In the words of Cosmopolitan, “Cosmo After Dark is an X-rated weekly edition that goes live every Friday at 6 p.m. and is exclusively dedicated to all things hot and horny.” Cosmo After Dark was launched on Snapchat’s Discovery page. Surprised it was on Snapchat? We aren’t, remember they’ve been on our Dirty Dozen list since 2016!
On May 18th 2018, Cosmopolitan ran its first and only “Cosmo After Dark” story thanks to the thousands of outraged parents who took to saying NO! to the gimmick on social media.
The first episode included topics like “the best music to play during sex” and “The 19 Best Sites to Binge-watch porn on”. Parents and advocates took to the Internet to express their concerns with the graphic and sexually explicit content being pushed out on a platform that is the go-to social site for kids and teens.
Within just a few days of articles surfacing on mommy blogs & Internet safety websites, thousands were complaining on every social media platform and Cosmopolitan and Snapchat decided to discontinue “Cosmo After Dark”.
VICTORY!!
On one hand, we are incredibly disappointed that Cosmopolitan would even consider publishing such sexually explicit content on Snapchat, but on the other hand, we are overwhelming encouraged by the awareness and quick activism by thousands of concerned adults for the welfare of kids on this platform.
This viral effort happened on the heels of another campaign where outraged parents took to calling out the kids movie “Show Dogs” for including a story ark that normalized child sexual abuse.
We are continually amazed by the change that can occur when parents and activists band together to protect the next generation from a pornified culture.
Rachel Racusen, Snap’s director of communications, said in a statement. “We strive to be a responsible source of news, entertainment and information for our community, and understand the legitimate concerns parents have about what content their children consume.”
We would now ask Snapchat if they really are serious about understanding “the legitimate concerns parents have about what content their children consume” because if they did they would need to take even more serious steps to protect their users who are minors. Snapchat is arguably the most popular smartphone app used by Millennials and teens. It is frequently used for sexting and the sharing of self-produced child sexual abuse images. Additionally, the built-in feature Snapcash has enabled Snapchat and its users to monetize and profit from the exchange of pornography. Snapchat’s business model facilitates sexual exploitation yielding hefty profits for the company without any regard for the associated harms. Learn more and take action here.
