Here we are in 2025, watching Snapchat—the platform that built its brand on fleeting, private communication—roll out “Topic Chats” for public discussions.

Snapchat’s pivot to public conversations marks one of the more fascinating identity shifts in social media. For over a decade, the platform’s entire value proposition was intimacy. Snapchat is the app that made disappearing messages cool, that positioned itself as the anti-Facebook, the place where your embarrassing moments wouldn’t haunt you forever. Topic Chats flip that script entirely. 

See a big yellow “Join the Chat” button on a Story or Spotlight video? Tap it, and suddenly you’re in a group chat with potentially thousands of other people. You’ll also be able to see which Topic Chats your friends have joined, turning discovery into a semi-social experience.

To Snapchat’s credit, the company isn’t abandoning privacy entirely. The implementation shows that display names will be used instead of usernames. Additionally, other users can’t tap through to your profile from a Topic Chat unless you’re already friends. 

However, these spaces can easily devolve into breeding grounds for harassment, misinformation, and predatory behavior. The use of LLMs for moderation also raises questions about what exactly is being monitored and how. AI can catch obvious violations (slurs, threats, spam), but context, nuance, and cultural subtleties often slip through.

Now we head to the five-year question: messages in Topic Chats will be retained for up to five years. Five. Years. On Snapchat. The app whose entire founding premise was that digital communication doesn’t need to be permanent. For users accustomed to Snapchat’s ephemeral nature, this permanence might feel jarring. 

Topic Chats will be expanding to more regions at a later stage.

In the meantime, you can read more here.