Snapchat is the first (and likely not the last) mobile app that I (as someone in my late 20's) just "don't get".
There have been plenty of apps that I've tried and aren't for me so I've uninstalled them, but I always seem to understand their purpose and what makes them unique and desirable to use for someone who isn't me. Snapchat on the other hand...is a mystery.
I'm in my mid-20's now, and I got it at first, though I didn't use it. Thr point a few years ago was it was a "secure" and "private" place to share with your friends, thanks to the ephemeral nature.
But over the last 18 months they've pushed towards a more broad social graph and more public nature and I just don't understand it. It's Instagram with some time-limit's.
It's almost as if Snapchat is a direct reaction to the permanency of social media. Once schools/parents started teaching kids to be careful online, they moved to a service where it isn't as much of an issue.
How does anyone know for sure that all of that traffic (or at least the meta data related to the traffic) is not prepped for data mining on a per-user basis ?
There would be obvious commercial advantage in doing this, just for starters.
Data mining services like facebook gives you a solid picture of the interests and connections that the target person broadcasts publicaly. This is useful information, and it is exploited by any number of parties ... and people are (hopefully) aware of that.
Data mining snapchat gives a deeper picture of a person's interests and connections, as they are broadcast whilst that person believes that this information is entirely private.
Aggregating data from both sources (which would be almost trivial), would provide a very detailed view of the target. Much more than the sum of each dataset alone.
And it matters not whether the owners of Snapchat are completely and utterly above-board with everything .... there is the question of who owns and operates the network that all this info travels over.
Bottom line is that all of that "ephemeral" data that is going through snapchat is no more private than facebook, or youtube, or HAM radio, or telephone calls, or email, or SMS, or pretty much anything electronic.
There is no real privacy with this, but its easy to provide the illusion of privacy.
"How does anyone know for sure that all of that traffic (or at least the meta data related to the traffic) is not prepped for data mining on a per-user basis ?"
You can't, but that's not really the point. The point is that it's not permanent in a form that other users can access. Sure, maybe Snapchat stores every picture I ever sent. That sucks and should stop. But at least Grandma can't go back and look at some 2 year old picture I took with some buddies.
I know that because I know Evan, and he is obsessive about privacy. Of course it could all just be an act, but Occam's razor.
Truthfully, I don't really care if my Snapchat data is being mined. I'm not looking for absolute privacy. I'm not sending sensitive or private information. The ephemeral nature of the medium keeps me from worrying if a picture is unflattering or could be construed as in bad taste out of context.
People get upset because Twitter and Facebook "mess with" their timelines, as if they were some fundamental natural component of the universe. The average person, even a young "digital native" has no concept of how their gadgets work, so while you might think "Oh, this pretty much has to be sitting on their server in a recoverable format" the average person thinks the picture lives only on their phone. They can't even get to the point of making an informed decision of whether or not the data they give up is worth the service received because they lack the models to understand what happens.
It's like wondering why someone who still thinks good and bad humors mediate health isn't worried about their cholesterol, there's literally not the machinery available to make that a concern. This is one of the biggest reasons that we should teach coding in schools. Even if you never write a line of code in anger, knowing vaguely what's going on at least gives you a chance to be a consenting participant in technologically mediated arrangements.
I consider myself an early-adopter. I always try to at least test out new technology, especially if it's what "the kids" are using. But with Snapchat I had a strong reaction of "this is dumb, screw this, I'm too old for this". Plus, no one I knew used it. I guess that makes me old now.
I didn't get it until literally this past Sunday. I've always had it installed on my phone, and have maybe ~10 friends on it, but I never actually sent anything. I would occasionally receive a snapchat from my friend, I would chuckle, and that was the end of it.
This Sunday my wife took my phone and just took a silly picture of ourselves during the Super Bowl and sent it to everyone on my list. Within minutes, I was getting a response from pretty much everyone, some people I haven't even talked to in months, and it was fun and made us laugh! I had the dumbest epiphany of my life. It's really just a fast, dumb way to communicate. That's it. Maybe I'll actually use it more now
It reminds me of Facebook back in the day, when it wasn't so serious. When it wasn't full of politics and Buzzfeed and not-so-humblebrags.
You don't have to worry (as much) about a silly photo coming back to haunt you in 10 years on Snapchat. It's much less formal feeling. The faces are my favorite; it's just a lot of fun to use.
We used to have ICQ, AIM, MSN, YIM, and a host of other lesser known methods to chat. This is just one geared toward sending quick pictures. I doubt the privacy part of it is even significant to most users.
I tried to use it, but I realized a core component was taking out my phone and snapping a pic in public. Using my phone in public makes me socially anxious (feel like I'm "part of the problem"), so I don't see a world where I can really snapchat.
I was told that Snapchat was full of naked pictures of cute younger women. For some reason it seems to be filled with short videos of startup executive types about my age driving around and getting coffee. Oh well.
I'm not sure why so many of us don't "get" Snapchat. Really it just corrects one of the biggest "features" of social apps: that they're essentially public-facing, permanent popularity contests.
On Snapchat, every picture and chat message self-destructs by default, so there's less social pressure to post something truly extraordinary. There's no publicly visible tracking of likes, so you're not tempted to compare your popularity with others. There is no infinite history where you can come across something old that will make you embarrassed and upset (e.g. records of bad decisions, photos with an ex).
Sending snaps back and forth is great for staying in touch with friends without having to converse about a particular topic. For acquaintances who you don't know as well, an amusing snap is a great icebreaker. And for when you DO want to have a conversation, there's both an IM and a video chat.
The Discover feature where you see content from VIPs directly competes with a significant use-case of Twitter in the target demographic. But unlike Twitter, it's more visual, more immersive, and because of its temporal nature, more exclusive.
Moreover, teens hate creeps. You know every time someone views your snap. You know when someone screenshots your snap. You know when your chat is read. You know when someone views your story. Your audience is exactly who you choose. It's not the internet at large. It's not your mom, it's not the weird guy in your school who found your profile, and it's not people way outside your age-range who are thirst-liking your selfies and making you uncomfortable.
I don't "get" Snapchat any more than I get Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. etc. These social apps (which are about as social as reality TV is reality) all are more about promotion than communication. In order to get into these apps you need to have a personality that seeks constant attention from others and external validation. The platforms are all about "broadcasting me and tracking the acknowledgement of me", which is great if you're advertising a corporate brand but kind of sad and self-absorbed if you're a person.
From the other comments on this thread and my tiny bit of Snapchat use, I think you're wrong about Snapchat being in the "promotion [over] communication" bucket. As a largely private, ephemeral communication medium, it seems much worse for promotional purposes than other social networks.
This is a great response. I'd add that you can meet people on Snapchat without giving away too much private detail, like a phone number.
The new 2d printed avatars that allow you to easily add people you meet are perfect. Shows Snapchat really understand their audience.
