Snap Maps a new app by Snapchat lets its users to track other’s movements in real-time, however many child safety groups are cautioning youngsters against sharing their location. Here is Why?
Snapchat has introduced a map feature that lets users track different people’s location in real time, raising considerations among safety and privacy advocates.
Snap Maps which has launched this week, plots users and their snaps onto a map thus friends and other Snapchatters can see wherever they're and what they're doing.
Snapchat said in a Blog announcing update that, “We’ve built a whole new way to explore the world! See what’s happening, find your friends, and obtain inspired to go on an adventure!”
When they first use the feature, users can choose whether or not they wish to make their location visible to all or any of their friends, a selected group of connections or to nobody at all, that Snapchat refers to as “ghost mode”.
The new feature has raised considerations among safety specialists who worry it may be used to stalk or bully others and thus posses threat.
The Child Safety Group Childnet International said in a blog post that, “Given how specific this new feature is on Snapchat , giving your location to a definite pinpoint on a map , we encourage users to not share their location, particularly with individuals they don’t recognize face to face,”
“It is very important to watch out regarding who you share your location with, because it can enable individuals to build up an image of wherever you reside, when you attend college and where you pay your time,”
Larry Magid, the CEO of ConnectSafely.org added.“Parents need to sit down with their kids and acquire them to really consider which friends they're sharing their location with,”
“Users should bear in mind of the feature and review it periodically – if a friend becomes an ex-friend, as an example.”
Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc sees the new feature as a discoverability tool for the notoriously easy to navigate messaging app.
Snap product designer Jack Brody said, “There’s definitely the aspect of where are my friends and what’s happening around them, then again there’s a bigger aspect of what’s happening globally, There’s something very powerful about seeing the diversity, however also the similarity of snaps round the world.”
If there’s a serious event or breaking news happening that a lot of individuals are documenting on Snapchat, a patch of color can be seen on the map distinguishing the hotspot.
The map additionally incorporates “actionmojis”, a brand new form of personalised avatar that Snapchat automatically creates by analyzing the user’s location, time of day or speed of travel. thus some individuals can appear in an animated car, as an example. The actionmojis appear on the map once a user shares their location and disappear once they’ve been offline for many hours.
Snapchat isn’t the First Social Media to enable location tracking. Twitter also lets individuals to add their locations to tweets, whereas Facebook check-ins and also the “share location” messenger feature enable individuals to trace their contacts. Also Apple enables its users to share their location on a map for a limited period of time.
Snap Maps is based on technology acquired when Snap bought social mapping startup Zenly in late May. Zenly’s app lets its users to see where their friends are in real time and also send them as messages.
To access the map, users need to open the app and pinch to zoom out on the screen, then it displays a map of the native area. Users can change whether or not they're visible to others within the setting of the App.
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