Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing? | Hacker News Reader

Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

bloomberg.com

181 pointspdog184 comments

Takes three paragraphs to get to the answer: Instagram stories.

Snapschat is busy trying to remain relevant as Instagram one-ups it again and again. Other than teenagers using it to sext, Snapchat is largely useless compared to Insta.

Certainly their core business model of teens sexting is still strong?

Hard to monetize that without going against the grain of also being a family platform.

Does everything need to be a family platform? A bit of an extreme example, but the adult entertainment industry seems to do fine without catering to families - I don't see why Snapchat couldn't do the same?

It's about the audience. Snapchat advertisers don't want to be associated with adult content. Adult entertainers are catering to their paying audience.

My point wasn’t to turn Snapchat into an adult entertainment site. It was simply to accept and embrace its fate as a sexting tool. Dating apps are also used for this purpose (frankly their whole purpose is to find people you’d eventually fuck with) and yet they are a socially acceptable thing to use and advertisers don’t have any problems with them, so I don’t see why it would be any different for Snapchat.

I agree it would work if Snap has a sub brand tailored towards sexting, where ad buyers could segment between Snap and a more avant-garde experience.

Seems like the bigger theme in the article is that the company is being run by a child.

Edit: I should perhaps expand on this. TFA repeatedly mentions Spiegel's tender age and his inexperience, and it points out that one of his core management techniques is a thing he picked up in prep school.

Yeah those meetings they mentioned (council meetings), sounds like the worst meeting i've ever had at my company, but 10 times as cheesey and 'make me want to kill myself'y.

Not that it matters but I just burned through a couple of bios about him and wow, for a 28-year-old he looks 40.

The stress of executive leadership I suppose . . .

Google+ tried to copy facebook functionality too, right?

While instagram already has the users, I think the point is that you can build it, but you can't make people use it. Instagram can prevent existing users from leaving snapchat for 'stories', but will it really entice snapchat users to come over to instagram, given that social networks are a function of people who use it?

Instagram Stories daily active users is 400 million. [1]

Snapchat dau is 188 million. Given that this declined from 191 million from Q1 2018, seems Instagram is crushing them.

Anecdotally I’m surprised Snapchat is even doing this well. Before Instagram Stories I had probably 50 people a day posting new Snapchat stories. Now it’s a handful a week. They’re all on Instagram.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/730315/instagram-stories...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/...

1.5% QoQ decrease in DAUs is hardly being crushed, especially when they have a 45% YoY increase in revenue [1]. See? I can google and cherry pick stats from statista too.

My point point about social being a two-sided market still stands regardless of your personal experience.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/552694/snapchat-quarterl...

That's quite a statement. I'm an active snapchat user, because the user interface is very streamlined. There's no cruft from over 24 hours ago on the platform.

To me they’re entirely different products. I use Snapchat to send funny things I see to specific friends who will find them funny. I can’t do that on Instagram without broadcasting that same message to over 100 people.

Instagram actually cloned snapchat in its app. You can send direct messages now. Photos, videos, filters, drawing, text, emoji, everything. Photo and videos can be sent to be viewed once/replayed (like snapchat), or persisted in the chat log.

Disagree. Currently helping run a summer camp with lots of < 18 year olds where we try to limit phone usage in group sessions. Snapchat is used for everything, probably sexting too, but as far as I can tell it's the goto instant messaging. When they're on their phones during sessions, they're all snapping each other. Insta is also ubiquitous - aside from following people, lots of them use it to discover smaller/niche bands (eg grime), for example. Facebook? Really uncool. Their parents are on Facebook.

Big component of these apps is the group dynamic. Plays well with the current culture of social capital, messages can be easily broadcast, rated, commented on, shared around. But you also have the option of things being semi-ephemeral.

I used to see that among the <18 crowd, but Snapchat has evaporated weirdly quickly. I'm only hearing about Insta and a long tail of other apps. Lots and lots of conventional texting/iMessage.

I'm in my 30s and most of my friends use snapchat for instant messaging, that is the primary purpose of snapchat.

