$16 a month to watch drunk me eating cheesy chips? I think not - here's a fix
Twitter and TikTok are raging right now because, some 15 years after the app first launched, Snapchat is going to start charging people for its Memories feature.
Whether you're still knee-deep in Snap streaks or you've long abandoned the app for more mature ways of communicating, Snapchat was the go-to app for pictures for literally years. I haven't sent a doggy-filter snap in years, and yet, my Memories are a majorly cringy montage of disastrous nights out, cute brunch pics, and moments I would rather forget than relive.
After officially launching in 2016, Snapchat Memories acted as an iCloud of sorts, storing your pictures and videos and offering them up on relevant anniversaries. The end-of-year roundup was both dreaded and celebrated, but now, if you want to take a mosey on down memory lane, you'll have to cough up some coin.
In a blog post at the end of September, Snapchat officially announced Memories storage plans, stating: "When we first launched Memories, we never expected it to grow to what it has become today. 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."
Over 5GB equates to thousands of snaps, but if you've been saving your pics and videos since the feature launched, it's pretty reasonable to assume that you'll soon have to pay to access them. According to ZDnet, it'll be 100GB for $2 per month, 250GB with Snapchat+ for $4 per month, or 5TB with Snapchat Platinum for $16 per month.
"It's never easy to transition from receiving a service for free to paying for it, but we hope the value we provide with Memories is worth the cost," the company announced, unwittingly sparking a sh*tstorm of backlash.
One person wrote on Twitter: "Wdym Snapchat is making you pay for memories storage.... that's literally the only reason I still have Snapchat,"
"I'm sorry, WTF DO YOU MEAN SNAPCHAT IS GOING TO CHARGE YOU MONEY TO KEEP YOUR MEMORIES... I've been using it as storage for 10 YEARS??! I'm so sick of capitalism and its insertion into the internet," another screamed.
Before we plan the inevitable riot and march on the Snapchat offices, here are some steps you can actually take to save those precious memories from the claws of capitalistic greed.
If you're willing to cough up money to keep your memories, then fair enough, but I, for one, am not sacrificing precious matcha money to watch myself fall in bushes after one too many shots. Instead, I think I'll just download a decade's worth of Snapchat Memories.
Only being able to do 100 at a time is a huge annoyance, but it's better than giving Snapchat your coin.
This option is a little more fiddly, but at this point, we'll accept any solution.
You can also do this on the app itself
Those are the only loopholes right now, but this article will be updated with any further developments in the future. In the meantime, get saving!