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- [00:03]
A
Welcome to Family Tech Talk, the show that helps you be the tech expert of your home. From interviews with lifestyle experts on how they use technology to tech tips and the latest news, no matter what your skill level is with Family Tech Talk, you can be the person all your friends and family go to for tech advice. Let's get right into today's episode. Hello and welcome back to Family Tech, where you get to be the tech expert of your home. And today I'm actually really excited. I mean, I think I said I'm really excited about my guests like every week. So it's losing its. But, but today I am talking to the head of law enforcement out outreach at snap. So we're talking Snapchat today, people. And this is Rachel Hawkhouser, and I'm hoping I said your name correct.
- [00:54]
B
You got it. Hi. Thanks for having me.
- [00:58]
A
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with this company called Snapchat.
- [01:03]
B
Yeah, sure. So I, as we were just saying right before we joined, I hail from New York City and I was a prosecutor in New York and also for a period of time in the Hague, but over, over altogether about 20 years. And I spent a lot of time prosecuting crimes against children and investigating crimes against children, safety in general and also safety of younger people. So has always been like, at the core of my work my whole life, very mission driven and I was really lucky to find a home amongst people who had, you know, the same feeling and the same dedication to that mission on our safety operations team at Snapchat. So that's kind of, that's encapsulating my whole life into about two minutes. That's been my journey. So where. So I'm the head of law enforcement outreach at Snap and I also work within our safety operations teams as a strategic advisor. So really trying to bring in the information that we get from law enforcement, from parents, from educators, from all of those really important communities and, and you know, bring it back into the company and make sure that we're responding to it.
- [02:24]
A
That's awesome. So if you have any questions at all for Rachel during this, I've got some really hard hitting questions for her too. So make sure you get those in the comments and we will definitely address those. So the first one I've got, and we're going to start right off the bat, you know, hitting hard on Rachel today. So I know you're up for the test.
- [02:47]
B
Getting nervous? Yeah.
- [02:49]
A
Yeah. So Snapchat appears in the news a lot for being a problematic platform for teens. So what are some of the things that Snapchat is doing to help protect teens?
- [03:01]
B
Yeah, so actually, thank you for asking that question. You know, let me say first that Snapchat is a product that was designed for people over the people 13 and over to connect with real friends, people that they actually know in real life. And it's designed, so it's really designed in a lot of ways in order to minimize being connected with or being contacted by people that you don't know, people that we don't want contacting teens. Right. Strangers. And so there's a lot of things that we do in the architecture of Snapchat itself. So of the product and in order to make that the case. Right. So we don't have, for example, public friends lists. Right. You can't see who teenagers who are using Snap, you can't Snapchat, you can't see who they're friends with. And we make it hard to connect with people who you don't actually have some connection to already. So either common friends or are in your address book. We just rolled out a series of protections specifically for our teen users in September, including things like, you know, an interstitial that pops up. So if you're getting that sort of suspicious friend request from somebody that you don't have those connections to, there's now like a prompt that will basically say, honestly, I don't, I don't have the actual words. But it basically says like, hey, are you sure you want to be connected to this person? And so we also have very strict stringent privacy settings that are set to private, like set off by default. For example, our geolocation sharing, a lot of people use the Snap map, but you have to opt in to use the Snap map. So you have to turn it on and it's set off by default. And you can control within it who sees your location and who doesn't. It's not like if you turn it on, you turn it on for everybody. And I know I'm going to suspect that we're going to talk about this a little bit more later. But also about, I think it was about 18 months ago, we also rolled out our family center, which is our parent, where we, where our parent controls live. And so it's a way for parents to get on the app and connect with their kids accounts and really have insight into how their kids are spending a time on the app. And then finally I'll say one of the really important things about protecting teens online and on Snapchat is educating their parents and the grownups in their lives, not just educating them, but empowering them, giving them tools and knowledge to help them make the decisions for their family that are best and have those conversations with their kids. And so we just um, we just started a microsite called and you saw me just glance because sometimes I reverse the words. It's parents.snapchat.com so I'm gonna say, oh nice. Yeah. Parents.snapchat.com and on that site we have videos that are available that explain, actually explain the app.
- [06:28]
A
That's actually good.
- [06:32]
B
I know I'm 44.
- [06:33]
A
Whenever I get on Snapchat I'm like, I'm too old to be here. I, I don't get it.
- [06:37]
B
I'm not too old to be there. But that's, but I feel you. I mean I'm 50. And you know, before I joined Snapchat, I had never said I had an account because I liked to put, you know, the filters on my kids faces. But I had never sent anybody a message because my peers weren't on it. And so what we found, not just from my own personal experience, but you know, from speaking to people like you and other family, you know, other adult, other parents and educators, members of law enforcement also that they just don't, they don't have familiarity with the application. So on our parents microsite, we've just launched sort of a YouTube mic, YouTube explainer series to familiarize the important adults in teens lives with the app so they can see where their kids are spending time, understand it. And of course, if that's not just because we want you in the app, it's because, because in order to, to talk to your kids about what dangers they have to be aware of and alert to, you have to understand the environment that you're talking about. Right. So there's videos about like videos about the app itself, videos about, about what, what dangers there might be. So what to be on the alert for and just in order. The goal is to empower adults and parents to, to really be able to have those conversations so that they can make the best choice for their families and participate with their, with their teens in those choices.
- [08:21]
A
Yeah, I always say be where your teen is sharing. And I think that's so important to be on the same platform. You don't have to interact with your teen on the platform, but just be there and understand what's going on for sure. So that's great, that's a great resource. Parents.snapchat.com Definitely check that out.
