Snapchat has been on the spotlight for many things like turning-down a billion-dollar buyout from Facebook and later the cloning of their essential features by well, Facebook. However, the key aspect that got the young social network on the map was self-destructing texts and videos. The app was unique due to its ability of disappearing texts and videos a couple of seconds after they are read/viewed by the recipient. In fact, the technique used to destroy the sent media was so advanced -that it was labelled “military-grade” – such that the media could not be retrieved even by law enforcers.
With time, people have come up with ways of retaining the sent media even after its disappearing timer runs out. The easiest way was to use screen-recorder apps. Nowadays, many phones have the functionality built in, but Android has not officially integrated it into the stock version. The iPhone users, on the other hand, have the feature embedded into the new iOS 11 update, this will see a lot more people record secret media.
Snapchat has already foreseen such behaviour and has tackled it will a heads up to the sender. Whenever an iPhone user records secret media, it will be saved in the Photos App, but the sender will instantly get a notification saying that a video has been recorded. Unfortunately, the sender does not have a way of stopping the record from happening, neither can they delete the recorded copy from the recipient’s phone. Some people are seeing this as a lazy escape for Snapchat, it would have been more beneficial if they could have a way of avoiding their video from being recorded in the first place, the company could simply override the iOS 11 screen-record feature. Of course, cunning recipients can simply record the sent video using the camera of another phone, I would like to see how Snap Inc. tackles that.