Snapchat may have been bootstrapped with sexting but it is so much more than that now. They've hit on something that no other social network has - an audience of regular people who aren't selling anything, who want to retain their privacy and who want to have fun with friends and acquiantances online.
So much of the content I see on Snapchat would never be shared anywhere else - and a lot of the people sharing it are those who weren't interested in building a profile on public pages.
It's amazing how much our priorities change as we move through life.
Once we've experienced quantity, quality gains importance. Simultaneously, our need for social acceptance might not diminish, but it becomes far more refined.
- Add people from your contacts: swipe down from the main screen -> add friends
- Add people by username: celebrities often post their username on other social networks, you can find aggregate lists
- Add people by "snapcode": hold the camera over someone else's phone while they display their snapcode, your snapcode is the yellow QR code thing you see when you swipe down from the main screen
My close friend in her mid-20s is teaching a journalism class to high school students, using SnapChat. I've been fascinated by the student's perspective. They all use Snapchat.
One of the most interesting responses I heard what that Snapchat was what they used to connect with people they didnt know too well, but wanted to stay in touch with. For example, if they meet someone, but dont know them too well, they would exchange Snapchat information. It is literally like Facebook was for the last generation.
It looks like anyone can create new myspace, facebook, snapchat, twitter, instagram, ... as long as they time it right with the previous one running out of steam and make it faster to interact with. I'm not sure what can be faster than snapchat though - live stream?
Has to be something that lets you fix it up and present your "best self"; looking cooler then you really are in a critical component of any social network.
A direct neural interface, paired to a bi-directional low latency satellite feed.
That way users can see,hear,smell,feel & taste everything that their friends are experiencing .... simultaneously, and in real time. Continuously, all day, everyday.
it already started happening - we're all paying attention to it and I bet more than half the people here are trying to work out how to make money from it.
>It is literally like Facebook was for the last generation.
This makes a lot of sense. I was starting college in 2005 when facebook was really starting to blow up, and this was exactly how I used (and enjoyed) it. There were times when I would just flip through the directory of people in my college and if I recognized your face from class or walking around, I'd add you, send a few messages to break the ice, then meet in person if it felt like we connected.
If anyone else is like me and started with facebook around this time and still has their profile, take a look at some of the posts and friends you had from over 10 years ago. It's pretty remarkable to get such a look at your younger self.
Once the service obtains requirement status. Where everyone joins it becomes more real and more serious. E-Mail is serious, Facebook is serious, LinkedIn is serious but Snapchat is still innocent and fun.
Adding adults to a service is the sure fire way to run off the children.
It's a video game for her. She doesn't look at the photos in the morning, she just responds to keep the chain going. It's like grinding. She has a score, tries to improve it, get trophies, new equipment (I mean filters), etc.
But a particularly powerful one, it's not attaching to feelings of escape or enjoyment but friendship and social status. So even if you dislike you can't not participate without serious consequences. Especially when you are at an age when social status is of extreme importance, that gives the operators of the network and app a hell of a lot of power and a new flavor of power at that.
That's true, but the trophies and points are barely any value in the day-to-day. For example, in deciding to reply to a snap, the thought "My score's gonna increase if I do this" barely crosses the mind.
It's always just about keeping the conversation. And since a lot of the conversation is filler that need not be saved forever, snaps have a unique position.
The bit of game theory they actively present is Seinfeld's "Don't Break the Chain" technique. Snapchat marks and elevates contacts you individually snap at at least once a day, moving those contacts into more-and-more personally named categories ("close friend", "best friends", etc).
That bit is right in your face and rewards you for increased use.
I had no idea that was the case, but that's some next level psychological shit to be pulling on a predominantly teenage customer base. Does no one see the proposal to do something like this and think to step back for a second and consider the effect its going to have on people's lives?
I'm very skeptical. No doubt Snapchat is game-ified somewhat, but I have people aged 12 to 53 (and all ages in between) snapping with me and not a single one of them has ever mentioned their snap score. I'd bet most don't even know their score.
Trophies aren't really all that unlockable. Within the app, any trophy you haven't unlocked is a lock icon with ??? underneath it, so you don't even know what you need to do to achieve it. You can go online to find out, but neither my 12-year-old daughter nor my 17-year-old sister have bothered to do it. They just don't care. That's not what it's about for them.
There's product placement. He namedrops "Treller" and "VSCO". The article isn't "How to upgrade your style", it "How to become a Snapchat user." Even his conclusion is "I'll try more", just like you tell yur teacher when you've failed and you know you'll fail again. I don't doubt the person is authentic, but I wonder how much he has worked with BuzzFeed to tune the article.
Still, 1. Snapchat's design is remarkable for its hidden features that you discover by social-networking, and 2. it's a much more interesting, funny, interactive press release presenting the features of a product than any other start-up I've seen. Next product video I make, I'll make it this way.
VSCO is definitely a phenomenon amongst teenagers, regardless of the product placement possibilities in the article. I'd actually have rather seen an article on that, because I find it fascinating that a service without any of the Skinner-box gratification buttons ("like" "retweet" "share" "comment") has taken off in such a big way.
Scores and Chains, as mentioned in the article, sound pretty skinner-boxy. Plus, every time someone sends you a response to a message is a skinner box reward, in a sense.
VSCO has a rather large following among the prosumer crowd, most of the Apple "Shot on the iPhone 6" ads mention VSCO and a photographer friend of mine uses it on his iPad with his 5D on the go. While I haven't used it myself, its certainly been name checked quite a bit and its success is largely due to it being a more empowered Instagram on the photography side.
I know pro photographers who use VSCO to edit their iPhone shots to upload to Instagram, as the tools are so much more powerful than IG's own. It's a great app.
i'm just fascinated that i spend ages on facebook, twitter, reddit, hn and lobsters, and have never heard of VSCO before this. is there that little overlap between the demographics?
No. If you look at snapchat as one of the most addicting games on the market right now, hidden features make complete sense. They increase the 'skill ceiling' of sorts, and dramatically increase user longevity.
Actually I think the article isn't about "How to become a Snapchat user." but rather "how teens use snapchat (or social media in general) that is really different than how adults use it" .
Going from that to "what social media teens use that you don't even know about" isn't much of a stretch.
I'm not sure if I'll call mentioning these apps as "product placement".
Could be someone trying to up these app's SEO ranking. Could be just an interesting tidbit he used (he also mentioned instagram, and I doubt that was by request).
I wish I had snapchat when I was growing up instead of just AIM! It's one of the new messaging platforms that I am excited about because it introduces a new (mostly visual) means of communication.
This is pretty stupid. Teens aren't the trendsetters, they're the early adopters. Teens follow their older siblings who are the true trend setters. There's no way a 13 year old determines whats popular, it is older 18-30 cool people who are the true trend setters. Rappers and pop icons for the most part, there are no 13 year old pop icons.
This was my thought the whole way through.. He's treating this teen like he needs to be more like her. It sounds like she's wasting her life while simultaneously wasting her friends' lives. There's no gain to this..
