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Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

wsj.com

21–30 of 177 posts

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#21

>the belief that Facebook was preventing Snap’s most popular content from trending on Instagram >Snap executives noted their belief that Instagram was blocking searches of these Snap-related terms Real solid data driven analysis here.. >Facebook’s tactics have long engendered concern across Silicon Valley, said Paul Keable, chief strategy officer at Ashley Madison. The dating site, which caters to married people seek…

> Yes, Ashley Madison, the "dating" site. Not sure why you seem to be implying that the article is using a euphemism, as literally the next phrase in that sentence is "which caters to married people seeking affairs".

I don't know if you are aware of the specific details of what Ashley Madison did, but basically they were using bots to convince men that there were actual women interested in meeting (if only the use paid the membership fee to enable messaging), when by-and-large there were none. It was a scam.

I mean, most dating websites use a series of tricks of messaging and "matches" to trick people into thinking there are more people available than there actual are. I did a study of eHarmony years ago and came to the conclusion that only 10% of all "matches" were people who had the capability of returning a message. But Ashley Madison took it to a whole new level of creating accounts ran by bots that actively messaged people. IIRC, it was much more on the order of 99% of activity.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#22
Classic. Not a day goes by that Evan Spiegel doesn’t regret selling Snap for a cool 7 billion to Facebook and just moving on with his life, so they throw out crap like this as some kind of revenge by social mob justice. He drank too much of his own koolaid.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#23
post #19
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a problem with your camera hardware and/or software. An unprivileged, user-space app should not be able to soft-brick a hardware part.

My phone is a Nexus 5X. All I know is that the old Snapchat app would occasionally soft-brick my camera such that no other application (including the camera app) could use it until I rebooted my phone. I confirmed with multiple experiments that Snapchat was the culprit. After the redesign, the problem went away.

I remember the same problem in a Nexus 4. And Google said they couldn't fix it because it was a bug in a Qualcomm driver and they had no access to the source code.

I think the redesign fixed that because Snapchat no longer takes pictures with the camera. Instead, they take screenshots of the camera preview.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, Ashley Madison, the "dating" site. Not sure why you seem to be implying that the article is using a euphemism, as literally the next phrase in that sentence is "which caters to married people seeking affairs".

I don't know if you are aware of the specific details of what Ashley Madison did, but basically they were using bots to convince men that there were actual women interested in meeting (if only the use paid the membership fee to enable messaging), when by-and-large there were none. It was a scam. I mean, most dating websites use a series of tricks of messaging and "matches" to trick people into thinking there are more…

Do you have that study - sounds an interesting read.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#25
post #22

Classic. Not a day goes by that Evan Spiegel doesn’t regret selling Snap for a cool 7 billion to Facebook and just moving on with his life, so they throw out crap like this as some kind of revenge by social mob justice. He drank too much of his own koolaid.

SNAP has $23 billion market cap you dolt.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, Ashley Madison, the "dating" site. Not sure why you seem to be implying that the article is using a euphemism, as literally the next phrase in that sentence is "which caters to married people seeking affairs".

I don't know if you are aware of the specific details of what Ashley Madison did, but basically they were using bots to convince men that there were actual women interested in meeting (if only the use paid the membership fee to enable messaging), when by-and-large there were none. It was a scam. I mean, most dating websites use a series of tricks of messaging and "matches" to trick people into thinking there are more…

There werent any women on AM. When the story broke they couldnt find anyone who actually had an affair. It was scams all the way down.

(And when the mounties responded after the hack there wasnt any evidence either. A so-called unicorn had no cohesive security program.)

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#27
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about Facebook copying features and draws a connection to Snaps subsequent downfall. I’m claiming the downfall was inevitable (no product, bad redesign, those useless spectacles), and once again Facebook is the scapegoat in all this.

Snap’s not a bankrupt Startup without product, they’re still a 23.5B company with growing market share and features Facebook has been copying hand over fist, that would be arguably be worth a lot more if FB had to come up with their own features instead of Xeroxing Snaps ideas.

Copying features of your competitors and innovating on them is part of competition.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#28
The headline doesn't really match the story. I don't doubt the likelihood that Facebook engaged in these sorts of things, but from the headline I expected a laundry list of complaints and at least anecdotes to support them. Instead there's only two vague accusation without support that Facebook discouraged influencers from Snap, and suppressed Snap content from trending.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#29
post #17

Why is this thread full of commentators attacking Snap for completely unrelated things? Strikes me as odd. FB told IG influencers they might lose their verified status if they link to a SC profile? Seems like that was a mistake on their part, could they really not anticipate future antitrust action?

That's a lot of HN though, you'll see people talk about tangentially related things to the main topic, and never address the linked topic.

I've learned to accept it as is, and not to worry about it too much.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#30
post #25
post #22

Classic. Not a day goes by that Evan Spiegel doesn’t regret selling Snap for a cool 7 billion to Facebook and just moving on with his life, so they throw out crap like this as some kind of revenge by social mob justice. He drank too much of his own koolaid.

SNAP has $23 billion market cap you dolt.

You can correct somebody without name calling.
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