Why Am I Subscribed to Someone on Snapchat?

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Snapchat subscriptions

On Snapchat, there are two sections when you go to the Stories view on Snapchat. The first section is the friend’s list which lets you see all of the stories that your friends have posted.

The second view is the subscriptions view which allows you to watch all of the stories of people you’ve subscribed to. If you haven’t subscribed to anyone, then there won’t be anyone in the subscription section on Snapchat. You have to be subscribed to people for anyone to show up here.

A common occasion that people find themselves in is seeing one of their friends that used to be in the friend’s section when it’s time to watch stories is now in the subscriptions section.

This can be quite confusing because the subscriptions section is usually related to famous figures and publications so to see a friend there might throw you off.

What Are Subscriptions on Snapchat

Snapchat Subscriptions are a section in Snapchat of people and accounts that you’re subscribed to. It’s very similar to YouTube – Snapchat lets you follow your favorite creators and brands so it’s easy for you to watch their content.

You can subscribe to accounts for free and you can manage all subscriptions from the discover tab.

Similarly to YouTube again, you can subscribe to other brands for free so you won’t have to pay for a subscription. You’re just following Snapchat accounts so you can be up to date on all of the stories that they post.
 
The Snapchat subscriptions can all be managed on the discover tab as well as the subscriptions section under stories. If you want to subscribe to accounts on Snapchat:
 

1. Open the Snapchat app.

2. Tap on the icon in the lower right corner of the screen. This will take you to the discover section where you can view stories as well as all of the content you’ve subscribed to.

3. Scroll down (or use the search bar to find specific creators) and when you’ve discovered something you want to subscribe to, press and hold down on the tile for the menu to come up then toggle on Subscribe.

4. Tap Done. Once done, you’ll see all of the subscriptions you’ve made listed at the top of the Discover tab. From here, all you have to do is tap on the tile of the subscription you want to watch.

If you want to receive notifications when someone you’re subscribed to posts, tap on the three dots on the top of the Discover tab and select Manage Subscriptions.

How to See Snapchat Subscriptions List

To see your subscriptions list on Snapchat, you need to open the Snapchat app, tap on the Discover button on the right icon to open Discover, tap on the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner, tap on Manage Subscriptions, and Notifications. From here, you can see everyone that you’re subscribed to.

Why Am I Subscribed to Someone on Snapchat

 

You’re subscribed to someone on Snapchat either because they haven’t added you back or you’ve chosen to subscribe to them.

If you can see that you’ve subscribed to someone, there’s a chance that you either searched up their name to look for their account and click subscribe, or you were on the discover tab and you held down on some content you liked and clicked subscribe here.

Usually, when you’re subscribed to someone, it’s either a brand that you like the content of, a media page that posts engaging content, a celebrity that you want to follow, or a regular person/influencer that you’ve willingly subscribed to.

If you’re subscribed to a regular person, chances are that you were friends with them but they removed you as a friend so you now have them in your subscriptions.

When someone removes you and they post a story, you’re automatically subscribed to them because you didn’t remove them as a friend first.

Now that you’ve been removed as a friend, you can’t remove them as a friend anymore, you can only unsubscribe to them. Once you’ve unsubscribed to them, then you’ll stop seeing their content in the Discover tab.

What Does it Mean When a Friend Becomes a Subscription on Snapchat?

Your friend’s stories appear under subscriptions because they removed you as a friend and you’re now subscribed to them. Unfortunately, when someone removes you as a friend, you’re automatically subscribed to them which is why you’re now showing up in the subscriptions section rather than the friend’s section.

Sometimes people remove you and their stories don’t end up on your subscriptions because they haven’t changed their settings for who’s allowed to view their stories to the public.

Making this change to your settings allows people you’re not friends with to watch your stories – this is why you can still see them in the Subscriptions section when they’ve removed you.

If their who can view my stories section was set to private, when they removed you, you wouldn’t have been able to see their stories until they added you back.

Another reason why a ‘friend’ will be in the subscription section is that you’ve added them and they haven’t added you back. If you want to know everyone you’ve sent a follow request to but they haven’t accepted, there are ways to do this.

How to Remove Them From The Subscriptions Section

To remove them from the subscriptions section, you need to remove them as a friend. Once you remove them as a friend, you’ll no longer be subscribed to them so you won’t see them under the subscriptions section again.

