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People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

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Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#151

Post by DoreenMichele »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #94

Guys, people aren't "exposing their finances" on Venmo. People don't use it to buy stuff, or pay off CC bills, or anything. Nor are the transaction amounts exposed. It's used for balancing payments/debts between individuals. I don't consider "A paid B for brunch yesterday" or "X paid Y for Rent+cable" in any way to be "exposing finances". It's just another random (albeit unnecessary) social network, one that takes li…

It's amazing to me that this level of exposure seems "nuts" to you all and leaves you "speechless".

I'm old. I'm very painfully aware that other people often feel amazingly entitled to have some say in how I spend my life. I have spent a lot of decades arranging a life in which, no, not too many people have any say whatsoever.

It's possible that the youth of today are experiencing an unprecedented amount of (social) freedom that their cranky elders lack. If so, good for you.

It's also possible that you just haven't yet figured out that information is power, hell is other people and there are lots of crazies in the world who feel incredibly entitled to try to enforce some standard of behavior on you that you won't notice until you try to do something they don't like for some reason, no matter how innocuous.

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#152

Post by Guest9812398 »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #94

Guys, people aren't "exposing their finances" on Venmo. People don't use it to buy stuff, or pay off CC bills, or anything. Nor are the transaction amounts exposed. It's used for balancing payments/debts between individuals. I don't consider "A paid B for brunch yesterday" or "X paid Y for Rent+cable" in any way to be "exposing finances". It's just another random (albeit unnecessary) social network, one that takes li…

> Shocking, young people don't care if others know that they went out to dinner with some friends

But, it seems like they do care. They want others to know they went for dinner with friends, or settled a bill for brunch. It seems like they're obsessed with finding ways to extract the most social presence from normal everyday activities.

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#153

Post by BookmarkSaver »

Guest9812398 wrote: post #152
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #94

Guys, people aren't "exposing their finances" on Venmo. People don't use it to buy stuff, or pay off CC bills, or anything. Nor are the transaction amounts exposed. It's used for balancing payments/debts between individuals. I don't consider "A paid B for brunch yesterday" or "X paid Y for Rent+cable" in any way to be "exposing finances". It's just another random (albeit unnecessary) social network, one that takes li…

> Shocking, young people don't care if others know that they went out to dinner with some friends But, it seems like they do care. They want others to know they went for dinner with friends, or settled a bill for brunch. It seems like they're obsessed with finding ways to extract the most social presence from normal everyday activities.

It's enabled by default. It isn't an "obsession", it was something the company threw in there and that users don't care enough about to disable. I'm sure usage of it would vanish almost instantly if something like the actual $ amount was published in addition to the message.

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#154

Post by pacetherace »

crazygringo wrote: post #136

There 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…

Financial transactions are covered by a lot of complex laws and regulations. A bad joke may end up costing a lot of time and money to clear your name.

It is equivalent to prank calling cops and telling them that a friend sexually assaulted you.

Usually, stupid financial transactions bite you at the most inopportune times like when you apply for home mortgages or deal with immigration issues.

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#155

Post by aphextron »

X-Istence wrote: post #129
hoffbrau99 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a cultural/generational thing. Millenials don't think twice about this. They are shocked that anyone would care. Non-millennials are shocked that anyone would share their financials publicly. We're all shocked at each other's behavior.

Excuse me... but as a millennial, and knowing many other millennials that also care, we do absolutely care. There is a long list of people that I know that don't use Venmo because of the "social" crap. Please don't try to brush this as a "millennials don't care".

>Excuse me... but as a millennial, and knowing many other millennials that also care, we do absolutely care.

I think by Millenials he really meant to say Gen Z.

"Millenials" has become a catch-all term for "young people" over the past 10 years, but the reality is that we are no longer the youngest generation. Older folks just haven't caught up to that fact yet. Anyone below age 25 now is a completely different generation from us. "Getting" Snapchat and Venmo seems to be the dividing line.

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#156

Post by chillacy »

bskap wrote: post #137
ajkjk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

At this point there are too many network effects around venmo, if you're splitting the BBQ with 5 people and 4 have venmo and you don't, it's not as convenient for the requester. That's why I got venmo initially, and now it's super easy to request money from friends and 2nd degree friends, since my network is all venmo. I know 1 person who uses square cash and he's over 40, and I know 2 or 3 less tech-literate friends who use paypal and refuse to try venmo. It's just a hassle to split costs with them because I have to do it in 2 apps instead of adding everyone to the same request in venmo.

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#157

Post by rconti »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #139
rconti wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Could be. I used PayPal to transfer money to friends before it was even accepted on eBay, but obviously that's a pretty niche example.

It looks like Venmo is ~2x as popular as Square Cash from this recode article:

https://www.recode.net/2018/2/27/17059182/square-cash-app-mo...

And a few other good data points/comparisons.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/paypal-vs-google-wallet...

https://lifehacker.com/money-transfer-showdown-square-cash-v...

(One source points out that Square Cash followed Square Wallet and Square Order; I used Square Wallet because I also had their card-reader from back in the day, so this goes back to at least 2011).

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#158

Post by rconti »

thirduncle wrote: post #145
triangleman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's PayPal without the fees.

Is it? My understanding is that (other than the brand and parent ownership) as services they're quite different.

Maybe from a UI standpoint, but all of the competitors are pretty similar. Minus network effect, of course. Nobody in my network uses Venmo, for example, but apparently I'm an outlier.

With all of them, you can find a way to use it for free. Eg, if the service you use doesn't support free bank transfers, you link it with a debit card for free transfers.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/paypal-vs-google-wallet...

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#159

Post by [deleted] »

pacetherace wrote: post #154
crazygringo wrote: post #136

There 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…

Financial transactions are covered by a lot of complex laws and regulations. A bad joke may end up costing a lot of time and money to clear your name. It is equivalent to prank calling cops and telling them that a friend sexually assaulted you. Usually, stupid financial transactions bite you at the most inopportune times like when you apply for home mortgages or deal with immigration issues.

[deleted]

Re: People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses

#160

Post by iamjaredwalters »

pacetherace wrote: post #154
crazygringo wrote: post #136

There 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…

Financial transactions are covered by a lot of complex laws and regulations. A bad joke may end up costing a lot of time and money to clear your name. It is equivalent to prank calling cops and telling them that a friend sexually assaulted you. Usually, stupid financial transactions bite you at the most inopportune times like when you apply for home mortgages or deal with immigration issues.

Drawing a comparison between a comment sent to a friend (a communication between two parties that ostensibly know each other) and prank calling the cops is a bit far fetched.
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