Snapchat is withdrawing its provocative “speed filter” from Snaps this week, according to NPR reports. The in-app effect promotes your current speed in distances or kilometers per hour.
Many experts had insisted on highlighting elevated rash driving — with some stating that Snap should be held responsible when the speed filter was correlated to fatal car accidents. There have been increased prosecutions over the years linking Snapchat to car wrecks.
One worrying a 2015 car crash in Georgia reported just a few years after Snapchat was initially updated to incorporate the filter. Since the organization has dismissed the filter to a sticker, concealing it in a separate list makes it more challenging to apply.
The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court lately ordered that Snap be prosecuted for the speed filter/sticker’s responsibility in car mishaps. The tribunal decided that Snap isn’t defended here by Section 230 — a part of the Communications Decency Act that guards businesses against being prosecuted over the content users promulgate on a platform.
Lemmon v. Snap included separate crashes in Georgia that happened in the passing of three men in 2017. The Ninth Circuit court said that the family members of the guys could litigate Snap after the case was initially dropped in 2020.
Snap affirmed that the sticker is being assassinated and submitted the following announcement to The Verge:
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our Snapchat community, and we had previously disabled the filter at driving speeds. However, today the sticker is barely used by Snapchatters, and in light of that, we are removing it altogether.”
Snapchat for iOS is withdrawing its once-popular speed filter amid anxieties about security and rash driving. The filter has become significantly less prevalent over the years, and Snap says it’s now entirely discarded from the application because it’s “barely used.”
