Not-so-ephemeral NSFW images
In the flow of posted images, banal photos of young people in full study. Among these innocuous images sometimes hide pornographic content. These are mostly announced before they are broadcast by a message displayed on the user’s screen: “The next snap is Not Safe For Work (NSFW) – Not suitable for work”. Understand by this that it is better to hide your screen so as not to be seen.
Although Snapchat’s principle is that the images or videos only appear for about ten seconds on the phone screen, the user just needs to press a combination of keys simultaneously to capture the moment and so save the image in his phone.
For Emeline, a 20-year-old law student, the practice is not shocking. “I think people are aware of what Snapchat is. And then, they are at university, they are generally adults. It’s their problem. We must not forget that the phenomenon is not new, even if it is gaining momentum with this kind of group. Before, we received naughty images on Facebook conversations or by Skype”.
The underlying drifts
The use of these Snapchat groups leads to other abuses. It happens that people photographed without their knowledge end up in the flow of images, the “story” of the group, and this for 24 hours. Some little jokers don’t hesitate to display the mobile number of the person photographed without their permission. Guillaume, 22, has already paid the price. “A friend, who knew I was single, told me a bad joke. When she photographed me in secret, she took the opportunity to slip my phone number which remained visible for 24 hours. Result: I was inundated with messages of all kinds”, he explains.
Amandine was able to see that the content broadcast on the group from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL) has radically changed in content. “At first it was a great group. The photos were funny. It made me laugh. But that changed very quickly and in the end, I was shocked to come across photos of breasts or even worse…”.
