Welcome, Comrade Snapchat

By Molly Osberg  |  January 15, 2021 | 4:40pm
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Welcome, Comrade Snapchat
Photo:Philip Taylor (Fair Use)

Today, Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times has published a hell of a blog about the lengths a flailing company will go to bury a competitor. Incidentally, those lengths look a lot like taking millions of dollars from shareholders and funneling it directly to the teens: An innovative if chaotic redistribution of wealth that, in this woman’s opinion, should be industry standard.

According to Lorenz, in an attempt to bring influencers to the platform, Snapchat has begun paying out more than a million dollars every day between users whose video go viral, inspiring a torrent of young posters to migrate over from TikTok. They include a 27-year-old Lowe’s worker in New Mexico who got $500,000 for an off-the-cuff video of her sister, a TikTok star who is now worth about $3 million, a high school student who says the money she made will allow her to apply to better colleges, and this lucky person named Dax:

“You don’t have to ask to be paid, you don’t have to join any program, you just post a video and if it does well you get paid,” said Dax Newman, 19, a ceramist in San Diego who has made about $30,000 on Snapchat.

It’s unclear how long this experiment will last, and as Lorenz reports, meme accounts are already trying to game the system. Competition will, unfortunately, start to get a bit stiff.

That said, Jezebel salutes Snapchat for having the courage to do what no politician has possessed the will to manifest: Pay Americans vast sums of money just for hanging out and posting online.

 
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