Snapchat Has A Track Record Of Stealing Artists' Work

“What they’re doing belittles the foundation of what makes an artist, an artist.” Mykie’s Instagram photo (left) and Snapchat’s ‘Lense’ or filter (right) Snapchat, the social media application used by hundreds of millions of people including myself, recently unveiled a line of its own emojis called “stickers”. Users can decorate their pictures with them, and send them to one another when private messaging. But what if I told you that at least one of them was blatant theft? A cropped screenshot of Snapchat (left) and Baarle’s sketches (right) Dutch digital artist Lois van Baarle took to Twitter to tell Snapchat, “I’m glad you like my fox sketch, but tracing it and using it in your app is intellectual property breach.” Upon doing research, she discovered that this wasn’t Snapchat’s first time stealing someone’s work. Argenis Pinal’s Instagram photo (left) and Snapchat’s ‘Lense’ or filter (right) Earlier this year, self-taught makeup artist and YouTuber Mykie (also known as Glam&Gore) exposed Snapchat via Instagram, explaining that they “admitted to taking someone else’s work in too similar a manner [the day before].” “[Snapchat] called it an ‘embarrassing mistake’,” she added. I reached out to her for a statement regarding the matter and she had this to say: What they’re doing belittles the foundation of what makes an artist, an artist. Our creativity and originality is our lifeblood for being able to make a living. Each and every time they more or less trace an artist’s work, slap minor changes on it, ask no permission, give no credit, and monetarily benefitting off the success of their fun filter-filled platform, it takes something big away from the artist that spent all the energy creating that foundation. My hands feel tied because as a self-employed artist, I don’t have the means to fight the legal team of a massive company. On the other hand, I am fortunate to have a bigger voice than many other self-employed artists who might not be heard if this happens to them in the future, so the best I can do is try to use my voice going forward and hope enough people demand better standards from Snapchat. Things like this happen far too often across multiple platforms. The Internet has altered companies’ professionalism. Only time will tell if, when, and how Snapchat will respond to the artists’ rightful outrage. Enough is enough.