Snapchat removed Cosmopolitan’s new porn site known as Cosmo After Dark less than a week after it was launched following an uproar by parents over the easy access of its pornographic content to children.
Chris McKenna, who runs the website Protect Young Eyes – a site devoted to “defending kids from online danger” – alerted parents to the porn site located in the Discover section of Snapchat, a platform that has almost no parental controls available.
He announced Thursday that Cosmopolitan “sent us a response to our original Tweet around noon on May 24 confirming the following about the After Dark channel that launched on May 18″:
“Cosmopolitan has always been known for empowering women in all aspects of their lives,” Hearst Corporation, the parent company of Cosmopolitan, responded. “With a highly popular Snapchat Discover channel, Cosmo launched an age-gated product on the platform for adults over the age of 18, which it is discontinuing after a pilot edition.”
WSPA.com news confirmed that the X-rated channel had been discontinued due to the uproar by parents and watchdog groups.
Victoria Hearst, who has battled against her family’s company – the Hearst Corporation, which publishes Cosmopolitan – said in a statement sent to Breitbart News:
God bless all of you good people who acted to protect America’s children and made Cosmopolitan Magazine (aka Cosmo) cancel its vile plan to put its pornography on Snapchat.
My family’s company, the Hearst Corporation, publishes Cosmopolitan, and is solely responsible for the magazine’s disgusting, pornographic content.
I have tried to persuade the Board of Directors of Hearst to label Cosmo “Adult Material” so that it cannot be sold to anyone under 18 years of age. They have refused.
Now, the Hearst Corporation has tried to expose your children to their pornography on Snapchat.
Enough!!! Fight Back!!! Contact the Hearst Corporation and ask them to do the right thing: label Cosmopolitan Magazine “adult material” and tell retailers not to sell it to anyone under 18.
McKenna said that while speaking at a public school in Michigan, he discovered 80 percent of 240 eighth-graders use Snapchat. He continued:
“But, Chris, not all kids who use Snapchat browse the Discover section.” I’ll concede – this might be true. But, in analog terms, would anyone in the 1990’s have thought it was a good idea to hand their 8th grade son or daughter a 3-page magazine where pictures of their close friends were on page one, pictures of people they kind of know are on page two, and porn is on page three? As soon as we translate a digital situation to an analog example, it clearly doesn’t make any sense.
Breitbart News reached out to Cosmopolitan’s media relations team after its own report on the new channel to inquire about why it was no longer live, but received no response.