New Snapchat update: More than a million people sign petition calling for changes to be reversed

The petition is becoming one of the most popular ever seen

Thursday 15 February 2018 12:42 GMT

A billboard displays the logo of Snapchat above Times Square in New York March 12, 2015 (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

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More than a million people have signed a petition asking Snapchat to reverse its controversial new update.

The company has now rolled out the new version of the app to most of its users. And it has been met with intense and widespread anger, as a result of the fundamental changes it makes to the way the app works.

Now more than a million people have asked the company to simply turn it back, and reverse the changes. That's according to a petition that's now received more than a million signatures.

"With the release of the new Snapchat update, many users have found that it has not made the app easier to use, but has in fact made many features more difficult," the petition reads. "Many ‘new features’ are useless or defeats the original purposes Snapchat has had for the past years."

It also notes that many people are being forced to take risky and complicated steps to get the old features back. While it is still possible to change back to the version of the app that was available before the update, users are putting themselves at risk by attempting to do so, security experts have warned.

"This petition aims to help convince Snap Inc. to change the app back to the basics, before the new 2018 update," the petition concludes.

The petition is still some way from becoming the most popular ever on the site. One calling on the Iranian government to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been signed by 1.5 million people, for instance, and another calling for the banning of the Yulin Dog Meat Festival has nearly hit three million signatures.

But it's much more popular than many of the – very worthy – petitions that have brought success. A petition calling on Oxford council to reverse a ban on rough sleepers received 70,000 signatures but brought action from councillors, for instance.

But in this case it's unlikely that the decision will be reversed.

Snapchat's official Twitter account has spent much of its time since the update was introduced telling people that they should try it out for longer, and they might get to like it. It also said it "isn't possible" to go back to the old version of the app, though that presumably applies to individual users and not the app itself.

What's more, the new design was in keeping with a new direction from the company that it hopes can allow it to generate more revenue. It knew that the changes would upset users in the short term and predicted that could be "disruptive to our business" – but said that it was "willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business".