- [08:40]
B
People center through it also.
- [08:44]
A
Oh, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the Family center, that's actually one of. One of my most viewed videos is just a really quick short on how to set up the family pairing for, or I guess family. I'm like, what do you guys call it? Like, it's called pairing in TikTok.
- [09:01]
B
How to pair your account.
- [09:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, so you do have to have your own Snapchat account to manage or monitor your child's Snapchat account. So again, you know, get yourself an account. It might be scary. You don't have to, like, you know, snap your friends all the time. But.
- [09:19]
B
Well, but I will say, though, even though to participate in Family center, you do need your own account, but if you wanted to report a problem to us, you don't need an account to report a problem to us. You can go to our safety center and report an account online as well. And so there's multiple ways in to talk to us and communicate with us, even if you're not on the app.
- [09:42]
A
Got it. That. That's very good to know. So I and you, we kind of just touched on this already. And this is my next question. Like, a lot of parents are not aware of these controls. So what are you trying to do to try and get that word out, you know, about parents, snapchat.com because that's a great resource. But if parents don't even know about it, what, what are you trying to do to get that out there?
- [10:05]
B
Yeah, so great question. One thing is like, hi,
- [10:10]
A
hello, family Tech.
- [10:14]
B
You know, and obviously it's not just me out here doing it. We have a lot of team members who are out here taking these kinds of opportunities to talk to parents where they are, and also educators. And we've also been working with school resource officers because we understand, and the national association of School Resource Officers, because those are the adults, whether it's school safety, parents, educators, those are the adults that we, you know, we want to be giving these tools to and making aware. So, you know, we're, we're, we're out kind of evangelizing these resources wherever we can.
- [10:52]
A
Yeah, that's great. Something interesting. And maybe you guys have thought of this too, and maybe you guys have done something like this too. But I got a mailer from Tick Tock about, like, the parental controls in Tick Tock, and I was like, oh, interesting that they would, like, send me a little, like, pamphlet in the mail. So maybe something like that too might be.
- [11:11]
B
Yeah, it's a great idea. I mean, to, to Your point where we. We're constantly thinking of ways and talking about other ways to. To. To reach people and not just to. Not just to let them know about what we have. Like, to let them know about Family center, let them know about parents.snapchat.com we did have like, a big kind of press and press. We had a lot of. We were talking to a lot of members of the press to try to get it out. Also we have a safety and impact. Impact blog. But also we're out there because we want the input from. From the right. We also want to know what your experience is because it helps us to. To do better. And our work is never done. Right. We. We all know that. It's just. There's not. It's not like we roll it out and then we're like, all right, we're done. You know, we're done here.
- [12:01]
A
It's.
- [12:02]
B
It's. It's the beginning. And then we start iterating on it and trying to improve it and always talking about thinking about it. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna talk to talk to the team about a mailer. Yeah.
- [12:12]
A
Yeah, I. I was shocked and like. And it wasn't just because of, like, you know, of who I am. Like, literally my entire neighborhood got this mailer from TikTok. And I'm like, oh, this is like, super interesting. And it was like a, you know, a few pages just like, how to set up the parental controls in TikTok. And you're like, oh, yeah.
- [12:30]
B
Well, it goes to what we were just talking about, right? About meeting people where they are. So if the parents are at their mailbox. Right. Not online.
- [12:40]
A
I mean, hopefully, you know, I don't get a lot of mail anymore, so it's like, oh, look, something new. Yeah, Strange. Strange that people would be mailing me things. So, like, even with these controls and you said you're. You're talking to people, trying to figure out what else you can do, like, what else do you think is kind of on the horizon? I mean, what you can talk about for, you know, improvements to the print, the parent center, and. And all of that. Is there you things you're doing to, like, in the future to keep kids safer?
- [13:19]
B
Yeah. So there we're. You know, as I said, we just rolled out a number of things in September. We're continuing to improve, like, on Family center, we just rolled out increased content controls for safer or more bespoke content experience for teens. And, you know, I know we're looking at this right now. We're very, very focused also on talking about and thinking about age verification and what we can, what we can do there. And it's just, it's, it's a, it's a, honestly a never ending process. And so in addition to the, you know, some of the, the other recent improvements that I just talked about it, we're always talking about how to improve the, the product itself and also how to get out in, in the world and make sure that people understand what we're doing. Because fundamentally, as I think it's sort of where I started, we want people on Snapchat and particularly young people on Snapchat to be able to communicate in a safe, fun way with one another. Like, and we want it to be a hostile environment for bad actors. We just, we don't want, you know, we want it to be a safe, fun place. That's why we, that's why, that's why we made Snapchat.
- [14:51]
A
Right.
- [14:52]
B
So. And we also work, you know, when we do a lot of work also with law enforcement and with the authorities to, to support investigations when bad things do happen.
- [15:08]
A
Yeah, a couple, I mean this is totally unrelated to like kids, but like with law enforcement and criminal behavior, I, I follow a lot of court cases. Like, I'm obsessed with like the court process. So I was watching the Murdoch trial and one of the like key pieces of evidence in the Murdoch trial was actually a Snapchat that the Paul sent. So, so just super interesting how, you know, people think like these are disappearing messages and things like that. But you know, when it comes down to it, like if you're going to do criminal behavior, that's probably still not the best platform to be using because it's going to come out.
