Snapchat walks back friend-ranking feature blamed for ruining relationships

Snapchat demoted a controversial feature that ranks friends based on their relationship to the user after concerns that it was fueling insecurity among its teen-heavy audience.

The social media site said that it would deactivate the default setting that automatically enabled the “Solar System” function on its Snapchat+ $4-per-month subscription service.

The tool is a ranking mechanism that assigned one of the nine planets to a friend based on the frequency with which they communicated with one another — analogous to the planets’ distance from the sun.