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Snapchat has announced it will start charging users for storing photos and videos, a core feature of the social media platform. The news comes as Snapchat previously introduced a premium subscription feature, Snapchat+, in 2022.
Introduced in 2016, the Memories feature on the social media platform quickly became a popular way for users to archive photos and videos in order to reminisce on the past. The feature also prompted users to repost their archives as a throwback beyond the 24h window when initially shared.
Snapchat users will have to pay in order to store Memories over 5GB
Snapchat announced last week that users will have to pay in order to keep their archived posts if they exceed 5GB.
“When we first launched Memories, we never expected it to grow to what it has become today,” the company wrote in a news release. “We want to make sure that our community can continue to store all of their Memories over the long term, so we are introducing new Memories Storage Plans to support Snapchatters with more than 5GB of Memories.”
Snapchat added that users have saved over 1 trillion Memories since 2016. The social media company also said that most users have less than 5GB of Memories and the change won’t impact them.
For those who have over 5GB of Memories, Snapchat is introducing different storage plan options. The introductory storage plan that includes 100GB will cost $1.99 per month. Snapchat+ users will have 250GB of storage included in their $3.99 monthly subscription, while Snapchat Platinum users will get 5TB as part of their $15.99 monthly plan, according to TechCrunch.
For now, the company said it will provide 12 months of temporary Memories storage for storage exceeding 5GB. This allows users to either sign up to a plan or download their Memories on a device.
Snapchat’s announcement has received backlash from its users
Several users said they have been using the app for years and therefore have considerably more than 5GB of data archived on the social media platform. Some have qualified the news as “unfair” and “greedy” as they are now forced to choose between paying a subscription or losing their Memories, according to the BBC.
The news comes as Snapchat announced in April that it had surpassed 900 million monthly active users. It also comes as several social media platforms have introduced paid subscription plans in recent years. X, formerly Twitter, made headlines after making users pay in order to keep or add a blue checkmark in 2022. The following year, Instagram introduced a similar feature that allowed users to pay for verification via its Meta Verified service. Last week, Meta announced it would start offering a subscription plan to remove ads from Facebook and Instagram. The feature has launched in the United Kingdom.
“The road to paying for storage on social media is inevitable,” Drew Benvie, the founder and chief executive of social media consultancy Battenhall, told the BBC. “In an era where we post less, but save more, this is an evolution of messaging and social media platforms.”