- [15:48]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's. And that was one of our team members, Heidi, who testified in, I watched that whole testimony. Yeah, I'm to tell her in the, in the trial. And it's, it's a great example actually and obviously that the crime had nothing to do with Snapchat.
- [16:04]
A
Right.
- [16:04]
B
It was evidence in the, in the trial. And it's a great example and a great lesson for all the parents who are listening right now to talk to your kids about. And you could even use it as an example that there, there isn't, you know, this idea of anonymity online or. Oh, I could, you know, everything just disappears. You know, there's, there's like we have a law enforcement operations team and a safety operations team. We are constantly getting requests from law enforcement to preserve data connected to investigations. And we're doing that on a routine basis and then you know, they, they send legal process afterwards and we provide data. And so there's. While, you know, while some data does delete by default, this idea that, that it's all just disappearing and you can act with impunity is not true.
- [16:58]
A
Right, good. I, I know you get that, but like that's definitely one thing I'm like trying to instill in like children and other people. Like, hey, you know, you might think that there's this like anonymous and you know, private behavior, but you know, nothing you do online is private. So, so, right.
- [17:15]
B
There's all kinds of circumstances in which we're preserving and providing data, you know, pursuant to legal process. And then also, actually we do also do it voluntarily without legal process where there's an imminent threat to human life. And we see a lot of situations, you know, related to the sort of teenagers in their settings so that we disclose data in those situations. So things like juveniles who have gone missing, you know, teens who have gone missing, or threats to schools, threats of self harm, things like that, where we're proactively escalating or escalating data to law enforcement to assist those people or to warn or responding to law enforcement requests in an imminent threat to life situation.
- [18:06]
A
Yeah, that's great. One of the big problems that I see, and I see this constantly of children who are underage joining the platform and this is with their parents consent, like you know, the parent will be saying something, oh, you know, my 11 year old has Snapchat and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, why does your 11 year old have Snapchat? So like the parent completely knows about it and is allowing their children under the age of 13 to join the platform, is there anything you guys are doing to try, like inform parents about this or like to actively try and shut these accounts down or you know, what are you trying to do?
- [18:42]
B
Yeah, so it's a great question and one we get asked a lot because sort of age verification or keeping younger users, keeping users off of platforms that are not designed for people their age is. It's really like an industry wide challenge. And so it's a challenge for us as well. And we're working across the industry, we work with a lot of partners to try to figure out solutions. One thing that we do current, like I can kind of talk about what we do currently and then we can talk and then I can mention some other sort of things we're thinking about. But for example, if we find out that a, an account belongs to somebody under the age of 13, we will delete that account from Snapchat. So it's not our platform. We were saying it, you know, we're saying it loudly. It is designed for people 13 and up. So when we find out about accounts that are being used or belong to people under that age, we will delete them from the platform. We also have certain sort of gating mechanisms in place to prevent people from changing their dates of birth and in order. So if a teenager signs up with their true age and then, and then wants to change it later to make themselves older, we, you know, we have mechanisms on the back end to prevent, to prevent that kind of changing of your, or falsification of your, of your date of your birthday just by changing it.
- [20:24]
A
Right.
- [20:25]
B
So yeah. And then the other thing I would say to parents who are doing it, you know, with the knowledge who are assisting your kids in doing it, is that we do have a lot of protections built in for our younger users. And if you assist your child also in signing up with a false age, they may not get those protections. So a lot of the increased vigilance that we have around making sure that younger users are not contacted, the, the steps we have in place specific to younger users having a safer contact experience, you don't get it if you sign up as a 45 year old. And so that's important for parents to think about when they're talking to their kids about signing up. So my recommendation would always be to make sure that if you're signing up for Snapchat with your child that you make sure they're putting in their true age and also that you to decide together on an appropriate username, one that doesn't indicate that they're 14 and one that doesn't convey something to the world that you as a parent, you don't want your 14 year old conveying to the world.
- [21:55]
A
Yeah. Any personal identifiable information, definitely leave that out of the username for sure. Yeah, that's great. So speaking about age verification and you know, I'm, I'm not a fan of age verification, so I know that's like a real rock and a hard place for platforms like yourself, like where I'm, I'm against children under the age of 13 joining the platform, but I also don't want to verify my age on the platform. So it's, you know, a very hard place to be in. But, but there's laws coming out that again, I'm not a fan of. So especially like I'm in Utah and Utah passed a social media law that has a lot of age verification components to it with other restrictions. Like, what are your thoughts on these laws for social media platforms?
- [22:46]
B
Yeah. So without. Without commenting on any specific legislation in particular. It's. You really. I can't do better than you did in talking, in nailing down or exposing kind of what's hard. Right. About these conversations. And there's, you know, we're doing some work on the. On the back end that I've talked about, about to kind of detect or age gate. But in terms of actual age verification, like, one of. One of the options that we talk about internally, which seems like it could be a good option, is doing it at the operating system level. It's within the App Store or at the device level, so that whatever age verification process happens, happens there, and all the apps then get the same information and it's done automatically and it's not piecemeal. And I actually love that. Okay.
- [23:54]
A
Yeah.
- [23:56]
B
Maybe we've solved it all right here.
- [23:58]
A
Right? We just did it. Well, that's amazing.
- [24:01]
B
Yeah. So I, you know, it's. There's a lot of. There's a lot of conversation in the industry about it. That's certainly. That's one, you know, option. And so I think what I can really say, which is maybe not all that satisfying, is that everybody's very focused on it now, and we certainly are as well on the conversations. Yeah.
