read the new @Snapchat privacy/legal policies before deciding whether to click yes. Scary stuff in there, kids. pic.twitter.com/RvXMk1JPdn
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) October 29, 2015