Snapchat may be recognizing more than just your face when you put the puppy filter on. According to Wochit Tech, the social media mogul is in the business of analyzing emotions based on both selfie structure and message content. A new patent was just put in the works for the company to implement this feature so mood analysis could help determine if a crowd was “happy, sad, or terrified.”
Most people would immediately respond to this as an invasion of emotional privacy, but there’s actually sound logic behind this/ Snapchat claims that the new feature will help event coordinators “aggregate” the mood of the crowd. If you’re at a concert, a speech, or any sort of festival, the coordinators would get a report of the overall mood of the people attending said event. With this information, they can alter the program on the fly in order to boost mood and positivity, a huge win for event coordinators.
While the patent has not been implemented yet, there is bound to be backlash, as an app is now going to be reporting to others our emotions. Something that we as humans have always desperately tried to keep inside will now be broadcasted to a new audience for analytical purposes, and the moral high ground of this stunt is shaky at best.