Apart from the title, I do not see any argument why Twitter is a to-be-replaced social network. Personnaly, I see it as a wonderful way to keep track of the topics of interest of people I do not know personnally. Plus I can comment, and these people can comment back. Sounds good to me.

If you haven't been following it, the issue is not dealing with racists, calls for violence, hate speech, bullying, etc. There have been major clear cases and they refuse to act.

They've chosen to act w/ private accounts, muted accounts, muted words, and blocked accounts. Personally, I find muted words a powerful feature but perhaps my story is a bit different as I don't find myself targeted by hate too often (ever). I'm hesitant to believe kicking accounts off the platform is a great solve.

Does any social media platform take part in shadow banning? How has that worked out?

> Does any social media platform take part in shadow banning? How has that worked out?

Reddit does, but I don't know how well it actually works since everyone is aware of it and can easily detect when they've been shadowbanned by simply using a second account.

Even Reddit's CEO has said that their shadowbanning approach is terrible and he wants rid of it but they haven't had time to build anything better yet.

Twitter isn't going anywhere, it is far and above the most powerful social network. Because it's a raw data stream. As long as Jack doesn't kill it, it will live and be relevant for ages. There is no social media platform that is better for news and interacting with news makers...staying relevant to internet trends, etc. None are even close.

I like following people on Twitter. But man, the moment you open the comments to their tweets, I want to nope out of there completely.

Twitter's community is incredibly toxic

This is a great example of how personnel leadership doesn't matter for success, so long as your product leadership is successful. The product success subsidizes everything else, including absent or toxic leadership.

And yes, Snapchat is clearly successful. They might be taking hits from the majors and close down in the long run, but Snap did create a new product category and redefined how video is consumed. They were the clear leaders in mobile AR also, which people don't seem to appreciate.

It's been really hard for me to come to this conclusion about leadership, because I grew up in a culture where personnel leadership is paramount - if you're a bad leader you can get those under you killed, or they'll kill you.

The fact that this just doesn't translate to business, especially where businesses are so focused on consumer products, is a challenge.

I think as with everything in business, people vastly underestimate the role luck plays. There are companies with good leadership and good products that fail. There are companies with poor leadership and poor products that succeed. There are companies with poor leadership but good product that succeed, and some that fail... and all combinations of these attributes and outcomes. There is little causality and everyone is basically just rolling dice.

I once had a discussion with someone who does brand auditing for a living, and they said the brand perception of social media in general (and FB specifically) is very similar to the IRS.

Whether FB is evil or not (it's a very rare person who tries to be evil), no one loves them. People only love communities they can wrap their arms around, and past a certain size that isn't possible.

If Snapchat is lucky that'll happen to them one day, too.

IMO there's still a lot of room for Snap to do something. They still have an opportunity to seize, same for Twitter.

For example, there's a subset of content creators on Snap that charges for premium content (a separate private account w/ more content). Subscription and payment is done outside of the Snap app. Cancellations and payment confirmations are all done manually. I'm not even sure if Snap realizes this but they can totally make money off of it.

Now that Evan is being more open and less dictatorial, someone will notice and bring opportunities like these to his attention.

Based on my brief time at FB (in 2016-2017), FB is not evil. MZ is trying to do the right thing, overall. Using this as a major piece of positioning/propaganda is not going to work for Spiegel. Also, if they ever want to make money, they'll be playing the exact same game as FB. That's going to be tough, as by now Snapchat is just a feature (of FB). Also, I can tell you, FB employees are laser focused on executing and making a measurable impact (and getting a big bonus), there's no group therapy bitching. I don't have any love/hate for Snapchat, but it is going to be very tough for them. (I don't own either stock.)

I think you're missing the point. It's not about MZ's motivations or even how FB thinks about things internally. It's about the perception by significant numbers of people - and, critically, their elected representatives - that FB is fundamentally shady.

There is a very good chance the path we're on ends with FB and potentially all of the social networks being considerably more regulated than they are currently, and I'd argue GDPR shows that we're already well on our way down that path.

