Snapchat Bans Naughty America’s Augmented Reality Lenses

The cat-and-mouse game between the gatekeepers of social media and adult entertainment industry innovators continued this week as porn production company Naughty America launched three augmented reality lenses to its members—and then had them promptly removed by Snapchat.

“The lenses allowed Snapchat users to super-impose porn stars in various states of undress over images of their own living room, and share the results with their friends on the service,” Variety reported on Wednesday.

Naughty America CEO Andreas Hronopoulos told Variety that because his company was distributing the lenses privately to its members, he understood the endeavor to be well within Snapchat’s community guidelines, which allow “depictions of nudity in non-sexual contexts.” The company’s submission guidelines, however, prohibit “obscene language or imagery, depictions of nudity, sex acts, or profanity.” The company’s terms of use, then, present a catch-22 that Snapchat used to its advantage by removing the filters within 48 hours of their release. 

But Naughty America—and the porn industry more generally—are likely not done with pushing Snapchat’s boundaries around augmented reality. “The porn company didn’t just make its own lenses, but also began distributing holographic source files necessary to build similar filters to its users, complete with a manual on how to do so,” Variety reported. So, Hronopoulis said, “Users are downloading and creating them.”

That means that Snapchat will have to be vigilant if it wants to curtail its users from creating pornographic lenses on its new Lens Studio, which allows users to build their own augmented reality lenses. And, if the history of technology has taught us here at YNOT anything, it’s that consumers, when presented with new technology like augmented reality, will always—always—use that technology to make porn. And with the word “augmented” in the title? Snapchat had better be ready to deal with a whole lot of pornographic mice in this cat-and-mouse game it’s started.