- [24:20]
A
Yeah. Do you think that Snap is going to respond to any of these? Because I know in Arkansas there was a conglomerate of, like, meta and. And everyone that got the. A federal judge to kind of delay the start of one of these laws. But do you think there would be pushback from Snapchat in particular, or would you probably join Annette?
- [24:47]
B
I don't know. I. I can't really talk about. Yeah, come on. Yeah, I know.
- [24:54]
A
Pending.
- [24:55]
B
I. I was in my former life, as you. As I've told you. Right. So I'm gonna. I'm just gonna say I can't comment on any, you know, potential litigation or pending litigation or anything.
- [25:05]
A
Totally makes sense. I will say. And I mean, I'm sure your lawyers have already, like, pinpointed this too. I dug through the Utah law, like, extensively and, like, you know, marked the whole thing up and all the, like, there was a lot of exceptions of, like, what is considered a social media platform that would, like, be subject to these rules. And most of them, I was like, well, this excludes Snapchat. This excludes Instagram. This excludes Pinterest. Like, really? All of the ones that they would probably be the most concerned about could be excluded based on like their exclusions. The one that caught my eye with Snapchat was that the primary function is to like, is communication between two people, which I think the, the Snapchat definitely falls under.
- [25:54]
B
Yeah, I don't, again, I don't, I don't, I'm not an expert on the laws and I'm not even on our legal team. So I don't wanna, I don't wanna step anywhere even agreeing with you or disagreeing with you about your interpretation of, I guess just as sort of a big picture point of view on a lot of these laws about, or proposed laws or things that are happening in the states about online safety and online protection of children that, you know, there's, we're certainly talking to people who are engaged in that work at a company level. And I think that there's support for the idea especially of some federal response, like a well thought out, well crafted federal response so that, you know, so that there's not 50 states with 50 different regulations and laws. And that's certainly a complexity. But again, I mean that's a very general statement and I, I think it's as much as I can probably say
- [27:08]
A
like, and that's it, I can't say anymore. So let's get out of the less comfortable area then. Kids really have a false sense of privacy and we talked about this a bit. Are you doing anything to help them understand that? Like, even though it says like it's been screenshot, which is great, you know, if you screenshot a Snapchat, it'll say like, oh, your, your Snapchat has been screenshot. But you know, obviously there's other ways to record. You know, I've got like a zillion devices here. I can record something from another device. So is there anything you guys are doing to kind of help kids understand that, you know, nothing's actually really private? Yeah.
- [27:51]
B
So, you know, we did like the, the, it is important to understand that we did, we did build Snapchat as like a privacy, you know, privacy focused company application. And there's a lot of really great reasons for that. Like the architecture of Snapchat, the idea that things delete by default after a period of time. And by the way, it's a period of time that can be also modified by the user and choice, you can save things as well. But the reason for that is because it's built to mimic real life interactions. Right. And so it, and so that, you know, there's not usually I was about to say in this conversation, but maybe we are being recorded in this.
- [28:42]
A
We are. It's gonna be lit.
- [28:44]
B
But like if you and I were having this conversation over coffee in a coffee shop, there's not going to be like a long term record of it. You know, this idea that kids go off to college with, you know, 20 years of, or not 20 years, but six years. I don't know, they're like 60, but they go off to college with, you know, five years of scrollable comments and material and photographs and everything kind of trailing them and all of this data. So this, that's not, you know, that's kind of not our model. Right. So it, it's, we're trying to not have the pressure to build, to build kind of followings and likes and the perfectionism and, and all of, and all of that. So I just want to point out there's like, there's a, there's also like a sort of purposeful intention behind the delete by default, you know, model that it, that is, is thoughtful and. But like I said before, we're, we're providing data daily to members of law enforcement who are, you know, asking. They're asking us to preserve the data and we're preserving it. They're giving us legal process that requires us to disclose it and we're disclosing it, you know, in accordance with valid legal process. And there's, there are a lot of instances and I don't want to get too like in the weeds here, but there's a lot of instances in which we're maintaining this, various kinds of data on the platform. So this idea again, that, that there's, you know, impunity or anonymity for bad actions or exploitation of Snapchat to do bad things or to do things that are against our terms of service. Our community guidelines and our community guidelines are out there on, you know, they're on our website. Take a look. Um, that, that's, that's a false, that's, you know, that's a, that's a false assumption.
- [30:54]
A
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. But is there any, like, because kids might not understand that. Like, is there any active thing to, to help kids? Like. See, that I guess is what I'm trying to say.
- [31:11]
B
Yeah, I mean there's. We, we talk about it on, on line. We go out into talking about it. I think, you know, there's, I think a lot of, A lot of our users know the ways also in which data is being saved. Like, not everybody. It's not all, just a lot of people are saving their data in their application as they're using it, you know, especially the prolific users of the app. And there's, there's messaging also, you know, we were clear in the application when something is being saved.
- [31:49]
A
Right, right.
- [31:50]
B
So people, so users can see it. Not only take the app, they can see it.
- [31:54]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. Like, and I'm just throwing this out there, but like, you know, maybe some sort of like pop up when they like first, you know, occasionally like, so like Instagram, you can set up a thing where, you know, like, hey, you've been on here too long, or like, you know, tick tock, you can, you know, set up like time limits and stuff like that. Whereas like Snapchat, I don't think it's necessarily a like thing where you're getting sucked into and you're, you know, hanging out there all the time, but you know, just like a little notice, like, hey, just, you know, even though these like disappear, you know, don't think that they can't get out there, you know, or something like that. You know, just like a little like, because I mean, I'm a, I'm a parent, I'm an active parent. I make sure my kids understand that. But I don't think there's a lot of parents that do, you know, and so there's, you know, you're around my age, the whole three way phone call back when we were, you know.