Re regulation: I think regulation wouldn't help Snapchat, as any regulation would also apply to them. Actually, you could even argue that it's harder for a small(er) company to comply to regulation. (And btw. regulation is good, at this point MZ also thinks it's good and wants it.)

Re people think FB is shady: that seems to be true, but FB's MAU and DAU keeps going up, whereas Snapchat's has stalled. Actions speak louder than words, literally.

I'm not saying "Snapchat is f-cked", I'm just saying it will be very tough for them.

Although this seems like a popular opinion here, the only thing that concerns me about Facebook is the potential for the govt to get access to the data fb has on me. I actually trust fb with my data because I know that they don’t care what I do online and no one will ever look at it individually. They are just going to Hoover up as much data as possible to target me with better ads, but it’s not like a human being is looking at my data, it’s just a bunch of ML code.

However if the govt can subpoena them and I’m on trial, the prosecution could probably make anyone look like a phsychopath and twist the data to look however they want.

What about where Facebook has wholesaled your information to companies like Cambridge Analytica?

You could say they "learned their lesson" and will focus on ads now, but this pattern of behavior is exactly why people distrust Facebook and find it shady.

Re "Facebook has wholesaled your information": FB does not sell user data (it doesn't need to, it makes so much on ads). CA gained user information on people who installed one of their FB apps whose purpose was to specifically get user data, and additionally because of a shitty choice FB made, it allowed apps like this to also access friends-of-friends data, afaik. Additionally, there was no monitoring in place to detect when an app is mass-downloading user data [through the API]. Overall, I think the most accurate thing to say is that CA was "scraping" user information, saying it like "Facebook has wholesaled your information" is misleading, nothing was "sold" by FB.

Oh no, Facebook sold 50M users worth of data to Cambridge Analytica through API access.

The fact that FB didn't charge more to make it comparable to ads revenue is their own fault. The user data access was a feature, meant to entice more companies like CA to use Facebook APIs.

Again, this flagrant violation of privacy is why people distrust Facebook, because they have proven they will fork over user information wholesale if it means continued company growth.

I take it you work at Facebook, right?

Re "Facebook sold API access to Cambridge Analytica": it was free, CA didn't pay any money to FB, they simply had an app on FB.

Re "they have proven they will fork over user information wholesale if it means continued company growth": that's very fair criticism imo. I would just note that "fork over" here means "give access to apps on the platform". Also, they changed this mechanism years ago, this scraping vector is no longer around.

Re "I take it you work at Facebook, right?": as I wrote in the original comment, I worked there for 18 months in 2016-2017, I no longer work there nor do I own any stock. I'm a heavy FB user since 2013 when I got divorced, the net of FB for me as a user is very positive, every day. Based on seeing FB internally, I think it's a great company, and I'm comfortable to entrust them my data (I was a Data Engineer, so I have an idea what they do with data).

>"Scraping Vector"

This is the most slanted, disingenuous way to describe a fully-documented feature of an API I've encountered in a while, and the fact you're an ex-FB employee makes it seem like you're astroturfing HN. What CA did was bad, but FB enabled them regardless of how you spin it.

> Overall, I think the most accurate thing to say is that CA was "scraping" user information

That sounds like the least accurate way to describe API access.

So you're betting Facebook will always be on top of the world.

Otherwise in ten, twenty, however many years, when Facebook is churning through ideas to stay profitable and relevant, "selling our user's data" becomes a very attractive one.

The correct phrase, IMO, would be "cumulative shadiness" for FB...

Individually, and within groups, the work of the employees and teams at FB is nothing short of amazing (and apple, google, etc)... cumulatively though? The nature of these companies are not in the best interests of individual users, and when looked at the power and impact the company as a whole has over any individual in specific, is pretty obviously not in the favor of the individual.

The only problem that I have with anything related to the internet reality, is that it is no longer possible to not be connected to it and have any modicum semblance of a modern existence.

