There's A Snapchat Filter For The Benghazi Hearing

The Benghazi hearing may have finally ended after entering its 11th hour, but if you're near 1100 Longworth House Office Building, there might still be time to enjoy some snappy fun that came with Hillary Clinton's lengthy testimony on the 2012 Benghazi attack. Conservative Foundation Judicial Watch released a location-based Snapchat filter meant especially for the Benghazi hearing, taking a jab at Clinton's email scandal while also reminding us of the fleeting nature of the social media platform itself.

Those searching for a geotag filter in the area will come up with a warning message on the top of their screen featuring a red outlined triangle with an exclamation point in its center followed by the text, "This message will disappear— just like Hillary Clinton's emails." Judicial Watch's name is at the bottom of the Snapchat.

Political filters have been in place since August, with Snapchat taking in money for advocacy groups and political action committees to have a chance to reach an even wider audience of voters. One of the first examples of such political tactics is a filter bashing the Iran deal geotagged for the state of Ohio and paid for by Secure America Now. The filter was implemented prior to the first GOP debate. It's unclear whether the ad was effective in its intended purpose of spawning a political dialogue.

It makes sense that politically-minded organizations would seek a medium to attract even more voters. According to data from ComScore, an analytics company that measures social media impact among other stats, Snapchat stands as the social media service with the most users ranging in age from 18 to 24. The data compiled in 2014 has users that fall under that age range accounting for 45 percent of all who use Snapchat. Conversely, Snapchat also boasts the least amount of older users with only 1 percent making up the 65 and over age range.

Political filters are only recently starting to be implemented. Prior to their use, most organizations who wanted to spread the word of a specific policy were forced to do it in video form on the social media service. As it's easy to overlook a random video, so too is it easy to pass by an unnecessary filter in favor of a different one. A majority of those who shared the filter via Twitter are journalists, it seems. Even if few users actually used it, the filter idea was undoubtedly effective enough in raising awareness of its existence for other political advocacy groups to follow suit.