> It sounds like she's wasting her life while simultaneously wasting her friends' lives.
It sounds like you spent more time writing this comment than she did to respond to all of her friend's snaps from the night before. Heroin is a waste of a life; Snapchat is just a distraction, and a minor one at that.
A distraction where continued use is necessary for your friendships to remain in place. That mediates social status among young people. While they learn how to interact with other people in social situations.
So ... no, not just a distraction. Just a new thing we haven't seen the outcome of yet (besides some evidence of a large increase in narcissism and a drop in empathy).
It's amazing that at age 22 I've already seemingly "aged-out" of being an early adopter/power user of new social media (not that Snapchat is new, but I use it maybe once or twice a day and I've never even heard of "Triller" and "VSCO"). My 15 year old sister is always rolling her eyes telling me how to "correctly" use my existing social media apps and I've never heard of most of the new apps she's into.
I didn't know how to use Facebook when I was 18, so don't feel too bad. We grew up on IRC and PHPBB, social networks of fundamentally different make than the ones in use now.
Plus, you are (were) one of the dorks and your sister is one of the cool kids. The two groups have noticeably different modes of socialising.
There was for a brief period what I like to call the "wild west" of the web. All just shitty phpBB and whatnot boards for every topic. There was no concept of social media. I genuinely got to know the people, mods, smods, gmods, admins, superadmins (the list of "positions" was always comically long and induced great drama on most communities). I visited many of those people I formed connections with online, in person. I feel like social media has swallowed the people from these communities and created large "highways" instead of communities.
Facebook groups just aren't the same. There's something comforting knowing it was "just some fucking guy" hosting the website for fun.
I think that kind of cultural expression is something we need to protect and keep alive.
A future when all of our communities, all of our social interactions, are routed two a small amount of services hosted by great companies is one I don't look forward to.
That kind of thing - just setting something up for the hell of it, and slowly building a community, or a group of friends that way - to me it's very special.
I remember when I first encountered BBSes (mid to late 80s). Dialing into a slew of local systems and enlarging my social circle. Then there was the Internet and many of my former BBS social circle were deriding it, saying it didn't have that community feel.
I remember when I first encountered USENET (early 90s). Reading scores of USENET groups and enlarging my social circle, even going to far as to go to a yearly meeting one group held for several years. Then there was the World Wide Web that everything was being funneled in to. Most of the USENET crowd I was with were deriding it, saying it didn't have that community feel.
I remember when I first encountered Slashdot (late 90s). Reading score of comments on trending topics and again, enlarging my social circle. Then there was Digg and many on Slashdot were deriding that, saying it didn't have that community feel ...
I also remember when no one could get fired for buying IBM, and when no one could get fired for buying Microsoft. Both were also (and still are) billion dollar corporations.
I feel a bit the same way. I was running a BBS in 90s, which allowed only one person to connect at a time. I ended up meeting a big bunch of my users in person.
To recreate this, maybe I'll try starting a video chat when random people want to ask me for advice. Tried that today when someone sent me a random message on FB asking me for advice about living in Japan, was fun.
> Plus, you are (were) one of the dorks and your sister is one of the cool kids. The two groups have noticeably different modes of socialising.
Very true. And like some of the other commentors are pointing out, it's somewhat sad that the old, more "natural" communities built over time are becoming a dying breed.
All communities evolve. I don't think there's anything particularly more natural about one approach or another (if anything I'd say phpBB promotes a very unnatural mode of conversation because of the way its "topics" work).
I still don't know how to use Facebook... Neither Snapchat or whatever social thing. I only need a text messaging app, which today is WhatsApp, and i'm fine.
P.S. as a corollary, if you were 14 today and on snapchat, you'd be one of the weird people she doesn't want to snapchat with and you'd be in the exact same position.
There's still a huge number of very active phpBB-type bulletin boards out their, with all the usual drama. They turn up whenever you search for help on a random non-tech topic. I love to visit the world for a little bit. It's like walking into a real locals' pub, where the regulars are at the bar chatting to the landlord about the crazy stuff Dave got up to at the weekend. They're probably the same people who go home and post on their homebrew, beekeeping, classic car, medieval history etc, etc forums.
In my experience so far it's a selective thing. Certain types of social media, apps or pop culture I am 'with' (Rick & Morty, certain indy games), but others I didn't even really understand years ago (twitter, myspace).
With technology, the cultural gap between generations widens, but the time gap between generation ages actually shrinks.
Every generation has their own technology and apps and I think it is fine.
You, being 22, might not even use Facebook at all, whereas I, being 38, still use it, so I feel "aged-out" versus you. :)
The problem with some of these new apps is the loss of "real" human connections. Like this girl said she almost does not even pay attention to her snaps because she gets so many. She just responds. What is the point of that?
It seems it is more important for her to get high scores to show she is popular than the actual interaction.
This might create some social and psychological problems for her later in life. At least this is my humble opinion.
Full disclaimer: I am working on a social app too, but opposite of these current alternatives, we are focusing on the "real" part, the non-idealized part of human interaction.
> I also presumed that a dedicated power user could preserve said photos forever, so I immediately wrote the whole thing off.
Same here. One of the girls also describes how to screenshot the app without the other user being notified. It's doubtful that most teens sexting using the app are unaware of this.
That and it is reactionary to the social media that sticks around. Teens can be goofy and in the moment but it doesn't get back to parents or others... for the most part.
I am the very proud father of a 14yo girl whom I have turned into an teenaged IT guru over the years.
She learned to read at age 3 using the very well done "Cat In The Hat" desktop program, and since then I have turned her on to everything from Gmail at age 6 to Ableton at 12.
I've decided that Snapchat is where it ends for me/us last year...she needs something to be hers and her friends alone, without "Dad" poking is old-ass nose into things.
I think she really appreciates that I haven't bugged her about connecting and sharing on that platform, and I know deep down it was time.
But boy...do I sometimes miss that 6yo angel sending me cryptic "i luvu" via Gmail.
Sorry for being an old-ass as well, but wasn't snapchat created to send nudes to other people in a way that they are automatically erased and can't be saved? I don't know if people still use it like that, but do you feel comfortable letting your 12 years old daughter use something like that?
As an old-ass father of 3 that pokes here and there I can tell you that does happen. However, that is hardly the point of it. It is because everyone needs to be able to say and do things that aren't recorded. That go away. And kids need space to experiment and grow in ways they are not watched. Honestly, from what I can tell it is used far more for making funny faces and moments than anything else.
Besides, if you are concerned that they are showing each other their bodies you have more to worry about than snapchat because it is going to happen regardless. At least nobody has got an STD from snapchat.
And after the things I found when doing a backup of my 16 year old's computer I'm more concerned with the pictures that stick around than don't. We had a talk about why I never want pictures of naked teenage friends on my network.
But if you think you can stifle teenagers, you are wrong. You just push them into the shadows and you out of their life.