I have a great time on FB/Messenger. It's a tool, it's up to everybody to use it in a way that is a net positive for them. I have friends/acquintances in 10+ cities, and it's a great way to keep in touch. As you mention, this "way" is very different then if we would meet in person, but that is out of the question, as we are separated by 1,000 - 10,000 km. The alternative, on average, is not to hear anything about these old friends and never meet them, lose touch, and that's the end of it. That's what happened with people who are not on FB (and living away).

If only there were other ways to send messages to people over the internet

It's the discovery mechanism that's unique to Facebook.

Other messaging services: tell someone your username on it (when you ever happen to run into them again, I guess.)

Facebook Messenger: search for their name on Facebook, find the one with the right profile picture, hit "send message."

Facebook is the modern-day White Pages, except for the entire planet.

And that's the part that makes it so hard to "quit Facebook": you're essentially erasing your entry from said White Pages, so people that want to connect to you by name can no longer do so (unless you're famous enough for Google to pull up your Twitter when people search your name; or you know enough about SEO for people to find your personal-brand website/blog when people search your name.)

Heh, you've given me a great idea for a weekend project (a free directory where you can put your info in, and you'll show up in Google search results). Think Gravatar, but for all of your contact info.

don't forget to add a picture and allow you to tag some interests as well

What would you call it? Imagine it's not just a publisher to Google, but you could land on the directory through a domain. Something about being a planetary directory.

The parent was probably being facetious (they're saying that you're sort of Greenspunning Facebook.)

Nevertheless, services like this already exist. https://about.me, for example. "Vanity website" is the generic term, I think. It's essentially a one-page business card that you can register a domain for.

The difference between these services, and Facebook, is that people sign up for Facebook and fill out their contact details as a necessary step in the process of doing something else they wanted/needed to do. People don't seek out Facebook, they just... end up there. Like your name ends up in the White Pages.

Whereas, these "business-card website" services, you have to explicitly seek out and register with, just for the purpose of having that information out there. Less like the White Pages, more like the Yellow Pages. People that want to be reached out to (i.e. people with "personal brands"—marketers) are willing to go to this effort, but regular people aren't.

It's very unlikely that, if you're looking to connect with someone (who is not the type to create a big public presence for themselves), that they'll have registered with one of these services. Why would they have?

Thanks.

If it's successful it will be bought and become evil. Gavatar tracks its users. It's blocked in my browser. If it's federated then maybe it won't become another Facebook.

Ideally, we will connect to far away people using tv size video conferencing , that enables eye-contact and the viewing of full body langauge - maybe creating something similar to the emotional experience of meeting people(according to research). And the tech is here , just a bit expensive.

But instead we use a tool,text, that creates very little emotional connection(according to research), addicts people in all sort of ways(intentionally), manipulates them via ads, and creates all sort of negative psychological effects.

Like FB's Oculus? :)

We don't know how Oculus will turn out to be - it may be a very isolating and addicting technology.

And there's no need for VR - high quality video conferecing does the job.

I don't think this is what people really want (most of the time). People tend to use modes of communication which are efficient (time/effort/responsiveness/exposure). They use whatever they can get away with: in person - video - telephony - text - like/reaction. I don't think manipulation plays a big part in choosing to text, people's preferences are just exploited by fb et al. for their own benefit.

>> I don't think this is what people really want (most of the time)

I'm not sure if this is true.

Let's experiment. Let's create a rewarding, addicting environment that will train people not to pay attention, not to develop social skills or empathy(research availble) , and be an easy escape from everything.

What will the result be? people will lack those skills. So for them, Social relationships will become more difficult and less satisfying - so why not use facebook instead ?

I think the fact that you can’t turn off read receipts is a kind of shady way to keep you using the app. You also can’t turn off notifications for a chat without going into it and notifying the participants you’ve read the message.

It absolutely is a "shady way to keep you using the app", in addition to a whole host of other subtle things you wouldn't even notice. My intern project one summer was a (failed, thankfully) experiment with one of the darkest patterns imaginable. Everything is very carefully tuned and measured against relevant stats. If it looks good in some place like Venezuela or Zimbabwe, it gets lined up for general rollout.