- [32:56]
B
Yes. Adding somebody surreptitiously to your phone call.
- [32:59]
A
Right. You know, so it's, so it's not just about like sextortion or anything like that, but like, hey, did you see what so and so said about you? You know, and they've recorded it from like another phone and then, you know, they're like, oh, I, like, I didn't, I, I thought I was having a private conversation, you know, and so I, I just think helping kids understand the, the nature of privacy online, I think. Yeah, could be helpful, you know.
- [33:27]
B
Right. And delivering and trying to deliver it to them where they are. I mean.
- [33:31]
A
Right.
- [33:31]
B
Yeah, no, it's a, it's a, a good suggestion.
- [33:36]
A
Thanks. But speaking of suggestions, let's talk about streaks. Okay, so one thing that makes Snapchat super addictive for teens is streaks. And I know teens that will like give their Snapchat password to a friend when they're grounded or, you know, they're going on vacation and they're not going to have access just to keep their streaks alive because they like live and die by these streak and measure their relationship status by how long their streaks are. So is there anything that Snapchat. I mean, I. Obviously it's a great feature for Snapchat because it keeps people coming back to the platform every day. But, but I don't know. What are your thoughts on streaks?
- [34:20]
B
Yeah, so my thoughts on streaks are. Well, first of all, for anybody, anybody who doesn't know who's watching. Streaks.
- [34:28]
A
Yeah, good call.
- [34:30]
B
Streaks are essentially, you get like a little emoji on your conversation. So let's say the two of us have a conversation going on Snapchat. Just, just the two of us, a one on one conversation. And every time, every time I send a snap like to every. We exchange snaps back and forth on a daily basis and that's going to be our streak. And the streak is going to be represented by a little emoji. Like a little emoji on, on our chat. Right. Like within our, within our friendship. The. Where our friendship is represented. So for one thing, just to, so it's only visible within to us. Right. So I can't look at your, your account and see where your streak is with anybody else. And so it is, it is like voluntary, right? Like, we don't, we don't push it. We don't. Well, we don't like push notifications, you know, about, like, hey, make sure you check in on that streak. Right. For wordle every day. And I'm like, I forgot to do the wordle. You know, like duolingo.
- [35:49]
A
You're like, you're about to lose your streak. Oh, shoot, I need to get on there.
- [35:52]
B
So we're not pushing people toward it. So that's one makes sense.
- [35:56]
A
That's good.
- [35:57]
B
Yeah. And we've also, you know, we've taken certain steps, like minimizing the, the size of the, of the emoji.
- [36:06]
A
Oh.
- [36:07]
B
To make it sort of less prominent. We've extended the period of time before it expires. So with this, we've taken this feedback and we've done a few things, you know, like we've made we. And we've also made it. There's an easy path to restoration of your streak.
- [36:25]
A
Oh, nice. Yeah.
- [36:27]
B
So. And, and candidly, it's one we keep talking about and thinking about. So you know, we hear you. The answer is yes and Right.
- [36:35]
A
Yes.
- [36:38]
B
Yes. We've done things and we continue to, to think about it.
- [36:42]
A
Oh yeah, that's great. And I like to tell parents too, like, this is something that is important to your kids. Like if it's important to your kids. And so when they are grounded, I would like, you know, okay, I'll open Snapchat on my phone, you know, so you can, like, you know, keep your streaks alive and, like, and then close it out, you know, so you don't have to be completely, you know, take it all away and take away something that's important to your kid when they've grounded. And I mean, sure, you know, don't let them, you know, hang out on Snapchat more, but, you know, come on, you can keep your streak alive and. And then, you know, be done with it for the day.
- [37:22]
B
But, you know, I mean, as a fellow parent, what I want, what I. My response to that is similar to what I said in the beginning, which is the purpose of all of this for us, is to help you understand what the app is doing, what that feature is, you know, what the feature is, so that you can make whatever decision is right for your kid, where they are developmentally, how they socialize, what's important to them, and that's consistent with your family's values. Right. So I'm not going to weigh in, Family tech. You can weigh in on whether you keep your kid's streak going or not. I'm not going to weigh in. I'm just going to say what we want, it really is for you to understand it so that you can make the decision about that's right for your kid about. About, you know, how to manage it responsibly.
- [38:15]
A
Yeah, absolutely, 100%. So since your job is related to law enforcement, and we've already kind of touched on this a little bit, but what is Snapchat doing, like, specifically to work with law enforcement to get some of the criminal activity off the platform? Because I know, I've heard of, you know, people selling drugs on Snapchat and, you know, trafficking images that have been sent. So what are you guys trying to do?
- [38:40]
B
So we, we. We do a few things. One is we detect. We have proactive detection. Right. Of. Of content. Of content. Right. Public content. So we. So we're looking in the public content for, you know, for things like drugs, and we're pulling it down.
- [39:05]
A
Yeah, right.