If you still want to have them as a friend, then the only way to remove them from the Subscriptions section is to get them to add you back as a friend.

One way to combat this is to simply ask them to add you back. Another way is to remove them as a friend them add them back – this will prompt them to get a notification saying that you’ve added them, from there if they see that you want to be friends with them, they’ll add you back.

Snapchat Subscriptions vs Friends

Snapchat subscriptions are people that you’ve chosen to subscribe to so that you can watch the content that they post regularly. it’s unlikely that accounts you subscribe to know who you are because they’re usually more corporate.

On the other hand, friends are accounts that you’ve agreed to be friends with, so one person accepted the other person’s follow request.

Chances are that you know the people that you’re friends with on Snapchat and you’ve spoken to each other before but with an account, you’re subscribed to, it’s unlikely that you’ve spoken.

When you’re friends with someone, you can message them and have conversations but when you’re subscribed to someone or an account and you try to message them, chances are they won’t reply because they get tons of people trying to message them.

An account you’re subscribed to usually has a lot of people subscribed to them so you won’t be the only one. In most cases too, you won’t even be able to message an account you’re subscribed to because they’ve stopped allowing people to message them since they’d get too many messages.

This of friends as more personal and people you know and subscriptions as more corporate and brands that you like the content of that may have a team producing content.

If You Unsubscribe Someone on Snapchat What Happens

If you unsubscribe from someone on Snapchat, then you’ll no longer be able to see their content anymore. The only thing tying you to them is that you’re still subscribed to them. Once you unsubscribe, then their account will be gone forever and you can’t see anything that they post.

Whenever they post a story, if they can see you in the list of people who viewed it, then your name will no longer be there. But apart from that, nothing else happens when you unsubscribe from someone.

If You Unsubscribe Someone on Snapchat Will They Know

If you unsubscribe from someone, they might know if they’re a small account. If they tend to look through who viewed their story and they can see that your name is no longer there because you’ve unsubscribed, then they’ll know that you’ve unsubscribed.

If they don’t look through who views their story often or they don’t know who you are or recognize your account, they won’t know that you’ve unsubscribed from them because Snapchat doesn’t notify anyone when you know.

There are no notifications or alerts sent to someone when you hit the unsubscribe button. Due to privacy reasons, Snapchat won’t tell people when you’ve unsubscribed because this will put people off from unsubscribing and they would feel like their privacy is being violated.

Imagine a bunch of people being forced to see the content because they’re worried that the person they’re unsubscribing to can see that they’ve unsubscribed, this could put them off Snapchat since they’re seeing content that they don’t actually want to see. But rest assured, if you’re seeing content that you don’t like, then you can unsubscribe without them knowing.

Tip: If someone is subscribed to you and they watch your story, you’ll see the term Other Snapchatters at the bottom of your story.

If You Are Subscribed to Someone on Snapchat Can They See Your Story

If you’re subscribed to someone, this means that they don’t have you as a friend and have chosen not to add you back. Since this is the case, they won’t be able to see your story because your story won’t appear in the friend’s section or the subscriptions sections.

For it to appear in either section, they need to either have you as a friend, or they need to be subscribed to you, but since you’re subscribed to them, they can’t be subscribed to you so they won’t see your stories when you post.

The only time that they’d see your stories is if you have who can view your stories set to public, and for some reason, they’re interested in your profile so they hold down on your name and click your story from there.

This is the only time that they’d be able to see your story. But if you have those who can view your story set to friends only, then they’ll never see your story because they’re not your friends.

If they don’t have you as a friend and you’re subscribed to them, another way that they can see your story is if someone sends it to them or if someone shares it with their story using the remix tool.

But aside from this, it won’t come up for them in either the friend’s sections or the subscribed sections. To get them to watch your story, you need to get them to add you as a friend.

If You Subscribe to Someone on Snapchat Can They Add You Back

If you subscribe to someone on Snapchat after searching for their name, then they can add you back. When you click subscribe to add someone as a friend, then they’ll still see the notification that someone has added them so they have the option to add you back.

To add you back, all they need to do is be the add button so that you become friends. Just because you’ve clicked subscribe to add someone as a friend doesn’t mean that they won’t be notified that they’ve been added and have the option to add you back.

