Snapchat redesigns to separate social and publisher content; ads not affected

Ads, however, will continue to run across social and media content. These sponsored stories will have a visible "Ad" slug both above the headline on the cover tile and in the top-left corner while viewing the Story.

In a recent ad update, Snapchat confirmed that its new promoted stories format would have prominent placement after the redesign. 

In a blog post, Snapchat explained that the redesign was to stop "blurring the lines between professional content creators and your friends". 

Describing it as an "interesting Internet experiment", Snapchat blamed this content mix with producing "strange side-effects (such as fake news) and made us feel like we have to perform for our friends rather than just express ourselves". 

Snapchat has also redesigned both its "Friends" and "Discover" (where it houses publisher, creator and community content) pages.

The Friends feed will now organise the list of contacts based on how they communicate with the user. 

The Discover feed now features an endless scroll of content, ordered to match each Snapchatters’ individual interests. This is curated using a combination of data and human editorial judgement. 

Before new content is recommended on Discover, it will be moderated. With the exception of Publisher Stories, Shows and Our Stories (content produced by editors at Snapchat), and creators the user already subscribes to, the content featured on Discover will be moderated by humans. 

In a column Snap co-founder and chief executive Evan Spiegel authored for Axios, he wrote that it is vitally important that future content feeds are built on top of a human-curated supply of content – rather than just anything that surfaces on the Internet". 

By curating content in this way, Speigel hopes to "change the social media model" and provide reliable content and content that users want.