- [39:06]
B
So that's one thing we also encourage within the applicant, both on our website within the application and messages within the application. We really encourage our community to report to us when they see something bad. Right. And then we action those reports consistent with our policies and our, you know, our community guidelines. But it's. It's really important that people report, not just block. Block is also great. Right. You have a bad interaction. Block the person who's what, you know, who's, who's sending that, that bad thing your way, but also report, you know, reporting is really important because what it lets us do is prevent that person from going, you know, from, from going to the next person, right. For that, from going to whoever their next potential person is. So, so, you know, we do. And that messaging is built into the application also. And then we also try to make it really easy to report bad actors. Right? So, and then we're actioning those reports. So it's proactive. We're doing it proactively, we're doing it reactively to get the bad act, you know, to, to identify and get bad actors off the platform. Whether it's in the drug space, whether it's in some kind of child exploitation space. We also, I think this is obvious, but we also report bad actors in the, in the child sexual exploitation space to net the national center for Missing and Exploited Children. And then, and we work, and we work closely with them. And then, you know, on the, on the other side, we, as I've said, like, you know, and this is something, I keep mentioning it maybe because I could talk about it all day as a former member of law enforcement myself, like, we work, we have a very robust and productive relationship with law enforcement. So that when something does occur where, you know, we're able to provide this, like, support, as you know, for their investigations in a way that's, in a way that's appropriate. So. And we also, we do other things to communicate with the law enforcement community because they, they. I was about to say suffer. I don't know suffer is the right word. They have some of the same challenges that other adults of our age have in, in not understanding or not being familiar with the application. And so we do a lot of work also on outreach to, to get out there and educate them about how they can get data from us, how they can communicate with us, what data we might have that would be relevant to them. You know, in December, we're having our third annual virtual Law Enforcement Summit, where last year, I think with 3,000 members of law enforcement that attended to watch that presentation. So that's a big, big, long answer because it's something I like to talk about.
- [42:15]
A
Well, no, I love that.
- [42:17]
B
But.
- [42:17]
A
And one thing I didn't send to you that, like, I just kind of thought of as we were talking is one of the big problems a lot of parents have with Snapchat is really the inability to, like, monitor what's happening. So, and I know in the Family center, you can see who your kid is talking to. You can see, like, how, how much they're talking to, you know, individuals, like, okay, they talk to these people the most or, you know, whatever, and, and who those people are. But what I would love to see is more like, and I don't need to see every snap. I don't need to have access to all of that. But if there's like some sort of content warnings, like if I have a kid that's under Family center, you know, and, and they take a, you know, an inappropriate picture of themselves and send that, like something that flags in the system, like, hey, this was inappropriate, or, you know, whatever. I think that would be really helpful for parents to be a little bit more on board with Snapchat. If I know that, you know, if I, if they do something that's inappropriate, I will get flagged or notified of that.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, for those, for those listeners who don't know, sort of the, the structure of our family center, the way that our family center works is that it gives you. And this is based on a lot of research that we did with, with teens, with parents about what they would both be willing to engage in. Right. So in order to use Family center, the teen has to agree. The teen whose account it is has to agree, and the parent has to agree. And then they connect, they basically agree to connect their accounts. So some of this is also about, like, what parents said that they wanted and what teens would be. Are willing, you know, to engage in with their parents without circumventing their parent. Right, exactly. And so what it, and what it does is the model is. And I let you know, I actually, I mean, I, you know, when I was young, we had, I've already told everybody how old I am. I don't know why since I turned 50, I do that all. I'm like, well, I'm 50. So they.
- [44:33]
A
But I love getting older. It's fine. I'm like, I'm 44. Like, I feel like it gives me some sort of, like, street credit.
- [44:40]
B
I don't know exactly. Not tell everybody all the time.
- [44:43]
A
Hold on.
- [44:44]
B
But anyway, so. But when I was young, we had, you know, a single phone line in our house and it was connected to the wall and I was allowed to use it and I would take it in my room on the long phone line and I would talk to people and my, you know, my parents were not picking up, you know, like, picking up the phone in to that same line. In the other room and, and listening to my conversations. But, you know, I'm telling you, and I know for a fact they were certainly looking at the phone bills to see who talking to and when I was talking to them. Right. And how often I was talking to people. So they, they, you know, they were keeping their eye on it and understanding who I was engaging with, even if they weren't, like, listening in on the conversations. And that's the model of our family. Family Center. Right. You can, it's again, empowering parents, giving you the tools to have the conversations that you want to have. To look at that friend who's at the top of the list in, in family center and go, you know, hey, I don't, I don't recognize this screen name, you know, Susie Blank or whatever. You know, that.
- [45:56]
A
How do you know them?
- [45:56]
B
Yeah, how do you know them? Are they a friend from school? Whatever. Whatever it is. And so, so that's the, you know, that's the model.
- [46:06]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [46:08]
B
And.
- [46:08]
A
And I, I like that part of it that, that's just what I'm saying. Like, if they're like. Because when I had my phone stretched, you know, to kingdom come into my bedroom, I couldn't take naked pictures of myself and send them to you. So, like, like I said, just like, if they've agreed to the family center and we're connected, you know, some sort of flag that something inappropriate happened, I think would like. And like I said, I don't care about your snaps. I like, I don't want to see, like, every single snap, but I would like to be notified if you have, you know, taken a naked picture of yourself and sent it to somebody.
- [46:48]
B
Yeah.
- [46:48]
A
You know. Yeah.
- [46:50]
B
And, yeah, I certainly under. Understand that. Yeah. And it also, you know, there's, there's, as I said, as I'm saying, for all of these things. Sure. There's the, there's like the sort of technical capabilities that we need to have in order to do something like that. And then the, you know, and then the policy piece of it. And they're all, you know, they're good ideas that we, that we talk about.
- [47:15]
A
Sure.