Yes, but you know snapchat pictures aren't really deleted right? 'Temporary pictures' is a proposition that doesn't actually exist in the digital realm, and certainly not when a VC-backed company is proposing it.
Compared to facebook they go away and it's more a "Probably" goes away.
I'm sure there will be a few snapchat users that will get screwed by this but at least the majority of the use will vanish before these kids are old enough for jobs and the shit they did on snapchat doesn't show up in a background check.
Stop pretending you know what you're talking about. Do you know how much money is saved by not keeping those pictures? Snapchat handles more pictures per day than facebook[0], which gets almost half a billion per day. I know a few snapchat engineers that concur that Snapchat really does not keep any pictures, which allows them to make interesting optimizations that Facebook (and similar) can't.
How in the world does that work? I'm too old to have caught that wave, but I have a younger sister, and it's not like the snaps her friends send her go poof into the ether if her phone isn't on the network when they are sent. They've got to get queued up in storage on a server somewhere, they've got to get sent to her phone, and I assume, checksummed to make sure they didn't get corrupted in delivery, possibly resent?
I mean, I hope SnapChat isn't keeping photos, or else they'd be sitting on one of the largest collections of child porn in the world...
You're right, I could've been more specific - they definitely need to sit somewhere if the destination phone isn't on the network or something, but they are deleted once viewed or some timeout has been reached. This of course also doesn't consider ways that the destination phone could store the photo (screen shot or something). But as far as snapchat is concerned, it's gone.
Well, the delete action doesn't happen until they've been viewed. The original comment was suggesting that delete-means-soft-delete-not-destroy, not that the photos are never stored at all.
Please let's stop equating naked children to child porn. That only helps the status quo which is willing and able to destroy the life of innocent people
> Stop pretending you know what you're talking about.
Calm down.
> Do you know how much money is saved by not keeping those pictures?
Okay, fine. Even if the pictures aren't stored indefinitely (I'd assume they'd do batch deletions at the end of the day or something when latency isn't as important), all of the photos are encrypted with the same symmetric key which can be found in any Snapchat binary. Which means that they aren't any more private than sending unencrypted images.
An idea that a couple of friends (can't remember if cyphar was one of them) and I came up with: piggyback some actual crypto on top of Snapchat, using steganography to initially transmit public keys. Would be interesting to see this happen.
I think I was there. Can't remember though. The issue is that Snapchat has gotten more stringent about image formats and things (remember when bad crypto could cause the app to crash?).
Because they don't do crypto properly. Some friends of mine broke Snapchat quite badly a few years ago (one of them goes through HN, so he might read this). The tl;dr is that you shouldn't trust any aspect of your security to proprietary services. Especially ones that don't do crypto properly.
As a thought experiment, if you were the head of ISIS or the Russian ambassador in Washington DC, would you or would you not expect your snaps to be "really deleted" aka actually private? Honest question, not trolling.
Snapchat won't protect you from a state-level adversary, nor does it need to. It may, however, protect you from a disgruntled ex leaking your photos, or from an employer snooping on your private life. It may even protect you from yourself when you come across an old post you really didn't need to see.
Snapchat attempts to use technology to enforce the social contract of "please don't repeat everything I say to everyone you know, and don't hoard it indefinitely", which is established protocol for, say, actual in-person conversations. By implementing a casual form of endpoint security, a non-sophisticated actor at the receiving end may not break this social contract without repercussions, since nominally, only the official client can get the payload; the official client deletes the payload upon receipt, and if the official client detects that a screenshot was taken or the message was saved, it notifies the sender. That's the feature, not off-the-record messaging.
I would expect that if I were personally targeted by ie NSA, they could intercept the snaps in transit, and those copies would not be deleted. Short of that though, I certainly do believe that snaps are indeed completely deleted after they are viewed (unless the recipient makes a screenshot) because the risk to Snapchat of lying about that far, far outweighs any potential reward.
Oh come on, every phone can take a screenshot. Once you send a picture out - it's forever on the internet. That nude picture will end up in 4chan, 9gag, other teen image posting websites, then a dozen creepy guys will save them and share their collection...
Agree. Oh, and it will be also be used to generate other nudes - people create fake accounts, send the nudes as if they were theirs, and incite the other person to send nudes of their own.
I noticed several replies talking about Snapchat's practices, but no one commented on the huge number of applications that exist to download Snapchat content permanently and without triggering Snapchat's screenshot detection. It's not like these require any technical ability either: they are listed even in the iTunes Store and are very simple to use.
I'm not a parent, but if I had a child in the Snapchat age range I would show them how easy it is to make the impermanent permanent and that trust is placed on people, not technology. Untrustworthy people cannot be made trustworthy through technology.
> It is because everyone needs to be able to say and do things that aren't recorded. That go away. And kids need space to experiment and grow in ways they are not watched.
I miss the old IRC.
I do mean it, the world of emojis and stickers and selfies is too vibrant for me; IRC wasn't recorded, it was text, private and I do miss it. Still using it for IT and Open Source, but not for private stuff any more, because private friends refuses to use it.
Much easier to plausibly deny it was you in IRC, with Snapchat etc, it's much harder to deny that you sent the photograph of yourself from your mobile device.
So the point is that it isn't graphic, but text only. Nothing to do with recording. Which is a big point... Snapchat can erase images, it doesn't matter. People can still capture them in other ways.
man this is scary for me, I'm about to have a baby girl (she already has a Gmail account), I know I'm far from the "dad doesn't get 'it'" phase, but it is still scary.
Do you have any tips to make this transition easy?
The great thing starting with a baby is you get to grow with them -- you don't have to be an expert right off the bat.
Gloria Wall (mother of four, spouse of Larry Wall) also has great advice that is worth repeating: You don't have to be an expert in children to be a parent -- you only have to be an expert in _your_ children.
Just after our son was born this was wonderfully summed up by a friend of mine as being like levelling up in a game. You start off with the absolute basics of keeping them fed and clean, and then just as you've got the hang of that something new is introduce. Before you know it you're at month 24, and seemingly without effort juggling food, drink, changes, entertainment, nap times, and telling them what they just said is probably not appropriate in front of granny.
Congratulations!! I'm about to have a baby girl too (she is due on March 6).
I've been really stressed out about this, so I set out to have as many conversations with other dads as I could. The best thing that I heard was that you just need to accept it as part of their maturing process. You won't get it because you aren't meant to get it.
Then, I remind myself that when I was into AD&D, my Mom thought that I was worshipping Satan...:)
I have four kids...two in college now...the other two are on track to be in a few years...I get compliments on them all the time...
The number one piece of advice I can give you is to suspend any preconceptions you have, consciously or unconsciously, about the kind of person they will be...don't force them into some mold you have in mind for them...they will be separate and distinct beings from birth...treat them as such with as much love and guidance as you can muster...let them breathe...
Also:
Expose them to as many things as possible, and let them choose the things that they want to follow up on...
