Snap experience as a man

2026-06-12 13:40 UTC

Hello Lemmy, I have been wondering about this for a while. A few years ago I, a man nearing his 40s, got snap because my niece was using it and wanted someone to snap with. I downloaded it and we played around sending snap pictures to each other. Then I looked around in the stories section, where you can see what other are posting. All I could see was very attractive half-naked women doing lewd poses with suggestive text. This was what snaps algorithm apparently thought I would be interested in, nothing but what is basically clothed softcore porn. I don’t see anything meaningful. Occasionally there are videos of bloopers and “funny” clips, often super old and reused a thousand times. Lots of pranks too, usually involving attractive half-dressed women or tight fitting clothes. Then there is a weird girls that want to add you to chat and about three texts in they start sending half nudes, usually in underwear. I don’t know if these are real women or bots, some feel very bot like, other don’t. I don’t really know what they want or why they do that. Is it scams? Or do women and men these days actually do that? Send nudes to each other for no reason? It is very jarring to me and I am not traditionalist or moralist, I consider myself very open and progressive, but this is just bizarre to me. Either way I got snap to chat with my niece and now these women are sending unsolicited almost-nudes (they never ask if they can send it, it just comes out of the blue, often out of context). This feel very in appropriate and like a very inappropriate app for my 12 year old niece and her now 9 years old younger sister who also have snap now. They probably aren’t being shown such content, but they will be encourage to eventually I assume. Is this normal for snap? Is it because the algorithm knows that I am a upper 30s man and it just assumes we want to be fed with porn and funny videos? What are you experiences of snap? What is snap showing to women? Snaps feels like a distinctly sexual app, not to mention that it encourages very very unrealistic standards, some women there don’t even look real, like they are using some filter or something. I have been wanting to bring this up with my brother and his wife, but haven’t really mustered the courage.

Replies (8)

@Fleppensteijn@feddit.nl 2026-06-12 14:07

Seems similar to Instagram. They want you to add them because more followers makes them appear more popular. Snapchat I’ve never used but it’s kind of known to be popular with pedos and thus pedo hunters, who probably write you.

Open ##3300956
@Wren@lemmy.today 2026-06-12 14:43

I’m a chick over 30 and I get these messages, too. I can’t say if it’s as severe because age and gender are factors in algorithms, but it’s all pics and content of women(bots) as well. Usually on facebook and instagram. I’ve just accepted it as the cost of using the app. I have two nieces as well, one who’s been well educated in how these things work and how to avoid scams, and another younger one who isn’t allowed on the internet without supervision. It bothers me, but I accept the only thing I can do is give advice and answer question honestly.

Open ##3301109
@reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 2026-06-12 15:11

I never used Snap but back when I had instagram I tried to train my algorithm to show me ONLY cute animal posts by only clicking in to view those videos (selecting from explorer rather than scroll mode). Nonetheless, IG insisted on including fitness and diet influencer videos and random “funny” clips in my feed

Open ##3301242
@Tetsuo@jlai.lu 2026-06-12 15:38

Is this normal for snap? Is it because the algorithm knows that I am a upper 30s man and it just assumes we want to be fed with porn and funny videos? What are you experiences of snap? What is snap showing to women? Snaps feels like a distinctly sexual app, not to mention that it encourages very very unrealistic standards, some women there don’t even look real, like they are using some filter or something. Duh, I’m sorry if this feels rude but obviously the algorithm sees men allocating their attention to ““porn like”” content and will therefore serve that to these demographics. And the fact that women receive them too in my opinion doesn’t invalidate that either. The other aspect of it is that easily influencable kids will look around and think being this sexually suggestive is just the norm and will think “why shouldn’t I do it too ?”. I know I have male friends that are on Instagram solely and admittedly just for this “softcore porn” content and when I tried the app myself it was clearly pushing me toward that too. Since I was not interested I uninstalled but I have no doubt that if you are a man these algorithm will go out of there way to push porn like content and at the other end will encourage inadvertently the content creators to go for that type of content.

Open ##3301343
@moistracoon@lemmy.zip 2026-06-12 15:52

Dang I thought this was linuxmemes for a sec. Yeah Snapchat is pretty bad, I see people comparing it to other social media and I think it’s not much worse but definitely more of a “I just jumped in and all I see is porn” where on meta it sorta creeps in over time.

Open ##3301413
@whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 2026-06-12 18:39

Just so you understand: social media apps (and websites!) measure your linger time (how long the device’s viewport is over specific stuff), the cadence of your typing, correlate the use timing to generate an idea of your sleep/work schedule, use tons of seemingly innocuous device reported metrics and naturally scrape your cookies through cross application “attacks” in addition to paying attention to the interactive parts they surface to you like clicking stuff, liking or favoriting, repeat viewing, friending or whatever. There’s two reasons I’m saying this: one is because you may not realize that the algorithm is showing you porno because it recognizes that you interacted with porno just by being disgusted by it or by letting the screen rest there long enough to tug one out. It doesn’t know the difference. The other is to hopefully help make it clear exactly how wrong people were when they called social media the panopticon. The panopticon isn’t just a word we use to describe surveillance, but a real building design some English guy came up with where all the prisoners cells are in a big circle and so you save on guard costs because one guard in a central tower can look at any particular one. It’s a stupid idea because prison guards are cheap and provide more than just the threat of observation and it relies on the prisoners all knowing they could be observed, not being certain that they are being observed. Social media is an unimaginable inversion of the panopticon where the prisoner is in the middle surrounded by manned guard posts all equipped with searchlights pointed at him. Just bear in mind that when you do bring up this stuff to your brother you’re gonna need to mediate your recognition of how insane the world is.

Open ##3302438
@communism@lemmy.ml 2026-06-12 18:45

Never used Snapchat but there’s a lot of porn bots on social media. Not really sure where they come from but I guess it must be profitable and some gullible and horny people are falling for them because the bots haven’t gone away. It is very unlikely that a real woman would just be messaging random accounts with unsolicited nudes. Unfortunately your nieces are probably getting similar bot spam. I don’t think it’s demographically targeted at all; they just seem to message everyone. I’ve gotten them as a woman on social media too (albeit a gay one, but I don’t think these bots are targeted at gay women lol, I think they’re targeting men). It might be worth trying to introduce them to some fun hobbies so they don’t feel the need to spend so much time on Snapchat, but I get that it’s a social thing too and it’s hard to opt out if all the other kids are on it.

Open ##3302495
@vapor_body@lemmy.ml 2026-06-13 22:38

Don’t bother harassing the scammers back some of them are kidnapped if they’re not just bots looking for marks

Open ##3312732