Snapchat charges money for keeping "Memories"
Snapchat disappears after a short time unless they are saved as "Memories". This is no longer free of charge indefinitely.
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The messenger Snapchat once claimed that once viewed, images would disappear by themselves. In 2016, the option to save your recordings permanently was added: the so-called Memories are stored in a searchable cloud storage. Those who make intensive use of this will soon have to pay for it.
The good news: up to five GB of stored memories remain free of charge. This means that the offer will remain free of charge for the vast majority of Snapchat users (Snapchatters), says operator Snap, Inc. Storage volumes exceeding 5 GB will remain untouched for twelve months. Otherwise, Snapchatters will have to pay.
In the USA, two US dollars per month are charged for up to 100 GB of memories. According to the announcement, there are two larger packages: Up to 250 GBytes costs twice as much. Anyone who can't make do with this must be a real enthusiast who will have to fork out 16 dollars a month.
Snapchat responded to the fact that many users also use the app as a camera application by introducing Memories in 2016. Since then, more than one trillion “Memories” have been uploaded. The operator Snap says it did not expect this success. Unfortunately, cloud storage of this size can be expensive over time.
Modelled on Signal
Snap's price of two dollars for up to 100 GB is modeled on Signal's price. The end-to-end encrypted messenger recently started offering encrypted online backups as a beta feature in Signal. Uploading the most recent 45 days of chat history, including files, is free; otherwise, two dollars are charged for up to 100 GB. Initially, the entire archive must be uploaded, followed by daily incremental uploads.
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Soon, the non-profit Signal operator would also like to make it possible to free up memory on your own mobile phone and access the online backup bit by bit by scrolling. This should please Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) in particular, as she will no longer have to resort to Signal's self-deletion function to prevent her mobile phone from running out of storage space. This allows the President of the European Commission to finally provide the transparency she is surely striving for.
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