Snap said in its blog post that its rollout of storage plans would not affect “the vast majority of Snapchatters”, whom it said had less than 5GB of Memories.
But the move has been criticised by some on social media,, external with users sharing messages sent by the platform telling them they need to pay for storage to keep their photos and videos.
Some say they have used Snap’s previously free storage over many years meaning they have considerably more than 5GB of data stored on the platform – so are now facing big bills.
Others say being forced to choose between paying a subscription or losing their Memories is “unfair” and “greedy” on the part of Snap.
Snap said in April, external that Snapchat had surpassed 900 million monthly active users – while rivals such as Instagram and TikTok boast billions respectively.
Drew Benvie, founder and chief executive of social media consultancy Battenhall, believes that eventually all social media platforms will charge for storage.
“The road to paying for storage on social media is inevitable,” he told BBC News.
“In an era where we post less, but save more, this is an evolution of messaging and social media platforms.”
