The fake tweet was crafted, and purported to show a conversation between Snapchat and a user who was frustrated by the updated version of the app.
Snapchat sympathized with Twitter user Isaac Svobodny, who asked how many retweets it would take for the company to change back to the old format. Snapchat’s imaginary response: 50,000.
As of that afternoon, that fictional exchange had been retweeted 1.4 million times, generated 10,000 responses and was liked more than a half-million times.
That tweet revealed two things: it is easy to be duped by false tweets and people are really angry about Snapchat’s update.
There has been outrage on social media channels about Snapchat’s update, which was rolled out recently. Users who updated the app found all of their friends’ content was on the left side, while media content, which many don’t like or want, was on the right side.
A Change.org petition that says “many ‘new features’ are useless or defeats the original purposes Snapchat has had for the past years” is seeking 1 million signees to convince Snapchat to switch to the old format. On Tuesday afternoon, 822,843 had signed it.
Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones tweeted: “@Snapchat how can i un- update my Snapchat??” His teammate Kevin Pierre-Lewis tweeted: “Hey #snapchat, not a fan of the update. Now I’ve said my piece I can go back to my Sudoku book”
However, Snapchat warned that using a workaround could result in bigger problems. Snapchat Support tweeted: “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet — unofficial workarounds to change the way Snapchat looks are temporary and can result in getting permanently locked out of your account or losing Memories”
As for that fake tweet, Svobodny told the Daily Beast it served a purpose.
“All we can do is hope,” he said. “I think this sends a good message to Snapchat. They will see this and see that if there’s over 1.3 million people who aren’t happy with the update they should try to make some modifications.