I'm not a big export on notifications, but afaik on current Android there's OS level ways to turn off notifications. Eg. in the swipe-down thing if I tap-and-hold a FB notification, it offers to turn off all notifications of this category (eg. FB comment notifications). I just tried it.

First of all Facebook messenger is an ugly app on mobile. Second the dark pattern of always having 1 unread messages even though I have literally deleted all my conversations is obnoxious.

The alternative, on average, is not to hear anything about these old friends and never meet them, lose touch, and that's the end of it.

The alternatives are telephone, e-mail, actual mail, text messages, and other means that are not trying to track, tabulate, and sell you and your personal information to the highest bidder.

Amazingly, people managed to stay in touch for thousands of years before Facebook even existed. Even using computers!

Are my emails and text messages not being tracked? My postcards? My telephone calls are definitely being listened to, we know that thanks to Snowden, particularly anybody that talks a lot about stuff the Government doesn't want us talking about.

Whether it's the gov or FB or Google, I assume someone is listening in. When it's time for secure communication, I reach for something like Signal. Otherwise, I'll go for whatever is the most convenient (probably FB messenger, or text, rarely email/instagram messenger).

Bring listened to by the government is very different from being psychologically manipulated by political parties.

Right, but I think that's a separate issue than "...means that are not trying to track, tabulate, and sell you and your personal information to the highest bidder."

Honestly, I'd rather be snooped on by a corporation for advertising purposes than snooped on by the government for worse purposes.

Even when the ad buyer is a foreign hostile foreign government?

In the US at least, being snooped on by a corporation is a subset of being snooped on by the government. All corp snooping is available to the government. In practice, the government often uses corporate snooping to get around laws that would prevent them from legally doing some types of snooping directly.

With Facebook, you get the worst of both of those.

Political psychological manipulation is also done via advertising.

I think the scary part of 1984 was not that the govt spies on its citizens, but that the govt tries to control their thoughts themselves. If thought crime is eliminated via newspeak, the spying is meaningless

You can just lose touch, you know. It happens, and it doesn't make you a bad person.

Interesting. Almost like a tragedy of the commons - each individual is so "laser focused" on their own impact that it eventually leads to them plundering the cumulative value for users.

A phrase I’ve heard in media theory circles is “lost in implementation”.

Just like in real life (:

You know, capitalist food producers don't need to be evil. All they need do is keep tuning their food, and a blind process of optimization will lead to addictive foods that people eat until they're obese, because that's what maximizes profits for the food industry.

It's not much different for Facebook. A blind process of engagement and relevance optimization leads to a more addictive product that steals more and more of your attention.

It's also not much different for Google. A blind process of information gathering leads to a more privacy violating product.

Different companies have different optimization processes depending on their business models, and they don't need to be made out of evil or have malevolent intent to end up having (potentially) evil outcomes.

People are in charge of their own diet. People are in charge of their own time, how they spend it, on the Internet or offline. Blaming big corporations and capitalism is a sorry excuse for making bad decisions.

Given the FDA and similar regulators exist, that's patently false.

Also given the (hundreds of) billions of advertising dollars spent on shaping consumer tastes/desires when it comes to food.

If people had perfect information and were rational.

And the people will collectively vote for representatives who hand smack downs to these companies.

Right, which is why as a society we’re fine with drug dealers—it’s the users who are obviously intentionally ruining their own lives. Out of choice.

There is unfortunately a big disconnect between C-level people and regular users. C-levels believe, truly believe, that they are creating a good thing with spying(1) on users to create more and more customized web experience and of course custom ads. They also consider ads as good in general.

(Some) users think that instead it's an uncontrolled full speed descent towards mountain cliff. Other users just aren't thinking about this at all, but I highly doubt that any one of them would ever join side of C-levels in this.

