Snapchat has published a new overview of its ongoing efforts to combat the spread of misinformation in its app, which also provides some valuable insights into the variance between Snap and other platforms and why it requires a unique, dedicated approach.

Whereas Facebook and Twitter do their part to contain misinformation, especially about vaccine side effects during this COVID-19 period, Snapchat appears largely absent in the same discussions with its alternative approach to social potentially outlining a framework for better managing news distribution in the same respect.

Essentially, Snapchat claims that it is actually succeeding in its misinformation and safety approach because the layout of this app is designed toward closeness over broadcasting to the world at large.

Snap says:

"Snapchat was initially designed to let people have conversations with their closest friends, not as a place to broadcast messages to the entire app. We've always felt very responsible for ensuring that news and information our community comes across on Snapchat is trustworthy and clearly sourced."

Indeed, the more closed nature of the app does confer upon it some advantages in this regard, while, as noted above, that also presents a fascinating point regarding why Snapchat marketing is distinct.

"Throughout our app, we don't give 'viral' opportunities to unvetted content. Snapchat doesn't have an open, unmoderated newsfeed where unvetted individuals or publishers can propagate false information."

This public news feed approach, which seeks to amplify content that engenders the most engagement, really incentivizes the 'hot take' approach to press coverage, where balance and reason are less likely to cause a stir than sensationalism and partisan reporting.

This has been underlined many times: a study conducted by MIT in 2018 found that false news stories are a full 70% more likely to be retweeted than true reports, while Twitter's retweet chains of false reports "reach a cascade depth of 10 about 20 times faster than facts." Another study published last year found Facebook to be driving significant traffic to untrustworthy news sources.

And it makes sense. Hollywood gossip magazines have made an entire industry out of longbow reporting, even blatant falsehoods because it is far more interesting to share something that's considered forbidden fruit-which, in this case, has a sensationalized bite to it, a rejection of the status quo, and therefore, more thrilling than people's mundane existences. Part of us, inherently, wants to be that insider, that one who's privy to the big secrets before everybody else, that behind-the-scenes information and gossip. And no doubt, and can be a thrill to share the latest rumors with your followers, and get all the Likes and comments as a result.

That makes sense, but when you take that same framework, expand it to political news and health information, as we have seen lately, that can have really significant, dangerous consequences.

Now, of course, everyone is their own media outlet, sharing and re-sharing whatever the latest things are that 'they don't want us to know'. People can now curate their very own gossip magazines, on any issue that they like, and in many ways it's human nature to seek out these edge examples in a bid to crack the unknown codes of the world, and feel part of something bigger. That, in a broader sense, is a major issue in the social media landscape, and giving every person a platform to amplify such, because people want the notification rush, the pings of excitement that come with those red alerts in their apps.

Snapchat eschews this by deliberately not providing a public news feed, which lessens the incentive to be controversial, and to fish for likes and comments with these hot takes.

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That's really the biggest reason why Snapchat has been able to avoid much of the associated controversy, though it also notes that it takes additional, defined steps to prohibit the spread of identified misinformation, fact-check all political and advocacy ads (by human review), and impose limits on the size of group chats to further reduce potential amplification.

There's even a specific dig at Facebook's approach to the same:

“Our approach to enforcing against content that includes false information is straightforward - we don’t label it, we completely remove it.”

In some ways, Snap could be seen as a model of moderation in these respects, but as Snap itself observes, it's not the same as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, since public comments and discussion are not readily available and have far less opportunity to gain viral traction.

So while Snap's patting itself on the back here, it's also clearly pointing out that it's not the same as other social apps so there really isn't a one-to-one comparison, either.

Could other apps have approached things in a less public manner? I mean, Facebook kind of does, in that your main News Feed, where people spend most of their time, is populated by people you're connected to. But because everybody is on Facebook, that still gives it an expanded scope for amplification - if Snapchat had the same amount of users as Facebook does, it would likely be in a similar situation.

But perhaps removing public posting as an option could be a way to reduce the spread of that type of thing in all apps? Maybe that could somewhat lessen the incentive to post engagement bait, as a means to 'go viral' and get those Likes.

Maybe.

It's hard to say, but it could be something worth considering - but then again, neither Facebook nor Twitter is likely to do that, given the engagement benefits they see from public posting in their apps.

So it's not the same, it's not a real comparison here. But it's interesting to consider Snapchat as a case study on such either way.