The only time that you won’t be able to be added back after subscribing to someone is if it’s not a regular account that you’ve subscribed to.

If it’s a corporate account that you’ve subscribed to, it’s unlikely they’re going to add you back because they get so many notifications that they can’t even see when you added.

They probably do add back a few people but the only time you’ll have a chance to be added back is if it’s someone that you know personally or if they just decide they want to add you back.

Why When I Add Someone on Snapchat It Goes to Subscription

If you add someone on Snapchat and they go to Subscription, it means that they haven’t added you back as a friend so you’ll be the only one who can see their stories.

And since they’re not friends with you, their stories won’t appear in the friend’s section, they’ll appear in the subscribed section instead.

 

So if you’ve added someone and they’re in subscriptions already, you need to wait till they add you back and if they don’t, you’ll remain in subscriptions. To get out of subscriptions, you’ll need to let them know on another platform to add you back, or you need to unsubscribe to them.

Why Does It Say Subscribe Instead of Add Friend on Snapchat

When you add someone and it says subscribe instead of add friend, it means that they have a public profile which means their account is public so that anyone can message them, anyone can view their story, anyone can add them as a friend.

If an account was private, then when you add it, instead of saying subscribe, it would say add friend. The only difference with accounts that say subscribe and add a friend when you add them is that one account has made a public profile and the other is private.

When you have a public profile, it makes it easier to get more followers on Snapchat because people can find your account on Snapchat because whenever you post, it’ll be sent to Snap maps.

If you want the button to say Subscribe instead of Add friend when people add you, you need to open Snapchat > click on your profile in the upper left corner > click on create a public profile and follow all of the steps to create one. Once you’re done, when people add you, it’ll say Subscribe instead of Add friend.

Why Can’t I See My Subscriptions on Snapchat?

If you can’t see your subscriptions on Snapchat, it could be down to a few things. There could be some errors occurring when you can see your subscriptions or you might not be subscribed to anyone.

1. Bug

You might not be able to see your subscriptions on Snapchat because Snapchat has a failure in the system. When there’s a system failure, all of your subscriptions may disappear.

This means that there’s not much you can do to fix the problem apart from trying out a few troubleshooting steps or waiting for the problem to go away.

Bugs sometime’s come about in apps and they can cause unexpected errors. So if you notice that your subscriptions aren’t there, then it’s just a bug or glitch that is out of your control.

2. You’ve Unsubscribed From Everyone

If you’ve unsubscribed from everyone on Snapchat, then you’re not going to have any subscribed content to watch, they’re all going to be gone.

This means that you’ll only be able to see the friends section which only contains stories and you’re not going to be able to see any subscribed content. To see your subscriptions if you’re unable to see any, you need to start subscribing to people again.

3. You’ve Watched All the Content

If you’ve watched all of the content in the subscribed section, then you won’t be able to see any more subscriptions because there’s no content left. When you’ve watched everything, then you need to wait for new subscriptions to come up.

4. No One You’re Subscribed to Is Posting

If no one you’re subscribed to is posting, then you won’t be able to see their stories. You’ll need to wait for them to post content before you can start watching what they post.

If you aren’t subscribed to that many people, and you watch all of the content you have available, then you might be waiting some time for new subscriptions to come up.

5. You’ve Got No Internet

If you haven’t got any internet, then you won’t be able to see all of your subscriptions because you need the internet to see them. If the area you’re in has no signal or your contention isn’t strong, then you need to wait for it to come back before subscriptions can load again.

6. Snapchat Is Down

Another reason why you can’t see your subscriptions is that Snapchat is down. Sometimes Snapchat goes down usually because of routine maintenance or something is up with their server and when this happens, it can cause unexpected errors within the app such as subscriptions not showing.

In this scenario, you just need to wait for Snapchat to start working properly again. Once their server issue is corrected, then you’ll be able to start seeing your subscriptions again.

David Johnson is a freelance writer with 9 years of experience writing for Techzillo and other established tech outlets like iMore. His focus and key interests are Apple and accessibility as well as consumer technology in general. Read our Editorial Guidlines and Fact Checking process.

1 COMMENT

  1. What about the one that says subscribed but you don’t see any of their content even though their profile is set to public?

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