(1) I'm using correct word instead of what C-levels prefer, because "metadata is spying" obviously. Just like it is spying even if I don't record your private conversations, but "only" stalk you 24/7 from afar and record all around you, who you communicate with etc.

Here is a more detailed opinion on (1) written by Bruce Schneier:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/metadata_surv...

> MZ is trying to do the right thing, overall. But results matter. If I am trying really hard not to kill people but inadvertently kill a few while providing employment for thousands of soldiers, won't a judge completely ignore that good side of me when sentencing? This is why we need laws and regulations to prevent FB from inadvertently killing democracy.

Nobody will tell you straight up they are evil.

It’s the things they do, that they may not even be aware of.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/08/22/facebook-removing-onavo...

This. Many of Zuckerberg's public statements, which are presumably largely considered and vetted, display a profound (I would say willful) naivety–political, social, psychological.

The presumption that it's "just business" and that the culture at large should if it wants different behavior change the rules is going to prove the epitaph of this generation of "technology" companies.

The sad part is that absent internal regulation and correction, the inevitable result will be regulatory backlash and the quelling of the next generations' wiser efforts.

It's already well underway in the EU. Once the traitors are out and with them that -sshat Pai is gone, you can expect a time of reckoning cum payback and there is no more obvious shiny target than Facebook.

The unrelenting drip of scandals, married to tin-eared and hollow-sounding reassurances, is building up quite the pyre.

Aside: a close family member who had personal access to MZ quit recently. Their take is quite different: at the executive level, many people know exactly what they're doing and why it's unethical shading into illegal.

You don't have to actively wish ill on society to damage it. The thing is, Zuckerberg has a level of power that in many ways is unprecedented. I don't think he has poor intentions, but his and Facebook's naivete about the impacts of their every decision, and the emergent properties of the systems they are creating, make them truly dangerous.

I don't think that what MZ thinks is the right thing is the right thing. That's what evil means.

"Evil" is a poor concept. Intention is mostly irrelevant, actions and outcomes are more important. If your actions contribute to "bad things" happening, if you are well aware that this is the case, and if you do not adequately make changes to avoid having your actions contribute to bad outcomes then you are complicit. Facebook is complicit in numerous "bad things", ranging from election interference, the spread of conspiracy theories and hatred, and crimes against humanity including genocide. The fact that FB does not take this complicity seriously or to heart is a resounding indictment of the entire organization. Whether it is "evil" or not, it is complicit in an enormous amount of malfeasance.

If you have to trust the CEO, you’re gonna get burned. They have different interests than you. The only thing you should trust him to do is make more money if possible.

Facebook is evil. Obviously, the "devil" is evil, but is his finger? Is his kneecap? Is his moment eating lunch? We don't judge an entity as evil or not because all components are not evil, we judge it based on its broad activity. Much of the devil's components might not know how evil what's in his head is.

Facebook created a social network, great, but it used it as a mass surveillance system, without user consent, to spy on some of the most sensitive parts of people's lives. It spied on those who didn't even use the service. It helped those who'd harm society target those most vulnerable with lies. It offered discrimination as a service with audience targeting. It abused its monopoly. It threatened those that would reveal the truth with lawsuits. It corrupted the security of financial and health services online. It used it's audience for psychological experimentation and targeted their vulnerability to addiction. Facebook is evil, but much of what it and many of its employees do day to day may seem like nothing worse than flexing a knee.

I dont think you use the evil consistently in the message.

> MZ is trying to do the right thing, overall.

Since when? This is at the top of my Reddit front page right now:

https://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-okay-but-youve...

The lede:

> Last week, we reported that, as a sophomore at Harvard, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Facebook members' login information to break into their private email accounts and read their emails.

Yes, it's an old story, but Zuck has been very plainly amoral for a long time now.

Could it be a combination of saturation and fatigue? Sure, each of these platforms delivers a different experience, but there's really only so much you can "share" and, moreso, there's only so much that you can ingest. At some point in time I'm sure it gets exhausting updating all the things and keeping up with all the things.

> Snap employees complain about his dictatorial management style and penchant for secrecy.

