Snapchat customers share fury at upcoming charges for Memories storage

But Mr Navarra mentioned introducing charges for a service that had beforehand been free, and customers had been inspired to make use of as such, might really feel like a “bait and switch” for some.

“Moving the goalposts after people have built this huge digital archive doesn’t really sit right,” he mentioned.

And for a lot of, he added, “Memories aren’t just data dumps, they’re emotional artefacts”.

The feeling was shared by these leaving crucial evaluations, with one individual calling their Snapchat images and movies “the most precious thing to me”.

“[Memories] have every aspect of my life within them from celebrations of new family members’ births, mourning of passed loved ones, memories with friends/family, [and] my whole teenage years,” they wrote.

Dr Taylor Annabell, a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University within the Netherlands, mentioned Snapchat’s transfer reveals the implications of business platforms getting used to retailer sentimental private content material.

“They benefit from this trust, interdependence, and presumption of never-ending access, which even incentivises some users to remain with the platform or continue to use it in order to scroll back through their archive,” she informed the BBC.

“But these are not benevolent guardians of personal memory.”