Model good behavior, so they will see what good behavior looks like...point out good behavior to them as opportunities arise...
Thank you very much, and congratulations on raising great kids. I'm really looking forward to the time ahead, the first few years are really fun - this is the time when you as a parent (or uncle/aunt) are a superhero to the child, you can do no wrong.
Even if they get to that phase it's often temporary. I've got a young daughter and in retrospect my dad seems a lot smarter than he did when I was a teenager.
I have a daughter who is always trying to compete with her older sister. One time she was chatting online with some creepy dudes in private. She saw her older sister chatting with teen friends and thought it was the same thing. I would try to lay some ground rules and keep at it. Being a dad ain't easy on the nerves with girls. Rules get broken, but just make sure your relationship with her isn't. Daddy time is important at any age.
Man, the age difference is what, 30-ish years? Of course you won't get it, and they won't 'get' your world. If you can comfortably relate to someone 30 years younger or older than you, something has gone wrong in your development.
Don't worry about it. You don't need to get it. You will hate her music, you will find her friends stupid children, she will think you're boring and no longer with it, and when she's grown up, you will annoy her with unwanted advice on how best to get around in the world of 20 years ago. It's an inevitable, normal part of life, not a problem.
Which "Cat In The Hat" desktop program are you referring to? The CITH section of the PBS site, or something different? If the latter, then my Google-fu is currently failing me and would appreciate a pointer.
it's been virtualized and mobilized and everything by now, but kids have been entranced by this since I was a kid and something about the rhymes and the the drawings just work.
I'm biased by my perceptive (legal) but imho girls between 12 and 18 should not be allowed connected cameras. I've had too many conversations with horrified fathers and crying children after a disturbing image ends up somewhere it was never meant to be. There are just too many people, and I include cops in this, out there looking to get kids into serious trouble. I know that kids live a life in pictures, but that public record of everyday activities too often come back to haunt them.
And fyi for fathers: Do not share a phone with your daughter. Do not borrow her phone, nor lend her yours. Some pictures are fine to be in her possession but if found in your possession could destroy your world.
Not boys? Boys send nudes too, and often request them. Isn't that soliciting child porn? We need to be feeding kids (boys and girls) way more information and hoping they don't mess up too badly.
I have yet to see a boy in my office. I'm in no doubt that it happens every day, but the cases I've had contact with all involved young girls, or at least images of them.
I think there is a different dynamic with males. Boys seem to show off by photographing themselves with things, with cars, cash or even tigers. [see link] Girls seem more likely to create images focusing on their person or their friends' persons. There is also some sexual dimorphism at work. Boys simply have less to physically cover, probably making inappropriate or accidentally inappropriate images less likely.
Maybe we could instead go after the people who want to make careers out of destroying teenage lives with trumped-up child pornography charges? They seem like the real enemy in this stuff.
Oh, that shit is awful too don't get me wrong. I was just trying to make the point that both boys and girls can get in serious trouble (legally and personally/socially). I don't get or agree with the sentiment that teen girls, alone, should not have access to cameras. Attacking the wrong part of the problem.
Are you going to be the representative or congressman who proposes a bill to decriminalise child porn? Or the president who signs an executive order to not prosecute child porn cases? How do you think that would play in the media and with the voters?
I'm aware of that feedback loop, but the comments I see here seem to view that kind of Draconian treatment of people, ones who are obviously not child pornographers or dangerous individuals, as a problem. So there seems to be at least a subset of voters who recognize the issue and think it's absurd.
This is partly a problem of common knowledge[1] - where lots of people are thinking the laws are absurd, but no one wants to be the first to say it openly, because they can't know for certain that anyone else is thinking the same thing. Getting a conversation going about how ridiculous some of these prosecutions for "child porn" are would be the first step towards a sane discussion of what those kinds of child protection laws should actually be, when they should be applied and when they shouldn't, etc, so that it stops being a third rail for lawmakers.
Might also point out that the recently passed "International Megan's Law" actually places a permanent mark on these people's passports labeling them as sex offenders.[2] These cases of a dad being permanently marked as a sex offender just for letting his daughter borrow his phone, or a 19 yro getting a naked pic from his 17 yro girlfriend, only end up being counterproductive to protecting the real victims. When you hear of someone labeled as a "sex offender" now, does it serve as a reliable warning? Or do you just wonder if the guy was unlucky enough to get caught pissing in public?
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you tell your daughter not or send nudes of herself to her friends, they might not end up on the internet.
> And fyi for fathers: Do not share a phone with your daughter. Do not borrow her phone, nor lend her yours. Some pictures are fine to be in her possession but if found in your possession could destroy your world.
And the fact that you have to say that is a great example of what's wrong with the legal system in the US. Common sense about applying laws has been stripped away.
My house is a Linux house, so Thunderbird for mail. Over the years, it went from "that sucks compared to gmail" (didn't need to introduce gmail, friends I guess), to "Thunderbird is for our real email with our real domain, gmail accounts are for the other stuff"
I gave all the internet safety tips I could over the years, I don't want to know what "the other stuff" are!
It felt nice when you had to physically meet a person to exchange the latest meme. The physical vicinity adds so much quality to the social experience. I cannot talk to friends the same way over char or even the phone than in person, it just feels weird.
Said every aging generation ever, I mean, the last part of that sentence could be any of (read a book|sit down and listen to the radio|watch broadcast television) and someone out there reminisces fondly of the better, simpler times.
Characteristically, Brooks in the `Mythical Man Month' has no nostalgia for bringing your program in punch cards to the data center, and sees timesharing as an unalloyed good.
(I think it's because the bad old days were still very fresh in memory when he wrote the essays.)
That seems close-minded and overly judgmental. Snapchat might not have any use to you, but it's clearly the world to this girl (and many, many other teenagers).
This has to be one of the most ignorant interpretations of a social media product. "no relevancy to anyone, and is a waste of time and money." First, your "proof" of Snapchat's lack of relevancy is literally an anecdote of how it is relevant to a girl's life. Second, do you think that Snapchat has to have some productive, utilitarian use to not be a "waste of time and money?" Snapchat provides a service that users enjoy (and this user in particular adores) using. IMO, that's the end of the story.
The way it's described, I'd call that "flow" - she's snapchatting "in the zone." It's like responses in a lot of video games - you don't "see" the enemy / row of gems / hole for an L-shaped block, you perceive it and react to it. If you have to look, it's probably already too late.
I'll echo the comment I made there that I am concerned that the teenage-focus will be the lesson startups take away from Snapchat, and that might lead to usability regression for apps as a whole.
What in holy blazes, 60 gigabytes in a month just for one fucking stupid app?
1) what carrier does that girl have? And at what cost? With German internet prices, we'd look at a 500€ per month alone for data, not to mention other data using apps, calls, SMSes...
