Snapchat Deletion

Snapchat is one of the most used social media apps amongst people in the world in today’s era. The app rose to fame in 2011 after creators developed Snapchat Inc. It is truly the fastest way to share a moment. They are partners with Bitmoji, an animated emoji-version of the user and it tracks “best friends” or how many consecutive days you have snapchatted someone called streaks. The multimedia messaging app prides itself on the security and privacy of its user though. Snapchat allows users to create time constraints when they send photos, videos, or text messages to their recipient. It even notifies you when someone is typing a message or puts a lock on someone’s story when they only want a particular audience for it.

Snapchat does a good at keeping their user’s information very private between each other, only allowing people to see what is intended for them to see. However, there is one major flaw in their design where they try to give both parties involved notifications on the actions of each other. Recently, snapchat has allowed for the sender of a word message to go back and delete the message they sent. Theoretically, it would be nice for the user to be able to delete the message without the recipient knowing. Informing the recipient that the sender has deleted the message defeats the purpose of actually deleting the message in the first place. Why would I want someone to know I sent them something and then deleted it because I realized I did not want them to see it anymore? It looks extremely suspicious and creates and sense of awkwardness in the air. The recipient is likely to respond with “Why did you just delete that message?” or “What did you not want me to see after you sent it?”, it is just awkward.

Snapchats purpose behind this is clear, they want everything to be put out in the open between people interacting with other: no secrets. Developers may have felt obligated to add this feature because how transparent they were with all other feature in the app. However, this major flaw is simply just not a good addition to the interface of the app. Instead, the developers could just actually delete the message without notifying the recipient to avoid any awkward occurrences and it would improve the efficiency of deleting a message. Right now, people have to worry about the awkwardness after, if they just deleted the message that problem would be eliminated. Snapchat notifying the recipient that the sender deleted a message is redundant and the user should know that this is going to take place. They should be clearer about what is going to happen. The developers have simply just blocked the message with another message saying, “you deleted a message”. Instead of saying “delete”, call it something like “hide” or “obscure” so that the user has a clear understanding on what is going to happen. Another approach would be to give a grace period after sending the message. This would allow for the sender to delete the message without the recipient knowing.