New Iceland-Only Social Media Platform Opens

On February 16, the Icelandic social media platform Slapp was opened. The new platform is intended exclusively for people with an Icelandic digital ID, limiting the prevalence of bots and fake profiles on the channel. Slappið is hosted by the software firm Vestra, founded by software engineer Bjarki Sigurjónsson and computer scientist Kristján Leó Guðmundsson.

In an interview with Vísir, co-founder Kristján said that the idea came as a response to popular social media sites becoming less and less interesting.

“You’ve stopped seeing posts from friends and family,” Kristján told Vísir, referring to Meta channels Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm. “Our goal is to solve that, so people can close these apps and use Slapp instead,” he continued. Still, Slapp offers users to customise their feed in three ways: Posts by everyone, Friends only, and Popular posts, begging the question whether inflammatory, high-engaging posts will be prevalent on Slapp as other social media platforms.

Slapp allows users to post texts, photos, short videos, conduct polls, and join groups. Additionally, Slapp has enacted an “I’m partying” status update, allowing users to notify others if they’re partying or not.

“I’m partying” button, screenshot

As of February 17, approximately 3.200 users have signed up for the service. The Grapevine’s journalist signed up for journalistic purposes.

According to Slapp’s privacy policy, the application collects personal information supplied by the digital ID, content, and information created during use, such as what content people seem to prefer, private messages, as well as technical information, among other things. Slapp claims to never sell users’ personal information to third parties, although they retain the right to share data with “trusted service parties (such as web hosting sites)” the policy reads. Similarly, Slapp will hand over any data if legal needs require it.