Many Snapchat users encounter Stories they'd prefer not to see—whether from oversharing friends, irrelevant influencers, or brands. Currently, the only solutions are unfriending, blocking, or manually skipping, which are either too drastic or inconvenient. A more subtle approach could involve allowing users to mute Stories without severing connections or alerting the poster, similar to features already available on platforms like Instagram.

How It Could Work

One way to implement this would be to add a mute option accessible by long-pressing or tapping a menu on a Story. Muted Stories would disappear from the user's feed, with no notification sent to the original poster. The feature could be reversible, letting users unmute at any time. For Snapchat, this might mean:

• Testing with a small user group first to measure engagement changes
• Adding UI cues, like a mute icon in the Stories menu
• Optionally offering advanced controls (e.g., temporary muting) for premium subscribers

Potential Benefits and Challenges

Regular users could curate their feeds without social awkwardness, while influencers and brands might benefit from more accurate engagement metrics (fewer "forced" views). Snapchat could see improved user retention, though there's a risk of reduced Story views—a key ad metric. To address this, muted views could still count as "seen" in analytics, or muting could be limited to a small percentage of a user's audience.

Compared to existing platforms, this would bring Snapchat in line with Instagram's Story muting, though it could differentiate by offering Snapchat-specific tweaks, like keyword-based muting. The main hurdle would be balancing user experience with business metrics, making careful testing essential before a full rollout.