Did Snapchat hellban my garden injuries?

April 22, 2016 11:38 AM

I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this, but I am curious about it in any case. I took a few photos for my "story" in Snapchat when I was working on the yard yesterday including one later where I pointed to my cut up forearms from working with all the brush. When I spoke with my SO today, he'd seen the story, but not that specific photo. We compared notes sitting right next to each other: when I look at my story on Snapchat, I see the image. When he looks at my story, it skips right over it. When I look at who has seen my snaps, all the ones around it have a few views and that one has zero. What happened?

My hypothesis is that maybe snapchat has an "auto self-harm deleter" function which overreached, but I'm sure the real answer is probably a lot more dull. I checked their community guidelines but nothing there specifically. Here's a screenshot from my story as well as the image itself. Ideas?

posted by jessamyn to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I can't even access that link of the screenshot - it's just a blank page.
posted by corb at 1:53 PM on April 22, 2016

Like corb, I see a blank page at that mlkshk link. About an hour ago the picture was showing, but no longer.

My guess is that yes, this is an automated self-harm filter gone awry.
posted by sockermom at 1:58 PM on April 22, 2016

Just for context, mlkshk is an unrelated image hosting community, and has been having some incidental instability today that is unrelated to anything regarding Snapchat.
posted by cortex at 2:22 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not saying your arrows look phallic, but perhaps this is the auto-deleter filter that got you?
What not to Snap?
Nudity or sexually suggestive content involving minors (people under the age of 18).....This includes adding drawings or captions to a Snap to make it sexual -- even as a joke.

posted by NoraCharles at 3:02 PM on April 22, 2016

No answer, but fwiw I see the picture at the mlkshk link.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 3:54 PM on April 22, 2016

My money's on a self-harm photo, too - I can easily see someone writing parameters that would perfectly match the photo, especially since these are red marks on pale skin.
posted by SMPA at 4:02 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

I can't access the picture but I did find this on a quick Google search, it mentions "They don't tolerate 'Snaps' that share: Self-Harm"
posted by sweetmarie at 4:27 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks folks and sorry about the random MLKSHK downtime. Did not even occur to me that the arrows might look like little dicks! So jury is still out but now I have two possible paths to consider.
posted by jessamyn at 11:22 AM on April 23, 2016