2) what the fuck, I use Netflix at home quite regularly and rarely exceed 50 GByte (I'm on a 50/5 VDSL so it isn't a lack of speed) of traffic. How many billions of crappy front cam selfies can be shared in 60 GB of data?
maybe snapchat should take note and send a 100byte version first with progressive improvement if the image is visible for more than 0.8 seconds (or whatever the threshold is).
On the other hand, while shockingly low caps are generally accepted on mobile, people do protest whenever a provider tries to place caps on landline (VDSL, DOCSIS) contracts.
T-mobile, to be sure, I didn't look at. But with that plan, "if you are in the top 3% of users" (which 60GB/month is likely to be, especially as that's just one of those four users), your data use will be slowed to 2G speeds.
"typical download speeds of 40Kbps-200Kbps and upload speeds of 20-80 Kbps"
Snapchat is going to get pretty painful pretty quickly.
But nobody uses 60GB of data on data only. When you're at home you're typically connected to Wifi. Also in many ways that's besides the point. Usage on mobile devices is skyrocketing and in particular young users are the reason for it. At this point high data usage per month is not exactly an exception but the norm.
I'm in the UK, and pay £33/m ($50) for unlimited 4G data, calls and texts, of which 12GB can be used for tethering. It includes roaming to 14 other countries at no extra cost. This is on a 1 month, SIM-only contract on Three. I think this is good value.
If she has an iPhone, just auto-backup to the cloud might cost her much more bytes than the picture alone. (They actually shoot a short video for each picture.)
Probably streaming and replaying youtube videos, or something similar. Not that hard to run through several gb in a few hours. Multiply by 30 (days/month) and you can see 60 gb a month being easily doable.
Torrenting games and 1080p movies is even worse - at 10-60 gb a pop, the time to hit a 300 gb cap is limited only by your download speed.
> What in holy blazes, 60 gigabytes in a month just for one fucking stupid app?
I didn't get the impression from the article that this was exclusively snapchat. I agree you'd have a hard time hitting 60gb/mo unless you're streaming a lot of video. To be fair, snapchat does have video, and the whole point of this exercise is that we cannot fathom how The Children use it these days, so...who knows.
I didn't fully read the article but I've got wifi at home, wifi at work, wifi at uni. My phone automatically connects to all of 'm. Hell I've got wifi at some friends, even at the parents of my gf when I stayed over for a weekend.
So most of my data use is not from my phone's data plan. Did she specify it was?
That having been said, 60gb is a shitload and I think 1) it may not be true and 2) she's an outlier who uses snaps for scoring. While undoubtedly more people do that, most young people I know send a few snaps a day at most, not 40 over breakfast.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadThere have been plenty of apps that I've tried and aren't for me so I've uninstalled them, but I always seem to understand their purpose and what makes them unique and desirable to use for someone who isn't me. Snapchat on the other hand...is a mystery.
But over the last 18 months they've pushed towards a more broad social graph and more public nature and I just don't understand it. It's Instagram with some time-limit's.
There would be obvious commercial advantage in doing this, just for starters.
Data mining services like facebook gives you a solid picture of the interests and connections that the target person broadcasts publicaly. This is useful information, and it is exploited by any number of parties ... and people are (hopefully) aware of that.
Data mining snapchat gives a deeper picture of a person's interests and connections, as they are broadcast whilst that person believes that this information is entirely private.
Aggregating data from both sources (which would be almost trivial), would provide a very detailed view of the target. Much more than the sum of each dataset alone.
And it matters not whether the owners of Snapchat are completely and utterly above-board with everything .... there is the question of who owns and operates the network that all this info travels over.
Bottom line is that all of that "ephemeral" data that is going through snapchat is no more private than facebook, or youtube, or HAM radio, or telephone calls, or email, or SMS, or pretty much anything electronic.
There is no real privacy with this, but its easy to provide the illusion of privacy.
You can't, but that's not really the point. The point is that it's not permanent in a form that other users can access. Sure, maybe Snapchat stores every picture I ever sent. That sucks and should stop. But at least Grandma can't go back and look at some 2 year old picture I took with some buddies.
Truthfully, I don't really care if my Snapchat data is being mined. I'm not looking for absolute privacy. I'm not sending sensitive or private information. The ephemeral nature of the medium keeps me from worrying if a picture is unflattering or could be construed as in bad taste out of context.
It's like wondering why someone who still thinks good and bad humors mediate health isn't worried about their cholesterol, there's literally not the machinery available to make that a concern. This is one of the biggest reasons that we should teach coding in schools. Even if you never write a line of code in anger, knowing vaguely what's going on at least gives you a chance to be a consenting participant in technologically mediated arrangements.
This Sunday my wife took my phone and just took a silly picture of ourselves during the Super Bowl and sent it to everyone on my list. Within minutes, I was getting a response from pretty much everyone, some people I haven't even talked to in months, and it was fun and made us laugh! I had the dumbest epiphany of my life. It's really just a fast, dumb way to communicate. That's it. Maybe I'll actually use it more now
It reminds me of Facebook back in the day, when it wasn't so serious. When it wasn't full of politics and Buzzfeed and not-so-humblebrags.
You don't have to worry (as much) about a silly photo coming back to haunt you in 10 years on Snapchat. It's much less formal feeling. The faces are my favorite; it's just a lot of fun to use.
We used to have ICQ, AIM, MSN, YIM, and a host of other lesser known methods to chat. This is just one geared toward sending quick pictures. I doubt the privacy part of it is even significant to most users.
Nobody cares what you do in public.
On Snapchat, every picture and chat message self-destructs by default, so there's less social pressure to post something truly extraordinary. There's no publicly visible tracking of likes, so you're not tempted to compare your popularity with others. There is no infinite history where you can come across something old that will make you embarrassed and upset (e.g. records of bad decisions, photos with an ex).
Sending snaps back and forth is great for staying in touch with friends without having to converse about a particular topic. For acquaintances who you don't know as well, an amusing snap is a great icebreaker. And for when you DO want to have a conversation, there's both an IM and a video chat.
The Discover feature where you see content from VIPs directly competes with a significant use-case of Twitter in the target demographic. But unlike Twitter, it's more visual, more immersive, and because of its temporal nature, more exclusive.
Moreover, teens hate creeps. You know every time someone views your snap. You know when someone screenshots your snap. You know when your chat is read. You know when someone views your story. Your audience is exactly who you choose. It's not the internet at large. It's not your mom, it's not the weird guy in your school who found your profile, and it's not people way outside your age-range who are thirst-liking your selfies and making you uncomfortable.
The new 2d printed avatars that allow you to easily add people you meet are perfect. Shows Snapchat really understand their audience.
Snapchat may have been bootstrapped with sexting but it is so much more than that now. They've hit on something that no other social network has - an audience of regular people who aren't selling anything, who want to retain their privacy and who want to have fun with friends and acquiantances online.
So much of the content I see on Snapchat would never be shared anywhere else - and a lot of the people sharing it are those who weren't interested in building a profile on public pages.
