Social media company Snapchat is taking a hit at another social media site Facebook, as it introduced a filter on April Fools’ Day trolling Facebook because of its Russian propaganda scandal.
Last year Snapchat trolled competitor Facebook through an Instagram-style filter but, this year the firm took a step forward by trolling the company pointing out Facebook’s inability to hold back the Russian influence campaign on its site.
Snapchat trolled the company through a Facebook-style filter in which it appears as if Russian bots are liking users’ posts. The filter places a Facebook UI around the picture with Cyrillic script-like text and includes likes from characters such as ‘your mum, a bot, and 2 others’, reported The Verge.
Omg the Snapchat April Fool's filter pic.twitter.com/moiufUQufT
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) April 1, 2018
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The filter shows as if the user is uploading a new profile picture on Facebook and the entire text is in Cyrillic script. The Cyrillic script is a hint towards Russia and the news that over 50,000 bots on Facebook, with links to Russian government were used to influence the 2016 presidential elections. The ‘your mum’ like is a nod towards Facebook’s older user base and Snapchat even used the same prank in its last year's Facebook troll. However, the April Fools’ filter was only available for April 1.
As Mashable reported, Snapchat hit Facebook at its current sensitive point that includes the entire Russian bot issue. Around 140 million users have seen Russian propaganda in their news feed or on Instagram over the course of 2016 election.