- [47:16]
B
And consider. And have to consider also from the technical perspective.
- [47:20]
A
Yeah. Like, and I also don't even need to see the snap. Like, just flag me that something inappropriate happens.
- [47:27]
B
Yeah.
- [47:27]
A
You know, I think would be great because I really don't want to see it.
- [47:31]
B
Right, right. And obviously a conversation that all, every parent listening here should be. I just said I wasn't going to tell parents what to say to their Kids, but, you know, should at least think about saying, you know, having that conversation with their kids about not sending photographs of themselves that they. We used to call it the New York Times test, but if they wouldn't cover of the New York Times. Not to be. Not to be sharing it.
- [47:57]
A
Yeah, yeah. And. And back to, like, our earlier conversation, like, I feel like on Snapchat just gives them that false sense of privacy where they're like, oh, you know, it's just gonna delete, you know, in 24 hours. But they don't really know that. You know, like, once they send it, it's. It's out there, you know.
- [48:17]
B
Yeah. And it's. And it's certainly, again, not a Snapchat, that. This one's not a Snapchat specific.
- [48:25]
A
No, no, for sure. They can send a text about the
- [48:27]
B
same thing just as easily.
- [48:30]
A
Exactly.
- [48:32]
B
It's also a real opportunity for. For education.
- [48:36]
A
Yeah.
- [48:37]
B
For our kids who are just way more comfortable online than those of us who lived in a universe where there was no online.
- [48:45]
A
Right. Yeah. I mean, it was. Even Apple imessage will like, blur out something that they've found that's inappropriate, you know, and you have to kind of opt into that, I think.
- [48:57]
B
Yeah. I mean, there's. There are. There are things like that. There are options that we, you know, we certainly, like, consider and continue to talk about.
- [49:05]
A
Yeah. That's awesome. So is there anything else you wanted parents to know about Snapchat, the initiatives? You know, definitely. Go visit parents.snapchat.com I think that's. That's an awesome resource that I'm trying to think.
- [49:19]
B
Parents. Snapchat.com family center. Go where your kids are. That's what.
- [49:25]
A
Yes. Yeah.
- [49:26]
B
Personal one. Go where your kids are. You know, spend some time like. Like understanding where they are. Both so. So you know, where they're spending time and why not only what. Like, not only so that you can talk to them about the, you know, about the warning signs, like, of a stranger approaching or if some, you know, if something bad were to happen, but also so you can see, like, why they're spending time on there. Like, what's fun about it. Right. They. They like it. So it would be great to understand. To understand why. For both of. For both of those reasons. And. Yeah, I think that's. That's. I don't know. Do I hit everything? Is there anything else? No.
- [50:13]
A
Yeah, we do have a couple comments here, so I'll pull this one up. Yes. Our kids, even though they have been taught, do not believe that the dangers etc apply to them. Their friends certainly don't. We need to be able to monitor to help them agree. Not every snap like totally agree with that one. And then on Instagram over here we got. I can't pull it up but happy to stumble on this chat because my kids are begging for Snapchat.
- [50:39]
B
So I think that they're 13 or over.
- [50:42]
A
Right? As long as they're 13 over.
- [50:46]
B
Sign up for Family Center.
- [50:49]
A
Yeah, and one of my. Right, right. One of my best friends recently sent me a Marco Polo was like hey, so her daughter Jay, I'll just call her J. It wants to get Snapchat. You know what, what were, what were your thoughts on this? You know, because I'm, I'm an I T. She worked with me at the 18. Oh the, the comment on Instagram said they are 14. So fantastic. But she's like hey, Jay wants to get Snapchat. What, what were we thinking on Snapchat? And, and I was like now she's over 13, right? Because if she's under 13, no way. But she was also around, I think she's 13 or 14. And, and I was just like, oh yeah, like, you know, I think it's fine. You know, just here's some of the, the warnings and we've talked about most of them, you know, and I was like, you know, for her specifically, like I wouldn't be worried about her taking like naked pictures. So you don't need to like hammer that one home. But what I would hammer home is the like the three way phone call aspect. Like, you know, if you're gonna talk bad about a friend, you know, just know that that couldn't get back to that friend, you know, so make sure
- [51:57]
B
you're the reporting and the blocking and you know, just sort of how to respond responsibly when there are conversations happening around you that you don't want to be a part of. You know, I, if I can finish with like a tiny anti anecdote or something in this situation, in this, these conversations is like my kids, you know at six were get where I was at work. My, our caregiver got caught, was caught on the train. I live in Manhattan so I'm probably giving away, I'm doing what I tell other people.
- [52:32]
A
There's only like five Rachels in Manhattan. So.
- [52:36]
B
So but my, I was on the train. I, I was at work, my caregiver was on the train and she called me and said I'm not gonna get to the bus stop on time to pick up the Kids. And I said, okay. So I couldn't get there on time either. I called a dad that. Who I know picks up his child at the same. At the same stop, and I said to him, can you please pick up my kids? But I'm just going to tell you, they're probably not going to go with you.
- [53:06]
A
Yeah.
- [53:08]
B
And he was like, oh, don't be ridiculous. They'll come with me. I see them around, you know, whatever. So he. And then he called me, and it was pouring rain, of course, and he. Then he called me, you know, 10 minutes later, and he said to me, can you talk to them? Like, can I put them on FaceTime with you? And yeah, and I was super proud of them because they refused. He was like, can I buy you a donut Donuts?
- [53:33]
A
They were like, red flags, Red flags.