Once we've experienced quantity, quality gains importance. Simultaneously, our need for social acceptance might not diminish, but it becomes far more refined.
Enlightening article.
- Add people by username: celebrities often post their username on other social networks, you can find aggregate lists
- Add people by "snapcode": hold the camera over someone else's phone while they display their snapcode, your snapcode is the yellow QR code thing you see when you swipe down from the main screen
One of the most interesting responses I heard what that Snapchat was what they used to connect with people they didnt know too well, but wanted to stay in touch with. For example, if they meet someone, but dont know them too well, they would exchange Snapchat information. It is literally like Facebook was for the last generation.
Snapchat is not about snapchat, it is about having a space to themselves.
That way users can see,hear,smell,feel & taste everything that their friends are experiencing .... simultaneously, and in real time. Continuously, all day, everyday.
Now, who wouldnt want that ?
This makes a lot of sense. I was starting college in 2005 when facebook was really starting to blow up, and this was exactly how I used (and enjoyed) it. There were times when I would just flip through the directory of people in my college and if I recognized your face from class or walking around, I'd add you, send a few messages to break the ice, then meet in person if it felt like we connected.
If anyone else is like me and started with facebook around this time and still has their profile, take a look at some of the posts and friends you had from over 10 years ago. It's pretty remarkable to get such a look at your younger self.
Adding adults to a service is the sure fire way to run off the children.
EDIT: At least SpaceX and Tesla won the Crunchies instead of junk like Snapchat.
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[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machine...
It's always just about keeping the conversation. And since a lot of the conversation is filler that need not be saved forever, snaps have a unique position.
That bit is right in your face and rewards you for increased use.
Political wonks talk about it a lot and have various daydreams of having that type of power.
It's not talked about much, and when it is you can counter it by labeling it as a "kids these days" type argument.
Trophies aren't really all that unlockable. Within the app, any trophy you haven't unlocked is a lock icon with ??? underneath it, so you don't even know what you need to do to achieve it. You can go online to find out, but neither my 12-year-old daughter nor my 17-year-old sister have bothered to do it. They just don't care. That's not what it's about for them.
How long will it last?
Still, 1. Snapchat's design is remarkable for its hidden features that you discover by social-networking, and 2. it's a much more interesting, funny, interactive press release presenting the features of a product than any other start-up I've seen. Next product video I make, I'll make it this way.
Honest question: isn't this just bad UI design?
Going from that to "what social media teens use that you don't even know about" isn't much of a stretch.
I'm not sure if I'll call mentioning these apps as "product placement". Could be someone trying to up these app's SEO ranking. Could be just an interesting tidbit he used (he also mentioned instagram, and I doubt that was by request).
It sounds like you spent more time writing this comment than she did to respond to all of her friend's snaps from the night before. Heroin is a waste of a life; Snapchat is just a distraction, and a minor one at that.
So ... no, not just a distraction. Just a new thing we haven't seen the outcome of yet (besides some evidence of a large increase in narcissism and a drop in empathy).
Plus, you are (were) one of the dorks and your sister is one of the cool kids. The two groups have noticeably different modes of socialising.
Facebook groups just aren't the same. There's something comforting knowing it was "just some fucking guy" hosting the website for fun.
A future when all of our communities, all of our social interactions, are routed two a small amount of services hosted by great companies is one I don't look forward to.
That kind of thing - just setting something up for the hell of it, and slowly building a community, or a group of friends that way - to me it's very special.
I remember when I first encountered USENET (early 90s). Reading scores of USENET groups and enlarging my social circle, even going to far as to go to a yearly meeting one group held for several years. Then there was the World Wide Web that everything was being funneled in to. Most of the USENET crowd I was with were deriding it, saying it didn't have that community feel.
I remember when I first encountered Slashdot (late 90s). Reading score of comments on trending topics and again, enlarging my social circle. Then there was Digg and many on Slashdot were deriding that, saying it didn't have that community feel ...
To recreate this, maybe I'll try starting a video chat when random people want to ask me for advice. Tried that today when someone sent me a random message on FB asking me for advice about living in Japan, was fun.
Very true. And like some of the other commentors are pointing out, it's somewhat sad that the old, more "natural" communities built over time are becoming a dying breed.
I also presumed that a dedicated power user could preserve said photos forever, so I immediately wrote the whole thing off.
Same here. One of the girls also describes how to screenshot the app without the other user being notified. It's doubtful that most teens sexting using the app are unaware of this.
Some of this sounds exactly like Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story".
The way the girls talk to themselves and about other people, it's incredible a 40-year-old Russian male to capture female American teenagers so well.
She learned to read at age 3 using the very well done "Cat In The Hat" desktop program, and since then I have turned her on to everything from Gmail at age 6 to Ableton at 12.
I've decided that Snapchat is where it ends for me/us last year...she needs something to be hers and her friends alone, without "Dad" poking is old-ass nose into things.
I think she really appreciates that I haven't bugged her about connecting and sharing on that platform, and I know deep down it was time.
But boy...do I sometimes miss that 6yo angel sending me cryptic "i luvu" via Gmail.
Hm, I searched and found more than one. Various companies: The Learning Company. Borderbund. MacKiev.
Which did you have?
Besides, if you are concerned that they are showing each other their bodies you have more to worry about than snapchat because it is going to happen regardless. At least nobody has got an STD from snapchat.
And after the things I found when doing a backup of my 16 year old's computer I'm more concerned with the pictures that stick around than don't. We had a talk about why I never want pictures of naked teenage friends on my network.
But if you think you can stifle teenagers, you are wrong. You just push them into the shadows and you out of their life.
I'm sure there will be a few snapchat users that will get screwed by this but at least the majority of the use will vanish before these kids are old enough for jobs and the shit they did on snapchat doesn't show up in a background check.
[0] http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/19/snapchat-reportedly-sees-mo...
I mean, I hope SnapChat isn't keeping photos, or else they'd be sitting on one of the largest collections of child porn in the world...
Calm down.
> Do you know how much money is saved by not keeping those pictures?
Okay, fine. Even if the pictures aren't stored indefinitely (I'd assume they'd do batch deletions at the end of the day or something when latency isn't as important), all of the photos are encrypted with the same symmetric key which can be found in any Snapchat binary. Which means that they aren't any more private than sending unencrypted images.
Whoa, that's totally out of line here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Your comment would be fine without the first sentence (and maybe the second).
Thanks for doing such good work!
Read the "Message Deletion and Retention" section: https://www.snapchat.com/privacy
Snapchat attempts to use technology to enforce the social contract of "please don't repeat everything I say to everyone you know, and don't hoard it indefinitely", which is established protocol for, say, actual in-person conversations. By implementing a casual form of endpoint security, a non-sophisticated actor at the receiving end may not break this social contract without repercussions, since nominally, only the official client can get the payload; the official client deletes the payload upon receipt, and if the official client detects that a screenshot was taken or the message was saved, it notifies the sender. That's the feature, not off-the-record messaging.
