Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake • Hacker News Board

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#101

Post by schraeds » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:19 PM UTC

bennyg wrote: post #26

jmduke wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It implies that the company is building a database that could be used to reconstruct an enormous network diagram. It's actually fun and trivial to do this yourself with a spider: go to http://www.snapchat.com/username , mark 'best friendships' as followthroughs. A fun thing you notice pretty quickly is that the 'best friend' designation isn't one-to-one, prolific snappers will appear often in peoples' friends lists…

That's the day I stop using it. If I get a few second ad every 4 or 5 snaps then I won't continue my usage of the app. I understand that good things that require monetary value to continue operating at scale need to have a way to make money, but advertising should be a last-resort option. We haven't even seen for-pay snaps yet (more seconds, more options like random clip-art to add in, etc). Advertising kills the pro…

Most people just want to see funny pictures of their friends, privacy and advertising concerns aside. Ride yo high horse outta here!!

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#102

Post by mholkesvik » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:27 PM UTC

micahroberson wrote: post #97

mholkesvik wrote: post #91

I'm now getting 404 errors for the web profiles: http://www.snapchat.com/username ...but I was building a crawler for fun and have been making tons of requests - the other pages seem to be working just fine. Anyone else having trouble? Did Snapchat do the right thing and shut down user profiles?

It appears they did!

Nope - looks like it's back online, at least for me. I think the response is just timing out, perhaps a heavy traffic issue.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#103

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:29 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #83

ansible wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this really need to be a centralized service though? Isn't this the sort of thing that could be implemented as a peer-to-peer networking service?

That doesn't get away from the issue of payment, it just moves it around. I think it does so in a way with a lot of positives, but there's the whole P2P bootstrapping problem in the way, both in terms of creating the code that even works and then actually bringing the network online, and unfortunately it seems that's a pretty big negative in practice.

It just "moves it around" to the point where the cost is so spread out as to be effectively zero. What's the average cost of a volunteer-run peer to peer file sharing network?

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#104

Post by beachstartup » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:31 PM UTC

so in other words, it causes drama, which will generate more user activity.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#105

Post by TheMagicHorsey » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:33 PM UTC

Can someone explain to me how Snapchat photos are considered ephemeral? Anyone can capture data at the endpoint and persist it. E.g. I can take a screenshot of a photo sent to me, and it will be in my iPhoto archive forever. I can share it from there to my entire contact list.

What am I missing? Please educate me.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#106

Post by Klinky » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:33 PM UTC

ansible wrote: post #76

jerf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. That ends with no service existing at all. Money has to come from somewhere for the service.

Does this really need to be a centralized service though? Isn't this the sort of thing that could be implemented as a peer-to-peer networking service?

See the Diaspora project for how great/easy P2P social networking is. Getting P2P working on bandwidth and port limited smartphone connections sounds like a nightmare.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#107

Post by jrwoodruff » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:36 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #79

speeder wrote: post #29

Today lots of posts on privacy... To those saying that if you have nothing to hide you should not have a problem with this, you are missing some points, and situations... For example, sometimes you do things that are controversial, but not necessarily wrong, or "sketchy", and you don't want the negative attention. For example, regarding the Verizon call list: What if people discover you have made lots of calls to KKK…

What if people discover you have made lots of calls to KKK? They will quickly jump to conclusion that you are probably a neo-nazi, but maybe you was like that black guy that made a KKK documentary The thing is, Verizon isn't handing over identities. This isn't to absolve Verizon here at all, but to illustrate that the US Government can't find terrorists this way.

... that we know of.

Just because the confidential subpoena that was leaked didn't specify the release of identifying information doesn't indicate the government doesn't already have that data to cross-reference.

Also, at least in the U.S., I believe landline numbers are public record, so if you're calling your wife on the ol' landline...

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#108

Post by mbetter » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:36 PM UTC

jmathai wrote: post #75

carbocation wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a society, are we rallying behind an app that helps people engage in extramarital affairs as this post suggests? Without getting into morality, don't we agree that affairs impact not just the two participants but the families surrounding them? I think that line of reasoning is projecting far too much onto a photo sharing service. I use it to share silly photos with friends. Just because someone else uses it to c…

Yeah. I'm not making any moral judgements or conclusions. Just stating an observation. I definitely don't think Snapchat in and of itself is immoral. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider the net effects of the app. It could be that Snapchat is terribly useful.

Just because you are cheating on your wife doesn't mean that everyone else is too.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#109

Post by ddt » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:42 PM UTC

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #105

Can someone explain to me how Snapchat photos are considered ephemeral? Anyone can capture data at the endpoint and persist it. E.g. I can take a screenshot of a photo sent to me, and it will be in my iPhoto archive forever. I can share it from there to my entire contact list. What am I missing? Please educate me.

It tells the sender if you screenshot. It's not enough to prevent it from happening, but it adds a pretty big social incentive not to do so.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#110

Post by amirmc » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 8:44 PM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #66

pkfrank wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot-on. If people would stop playing "gotcha" and focus on the substance of this post, we'd have much more substantial and valuable conversation. Snapchat has always positioned itself as a temporal messaging app, where anything goes - but only for a few seconds. It's always meant to be the foil to our Facebook, Google+, et. al., culture of heavy-hitting, abundant, follow-you-everywhere data trails. Why they would em…

Snapchat proves there is a huge market for privacy. The secondary issue is trusting that the privacy is as advertised. Developers should seize on both.

I hadn't thought of it this way but yes, it does.

However, the trust part is extremely difficult. Savvy users know that they can't trust 3rd parties with data and usually talk about encryption, self-hosting, P2P etc (that kind of stuff). i.e. not really 'trust' per se but more that privacy is 'built in'. Normal users (the vast majority), don't understand this stuff so the only thing they can do is have some faith in the company/service and carry on blindly (until they get burned).

Trying educate your market is a sure-fire way to go out of business. I don't know how developers can seize this without users already understanding why security/privacy (at a technical level) matters.