- [53:35]
B
Red flags were popping up all over the place for them at six years old. And that's because, of course, I had told them a thousand, million times that I would never do what I just did, which was send somebody to pick them up that they weren't expecting, who was going to say, like, your mom asked me to get you. Can I buy you a donut? Right.
- [53:54]
A
So.
- [53:56]
B
But. So. And it's. It's a funny. It's a funny story. And I am super proud of my kids.
- [54:00]
A
I am awesome. That's awesome.
- [54:01]
B
Yeah, it's an awesome story. But it's. It's. You know, we're not doing the same thing with our kids in the online space. And a lot of the time that's because we don't. We're not as comfortable as they are there, and we don't understand where they're spending their time. Right. And so we need to. What we're hoping, what we at SNAP are trying to do is put out these resources, put out these, give these tools, give these resources to really empower parents to have those conversations and, and make those decisions and do it in the way that they believe is right for their families.
- [54:42]
A
Yeah. No, I love that. That's a perfect thing to end on. I love that anecdote as well. They're probably not going to go with
- [54:49]
B
you, but give it a try. I was like, you're going to have to FaceTime me. And he was like, no, it'll be fine. I was like, trust me, it's not going to be fine.
- [54:58]
A
But it's important to, like, you instilled that into them. And we also need to have the same kind of conversations. You know, for us, it was all the stranger danger. You Know, don't get in the white van with the like, person giving out free puppies. You know, that was instilled in us. And we're not kind of passing on that stranger danger to our kids with like the online space, so.
- [55:24]
B
Right. And we're doing it also. I don't want to make it seem like it's just education. It's not like, it's not just that. It's also like tools and resources and we're doing the proactive detection and we're, you know, we're, we're doing all of these things within the infrastructure of the application itself in order to make, you know, in order to make sure. Not sure, but in order to make contacts, real contacts. Right. And we're continuing to work on it and iterate it, but it's never going to be perfect.
- [55:54]
A
No. Yeah.
- [55:55]
B
And so the perfect piece comes with the addition of, of conversation and education and awareness.
- [56:03]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, I'm a huge fan of technology, obviously, and I've been in I t for over 20 years. And that's one thing I always say too, like, the technology is never going to be perfect. It's never going to completely shield your child from seeing pornography. They're going to see it, you know, no matter how. You know, I have my house like Fort Knox and it's still going to get through, you know, even with all of my technical knowledge. So the technology is never going to be perfect. So, yeah, you have to have those conversations and you have to make sure you are understanding what your kids are. Are understanding. Yeah.
- [56:40]
B
I really enjoyed this conversation, I have to say.
- [56:43]
A
Thank you. Me too. I was like, ooh, Snapchat.
- [56:48]
B
Oh, no.
- [56:49]
A
Yeah, but it was really great. No, I think you guys are doing some really great things. And you know, the, the one thing that always surprises people that I say, I mean, and not to, you know, bash on Snapchat or anything, but Tick Tock actually has the best parental controls built in of any social media platform. And anytime I say that, people are always like, really Tick Tock. You know, people are so against Tick Tock and they're against Snapchat, but I'm like, you know, there, there are things here that can help it.
- [57:17]
B
And I, I can't speak to Tick Tock because I'm actually, I'm not on Tick Tock.
- [57:22]
A
Yeah.
- [57:23]
B
But I will say I hope, you know, I hope that it, that it. That you learned something. Not you. Yeah, necessarily.
- [57:30]
A
No, no, yeah, yeah.
- [57:32]
B
Like, I hope everybody who's listening learned something. I hope gave you at least pointed you to a place to go to learn something like to, to answer questions that you have and you know, I guess to leave you with the idea that there's a lot of people at the company who care about this deeply and you know, cared about it before, before we came to Snap, you know, and it's really a cross functional, like a company wide effort. It's not just the people in safety ops, it's not just the people with my job in particular. It's really, it's in product, it's in legal, it's in policy, it's in engineering. We're focused on making it a safe and happy place for our users to, to be. So
- [58:22]
A
yeah, that was my point in mentioning TikTok was that like these apps that people are so scared of like Snapchat and TikTok, I'm like there are things here that you can do to help make it a safer experience. Yeah. Well, so thank you so much, Rachel. It was wonderful. Oh wait, would you repeat the name of the parent info? Parent.
- [58:45]
B
Parents or parents with an s with an s.com.
- [58:50]
A
snapchat.com. So that's, that's the website. Parents.snapchat.com and I will put that in the description of the YouTube video and in the description of the podcast as well. So yeah, so definitely check that out. Learn how to use Snapchat down like, and that's another thing I always say, like download it yourself, check it out, you know, make sure, you know everything that it can do. So I really appreciate, appreciate you guys putting that website together. Like not just like here's how parents can manage, but this is like this is how to use Snapchat.
- [59:25]
B
Yeah, this is, this is, and we're, and we're continuing to add to it. So it's a, you know, it's a new microsite. We're continuing to add new, new, new functionality and videos into the future. So yeah, check it out.
- [59:37]
A
Okay, thank you so much, so much. Yeah, have a good day and we'll see you guys next time week.
- [59:42]
B
Yeah, bye.
- [59:43]
A
Thank you for listening to Family Tech Talk. Please make sure to subscribe and leave us a review. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, feel free to reach out to me on social media. I am family tech on all platforms and respond to all of my DMs. You can also become one of my techs by joining the Facebook group, our subreddit or the Discord server. Just search any platform for family tech and you'll be sure to find the community.