Gabriel Oshman- Conversation 3

The article “Snapchat Wants You to Post, and It’s Willing to Pay Millions” published in January of 2021 is about highlighting the addition of a new feature, the Spotlight feature, on Snapchat and how they are trying to make their app relevant compared to apps that have been around longer. Spotlight is a way for users to post short form content like you might find on TikTok and share it across the platform. The article starts talking about a TikTok star Cam Casey who was able to post a video that went viral and was paid millions of dollars by Snapchat for the engagement he brought. Many of the stars on Snapchat at the time were people with large followings on other platforms but the article highlights there are exceptions. Another user Andrea Romo, a sales associate, was able to make half a million dollars in two weeks for a video she posted over Thanksgiving. The article then talks about how you don’t need to go through a lengthy monetization process to receive money for your posts like other platforms and that makes making money on any given post easier as long as you get views. Because of these large payouts many creators besides Casey are moving over to Snapchat but the large numbers are starting to stretch Snapchat’s budget thin and it is unclear if they will be able to pay their users such large amounts far into the future. For the time being, creators will use whatever sight will get them the most views, followers and money, highlighting how different and some might even say strange world we live in that people are able to make a living off of posting random videos.

I don’t really use social media that much. I have a few accounts, a Snapchat and a Twitter but I use Snapchat mainly for messaging and I use Twitter to follow news in the film and video game industries and occasionally news will pop into my feed as well. I do have a spend a lot of time blocking or muting accounts that are spreading misinformation and it can be hard to tell what counts as that just from short posts sometimes. I don’t engage with social media as much as other people I would say so I don’t think this article or Fakey will change my habits. I couldn’t see the sources for the articles in the game and for me that is a big part of how I vet what news will be reliable or not as well as how the title might be written so I found the game harder than checking a source for reliability normally.

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