I am embarrassed (yet again) to admit I am part of the Millennial generation. My generation has effectively destroyed every aspect of both privacy and human interaction. It's truly pathetic.
People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
131–140 of 209 posts
Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#132I am embarrassed (yet again) to admit I am part of the Millennial generation. My generation has effectively destroyed every aspect of both privacy and human interaction. It's truly pathetic.
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Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was one of the early adopters of Venmo. Here's my take on it: * Venmo launched the first out of all the systems you mentioned * Venmo was one of the few (maybe only) system that allows you to pay users who are not on their system. Say you need to pay Joe and you were a Venmo user but Joe wasn't. You could still "pay" them on venmo and they would get a text back saying if they signed up they would get the payment. N…
PayPal was doing most of this years ago - and keeping your transactions private...
Paypal was missing all the core features:
* Paypal did not integrate with facebook (does it even do that now?) so I would have to manually ask each person for their paypal id. Not fun for casual dinners with new friends
* Paypal was not free (they charged for debit or credit)
* Paypal did not have a good mobile UX
I remember this because the reason I adopted Venmo was because my roommates were searching for a solution to split rent and we looked at Paypal and ended up choosing Venmo. Then I started using it for social activities (restaurants, taxis, bars, etc.) and became an active user. I actually have had Paypal since the ebay days, but I never use it.
Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#134It boggles my mind that anyone would want to stream their payment history publicly.
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Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#135In use Venmo to pay my babysitter. By default when you open the app, it shows the social feed.
It’s true, I learn new things about my friends every time I open the app. Sometimes some fairly embarrassing things.
Despite the fact that we have a babysitter isn’t private, I still always keep the transaction private.
Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#136There are so many comments here from people not understanding why anybody would ever want their history to be public, or shocked that that's the default...
Here's the thing: you get to type whatever you want, so you turn everything into jokes. Because it's public, you get to make up things that will embarrass your friend. Cryptic emoji. It's fun. It's just silly. When you pay back friends at a bar, you can browse their history and make fun of them.
None of the other payment platforms are fun like that!
Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm utterly perplexed that Venmo is even a thing. When I first started hearing about it maybe 5-6 years ago, I just figured, I already have PayPal and Square Cash, I'm too old, nobody I know uses Venmo, why bother. I've mostly ignored that it existed except occasionally hearing (usually younger) folks talking about it. A couple of months ago I was telling some people at work that I'm too old for it, and Square Cash w…
I imagine my feelings about Venmo reflect a lot of peoples': Basically it was the first way to send money on mobile phones that wasn't miserable or charged fees so everyone started using it. By the time PayPal owned it it was already popular. Everyone wanted to easily send money for at least, like, 10 years before that. It was the first mainstream option and it still felt really late. (PayPal already existed but was.…
So Square Cash then?
Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#138There are so many comments here from people not understanding why anybody would ever want their history to be public, or shocked that that's the default... Here's the thing: you get to type whatever you want, so you turn everything into jokes . Because it's public, you get to make up things that will embarrass your friend. Cryptic emoji. It's fun . It's just silly. When you pay back friends at a bar, you can browse t…
Well, you can't have too much fun. If you put something like "ISIS recruitment dues", you can get the money frozen.
Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I started using Venmo, PayPal was cumbersome to use (I don't even know if it had decent mobile app 6 years ago) and tended to have additional costs. Also the UI pummeled you with all sorts of random information and options, when all anyone wants to do is send $x to y-person as fast as counting cash in your wallet takes. For a group of people sitting in a restaurant, PayPal was (is? I dunno) annoying. Venmo is ef…
Wikipedia's article is very oddly worded, saying "In March 2015, Square introduced Square Cash for businesses, which includes the ability for individuals, organizations, and business owners to use a unique username to send and receive money, known as a $cashtag" But for some reason they neglect to point out the pre-for-business component. It actually dates back to 2013: https://squareup.com/news/introducing-cashtags…
The thing with PayPal is that it always seemed primarily targeted towards customer-business interactions. Trivial payments between friends didn't seem like a high-priority usecase back in ~2012. I noticed the same issues as you when I tried to Google its mobile history.
Venmo definitely won the first-to-market/network effect game. That said, I'm not complaining. Unless it looks like they are on course for bankruptcy or there is a major data leak, it's CX is pretty much exactly what I want it to be. The only unnecessary part is the social feed, but that has absolutely no impact on me unless I want it to (and sometimes it's amusing to see the messages my friends attach to them if I happen to look at it).
Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
#140This feature is completely nuts. Completely . I can't believe people want any of their payment activity showing up in a public feed. Just, no.
Not defending this, but I think the default setting is "Friends". So it's semi-public. But people are generically paying friends back for meals. You can understand why a lot of people wouldn't think of this as a big deal.
I think the "not a big deal" nature of such things is what contributes to them being so potentially insidious; if it was obviously a bad idea nobody would do it. But all the little drips and drops of data you leave around everywhere can add up to something not pretty.
I also think I would argue "friends" is basically the same thing as being fully public. Most people have hundreds or thousands of FB "friends".