Snap launches a planning tool for organising meet-ups with friends

Snap has launched Snapchat Plans, an invite-only tool for organising real-world gatherings of up to 200 people, built on the finding that a third of young American users already arrange meet-ups in chats. The European Commission has had formal proceedings open against Snapchat since March over its protection of minors, and none of the coverage mentions them.

Snap has launched Snapchat Plans, a set of tools for organising private, invite-only gatherings of up to 200 people without leaving the app, Bloomberg reported. The company built it on a finding that about a third of young American users already arrange meet-ups in group chats and messages.

It is a tool for moving teenagers from a conversation to a place.

The European Commission opened formal proceedings against Snapchat in March over how it protects those users.

None of the coverage of Thursday’s launch mentions them.

The investigation runs to five areas. One is whether Snapchat does enough to shield minors from contact by people seeking to exploit them or recruit them into crime.

Another is whether automatic friend recommendations and push notifications switched on by default are themselves the hazard.

Plans adds invitations, responses and a commitments tracker to that. Snap has been narrowing what younger accounts can do elsewhere, and in June it walled under-16s off from public Spotlight. Engagement counts came off those profiles at the same time.

Its answer to the wider question is a marketing campaign.

“TikTok has trends, Meta has scale, and Snapchat knows the real you,” Evan Spiegel wrote this week, in a push to convince people the app is not social media. Under the Digital Services Act that is not a category anyone can opt out of, and the Commission separately says Snapchat’s age checks rest on self-declaration, months after Brussels declared its own age verification app ready.

Ursula von der Leyen’s line then was that there are “no more excuses“.

The Dutch regulator’s parallel inquiry into vape sales to minors on the app has been folded into the Commission’s. A separate strand covers drugs, vapes and alcohol reaching minors, and another asks whether Snapchat’s reporting tools use dark patterns.

American pressure is running alongside it rather than instead of it.

Pennsylvania’s attorney general sued Snap in August using an account opened as a 13-year-old, alleging the 13+ rating is contradicted by what that account was shown. Snap denies it. Plans arrives into all of that.