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Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

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Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#21

Post by lmm »

jmathai wrote: post #9

This has been circulating in my mind for some time now. It seems to me that Silicon Valley is so obsessed with "home run" start ups that we've lost track of caring if they make our lives better. I'm not necessarily making a moral judgement on Snapchat but I do think it is something to consider. You can see the same mentality around Chatroulette. I realize the value of something is not concrete at first; Twitter comes…

>I'm not necessarily making a moral judgement on Snapchat but I do think it is something to consider. You can see the same mentality around Chatroulette. I realize the value of something is not concrete at first; Twitter comes to mind. I think we all agree that Twitter plays an important role in society today, yet that was unclear a few years ago.

I tend to assign the values the other way around; Snapchat seems like something people get a lot of fun from (and I don't mean affairs, just friends sending each other pictures they don't want to post publicly). It's not a "worthy cause", but it's a moral good, possibly the greatest such thing.

Conversely twitter seems like a net negative; the main way it impacts me is that news organizations now seem to think it's ok to publish comments from random people as if they were news. And people in fora like this seem to think they can dismiss an idea by linking to a witty tweet about it. It's a dumbing down of discourse and I'm seeing no upside; I think I would genuinely have a better life, and be happier, if twitter didn't exist.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#22

Post by jmathai »

jmduke wrote: post #14
jmathai wrote: post #9

This has been circulating in my mind for some time now. It seems to me that Silicon Valley is so obsessed with "home run" start ups that we've lost track of caring if they make our lives better. I'm not necessarily making a moral judgement on Snapchat but I do think it is something to consider. You can see the same mentality around Chatroulette. I realize the value of something is not concrete at first; Twitter comes…

As a society, are we really 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 use SnapChat daily and its starting to cannibalize a lot of my other methods of communication: its fast, more personal, more affective, and a lot more fun to use. I…

I'm sure there are useful scenarios like yours. But that alone doesn't magically make the app have a net positive impact. I'm not claiming it is positive or negative but rather something to consider.

The comment about email isn't really logical. Crow bars help you kill people but that doesn't mean we should treat them the same way as guns. I'm sure there is a technical term for it (logical fallacy) but that's besides my point and I'm on mobile :).

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#24

Post by jmathai »

lmm wrote: post #21
jmathai wrote: post #9

This has been circulating in my mind for some time now. It seems to me that Silicon Valley is so obsessed with "home run" start ups that we've lost track of caring if they make our lives better. I'm not necessarily making a moral judgement on Snapchat but I do think it is something to consider. You can see the same mentality around Chatroulette. I realize the value of something is not concrete at first; Twitter comes…

>I'm not necessarily making a moral judgement on Snapchat but I do think it is something to consider. You can see the same mentality around Chatroulette. I realize the value of something is not concrete at first; Twitter comes to mind. I think we all agree that Twitter plays an important role in society today, yet that was unclear a few years ago. I tend to assign the values the other way around; Snapchat seems like…

Interesting points. I agree that "fun" is a valuable thing, or can be anyways.

Twitter isn't perfect but one thing if does is to give a voice to those who didn't have one before. I'm thinking specifically of oppressive governments and the affected citizens or folks being harassed by law enforcement.

I hope that benefit outweighs the media's misuse of it.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#25

Post by jmduke »

jmathai wrote: post #22
jmduke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a society, are we really 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 use SnapChat daily and its starting to cannibalize a lot of my other methods of communication: its fast, more personal, more affective, and a lot more fun to use. I…

I'm sure there are useful scenarios like yours. But that alone doesn't magically make the app have a net positive impact. I'm not claiming it is positive or negative but rather something to consider. The comment about email isn't really logical. Crow bars help you kill people but that doesn't mean we should treat them the same way as guns. I'm sure there is a technical term for it (logical fallacy) but that's besides…

The comment about email isn't really logical. Crow bars help you kill people but that doesn't mean we should treat them the same way as guns. I'm sure there is a technical term for it (logical fallacy) but that's besides my point and I'm on mobile :).

This is exactly my point.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#26

Post by bennyg »

jmduke wrote: post #18
carbocation wrote: post #12

Most of the comments are focused on the author's trivial mistake (when was this information surfaced: now, or at launch?). His substantive point is more valuable to bring to light. Perhaps the fact that there are top-users lists highlights the tension between what Snapchat says that people use it for (sharing brief moments with friends) vs what people actually use it for. In fact, I actually use Snapchat for sharing…

> 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 product 9 times out of 10.

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#28

Post by stopcodon »

cmelbye wrote: post #4
mrlase wrote: post #2

You've been able to see this online now for... a long time. Just go to http://www.snapchat.com/ ; and you can see it.

I'm glad someone pointed this out. This feature has always existed. You didn't even have to do it through your web browser, Snapchat has always had a link within the app to view the profiles of your friends (including their "best friends").

Exactly, I'm not sure why this suddenly became news. Did nobody bother to tap a name in their friends list in the last 6 months?

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#29

Post by speeder »

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? 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 (I forgot the name, I saw in school many years ago, a teacher showed us) and interacted a lot with them.

Or snapchat, what if you are exchanging photos with people with some other people dislike? You never had friends that hate each other? Or your mom that hate your girlfriend? Or your wife that hate your uncle?

There are lots of situations where privacy is important, and beyond commiting crimes or being a anti-government rebel...

Re: Snapchat, You've Made a Huge Mistake

#30

Post by _pmf_ »

This reminds me of this article[1] that nicely outlines that the social network graph is either useless (see Facebook; what good is the fact that I have added 10000 users as "friend"?) or creepy (now Snapchat, apparently).

[1] http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/

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