I'm not a parent, but if I had a child in the Snapchat age range I would show them how easy it is to make the impermanent permanent and that trust is placed on people, not technology. Untrustworthy people cannot be made trustworthy through technology.
I miss the old IRC. I do mean it, the world of emojis and stickers and selfies is too vibrant for me; IRC wasn't recorded, it was text, private and I do miss it. Still using it for IT and Open Source, but not for private stuff any more, because private friends refuses to use it.
Except by anyone in the room with logging enabled.
Do you have any tips to make this transition easy?
Gloria Wall (mother of four, spouse of Larry Wall) also has great advice that is worth repeating: You don't have to be an expert in children to be a parent -- you only have to be an expert in _your_ children.
Never forget to tell them "you are my vengeance on this world."
I've been really stressed out about this, so I set out to have as many conversations with other dads as I could. The best thing that I heard was that you just need to accept it as part of their maturing process. You won't get it because you aren't meant to get it.
Then, I remind myself that when I was into AD&D, my Mom thought that I was worshipping Satan...:)
The number one piece of advice I can give you is to suspend any preconceptions you have, consciously or unconsciously, about the kind of person they will be...don't force them into some mold you have in mind for them...they will be separate and distinct beings from birth...treat them as such with as much love and guidance as you can muster...let them breathe...
Also: Expose them to as many things as possible, and let them choose the things that they want to follow up on...
Model good behavior, so they will see what good behavior looks like...point out good behavior to them as opportunities arise...
And hope luck is with you...
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/10/twain-father/
Don't worry about it. You don't need to get it. You will hate her music, you will find her friends stupid children, she will think you're boring and no longer with it, and when she's grown up, you will annoy her with unwanted advice on how best to get around in the world of 20 years ago. It's an inevitable, normal part of life, not a problem.
it's been virtualized and mobilized and everything by now, but kids have been entranced by this since I was a kid and something about the rhymes and the the drawings just work.
They went to one of their iPods and SMSed "bee-doo!" to my wife. I don't think I've ever been prouder as a parent.
And fyi for fathers: Do not share a phone with your daughter. Do not borrow her phone, nor lend her yours. Some pictures are fine to be in her possession but if found in your possession could destroy your world.
I think there is a different dynamic with males. Boys seem to show off by photographing themselves with things, with cars, cash or even tigers. [see link] Girls seem more likely to create images focusing on their person or their friends' persons. There is also some sexual dimorphism at work. Boys simply have less to physically cover, probably making inappropriate or accidentally inappropriate images less likely.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/25/new_york_bans...
http://tinderguyswithtigers.tumblr.com/
This is partly a problem of common knowledge[1] - where lots of people are thinking the laws are absurd, but no one wants to be the first to say it openly, because they can't know for certain that anyone else is thinking the same thing. Getting a conversation going about how ridiculous some of these prosecutions for "child porn" are would be the first step towards a sane discussion of what those kinds of child protection laws should actually be, when they should be applied and when they shouldn't, etc, so that it stops being a third rail for lawmakers.
Might also point out that the recently passed "International Megan's Law" actually places a permanent mark on these people's passports labeling them as sex offenders.[2] These cases of a dad being permanently marked as a sex offender just for letting his daughter borrow his phone, or a 19 yro getting a naked pic from his 17 yro girlfriend, only end up being counterproductive to protecting the real victims. When you hear of someone labeled as a "sex offender" now, does it serve as a reliable warning? Or do you just wonder if the guy was unlucky enough to get caught pissing in public?
[1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2410
[2] http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/obama_signs_int...
And the fact that you have to say that is a great example of what's wrong with the legal system in the US. Common sense about applying laws has been stripped away.
are you saying they shouldnt have a phone until they turn 18? that sounds super unrealistic
i think its important to respect their intelligence.
>There are just too many people, and I include cops in this, out there looking to get kids into serious trouble
maybe that is the problem we need to solve.
saying a young woman in high school shouldnt be allowed a phone sounds like victim blaming
I gave all the internet safety tips I could over the years, I don't want to know what "the other stuff" are!
> It felt nice when you had to...
Said every aging generation ever, I mean, the last part of that sentence could be any of (read a book|sit down and listen to the radio|watch broadcast television) and someone out there reminisces fondly of the better, simpler times.
(I think it's because the bad old days were still very fresh in memory when he wrote the essays.)
ME: I’ve seen how fast you do these responses… How are you able to take in all that information so quickly?
BROOKE: I don’t really see what they send. I tap through so fast. It’s rapid fire.
I closed the tab at that moment. That alone proved Snapchat has no relevancy to anyone, and is a waste of time and money.
I think our definitions of 'proof' differ greatly.
> I closed the tab at that moment.
> BROOKE: Also, EVERYONE looks at Cosmo on Discover. If it’s funny, they share it.
I'll echo the comment I made there that I am concerned that the teenage-focus will be the lesson startups take away from Snapchat, and that might lead to usability regression for apps as a whole.
1) what carrier does that girl have? And at what cost? With German internet prices, we'd look at a 500€ per month alone for data, not to mention other data using apps, calls, SMSes...
2) what the fuck, I use Netflix at home quite regularly and rarely exceed 50 GByte (I'm on a 50/5 VDSL so it isn't a lack of speed) of traffic. How many billions of crappy front cam selfies can be shared in 60 GB of data?
And they don't even look at the pictures!
Um, if you're in the U.S. probably not. Most have some kind of limits even on 'unlimited' such as your connection goes to ISDN speed.
Even my cable modem has a 350GB a month cap which I occasionally exceed.
Yeah... but in Germany the biggest cap available is 10GB for 25€ (http://www.billiger-telefonieren.de/mobiles-internet-verglei...) and these are data-only SIMs, truly unlimited does not exist for us.
On the other hand, while shockingly low caps are generally accepted on mobile, people do protest whenever a provider tries to place caps on landline (VDSL, DOCSIS) contracts.
What plans are you looking at? For a family of 4, unlimited data on T-mobile for instance costs 150 USD for the entire family or 37.5 USD per phone.
"typical download speeds of 40Kbps-200Kbps and upload speeds of 20-80 Kbps"
Snapchat is going to get pretty painful pretty quickly.
Torrenting games and 1080p movies is even worse - at 10-60 gb a pop, the time to hit a 300 gb cap is limited only by your download speed.
I didn't get the impression from the article that this was exclusively snapchat. I agree you'd have a hard time hitting 60gb/mo unless you're streaming a lot of video. To be fair, snapchat does have video, and the whole point of this exercise is that we cannot fathom how The Children use it these days, so...who knows.
So most of my data use is not from my phone's data plan. Did she specify it was?
That having been said, 60gb is a shitload and I think 1) it may not be true and 2) she's an outlier who uses snaps for scoring. While undoubtedly more people do that, most young people I know send a few snaps a day at most, not 40 over breakfast.