snapchat: Snapchat announces features aimed to save teens from harassment, drugs – Times of India

Instant messaging platform Snapchat has announced two new features aimed at the security of teens using the platform. The features, the company claims, will help protect them from strangers, potential harassment and drugs.
One of these features has been added to the friend suggestion feature ‘Quick Add‘ to bolster protection for 13 to 17 year olds on the platform. Snapchat is not going to show friend suggestions of users in the age of 13-17 years to others, unless they have a set of mutual friends.
“We recently added a new safeguard to Quick Add, our friend suggestion feature, to further protect 13 to 17 year olds. In order to be discoverable in Quick Add by someone else, users under 18 will need to have a certain number of friends in common with that person — further ensuring it is a friend they know in real life,” announced Snapchat in a blogpost.
When it comes to the issue of drugs, the company has faced severe criticism over the years on account of various teenagers losing their lives after purchasing drugs on the online platform. Snapchat has said that it’s made some progress with its drug-detecting algorithms, with the current upgrade to its machine learning and AI algorithm claimed to give 33% increase in detection since the last update. The company also has two new partners to the Heads Up portal – Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) and Truth Initiative.
“88% of drug related content we uncover is now proactively detected by our machine learning and artificial intelligence technology, with the remainder reported by our community. This is an increase of 33% since our previous update”, said the company.