This is not too surprising to me. I remember how he actively worked towards preventing Snapchat from existing on the windows (phone/mobile) platform, purely due to Microsoft hate. This went as them going out of their way to targetedly fight third party windows phone apps until that indie dev gave up disappointed. That was pretty pathetic.

Everything I've read about Evan Spiegel indicates that he's really cargo-culting trying to be Steve Jobs, with no real understanding of why Jobs was successful.

>“Why would I go around the company and just chat with people? Like that would be so awkward”

He sounds like a 17 year old, not necessarily that he has no idea what he's doing, imo. Just seems super immature a lot of the time.

full quote: "I had a pretty serious Christian upbringing. I remember growing up I was taught to be small, be a turtle,” he says. “I remember thinking, Why would I go around the company and just chat with people? Like that would be so awkward. Now I go walk around the office and get a ton of emails like, ‘Oh, my God, that was awesome you came by.’ ”

but bloomberg did only highlight the bit you quoted and put it several paragraphs above the full quote...

That's one of the many techniques journalists use to create false perspective without out right lying.

Please don't post cheap personal comments to HN. This breaks more than one of the site guidelines, such as the one against shallow dismissals.

Maybe it's just that my phone (Nexus 5X) is getting old, but Snapchat is probably the worst Android app I've ever used. Not sure how the iOS experience is.

Let's go down the list:

- HUGE (>300 MB)

- Extremely Slow/Laggy UI

- Battery Suck (mainly because it auto turns on location services, etc.)

- Sometimes soft bricks my camera (need to restart in order to use my normal camera app)

I only use it to stay in the loop of my family members, maybe I should start campaigning everyone to switch to Instagram.

> - Sometimes soft bricks my camera (need to restart in order to use my normal camera app)

Skype manages to do that on Android as well recently (while it used to work fine before).

If userland software can soft brick the camera, the problem is not the userland software.

This is what happens when you choose “freedom” over stability.

(iOS is not necessarily what I mean by “stability”. Not anymore at least.)

I'm not sure Android is a shining example of freedom.

Compared to iOS? Yes it is.

yes, perhaps, and it can be made more so, but the parent post said essentially 'Android is an example of what happens when you choose freedom over stability', and I don't think Android is a good example of that. There's lots of 'different Androids' but most of the problems come down to manufacturers not quality-testing their software and the (perhaps inevitable) use of all of the proprietary bits in the mobile that third parties thus can't fix/optimise.

Is that a Linux thing rather than being specific to Android ? V4L does a lot of camera stuff in userland.

Android doesn't really user V4L (at least not in most devices). Fact of the matter is that camera drivers are rather buggy on many devices and if you manage to crash the camera library or the kernel module, it'll most likely break other apps.

You can of course blame that on Android, but pretty much no operating system will recover a device when the driver itself is broken and refuses to reset the device properly :)

Not sure how big the app is on iOS, but the app works really well for me. I've been really surprised with how quickly they can add features without breaking things. (At least they don't break my normal usage.)

It used to be unusuable on my Moto X -- activating the camera would cause the phone to randomly reboot. Only Snapchat ever did that...

I gave up about a year ago after a year of using it. I don't know if they solved it now but it never managed to play video without huge lags... So one of the core features of the app. It was also crashing constantly indeed. It's clearly the worst app I've ever used on Android, it was an hackathon-level of quality.

It's a recurring theme in Snapchat's financial disclosures, in fact.

https://stratechery.com/2018/facebooks-story-problem-and-opp...

I find it practically unusable on my iphone 6+, whilst other apps work fine.

I have exact same experience on my 5X.

They have taken short cuts on Android and instead of fixing the core app, they are focusing on their AR add ons. May be the right choice, but it has ended up with a horrible user experience on Android, at least on mid-level phones.

It's always, always been terrible on android. It's to the point i almost think it's intentional for some "influencers use iOS" sort of reason. It works just as terribly on current flagship devices, and the picture quality is still horrible even compared to an iphone 5s

Until a few months ago, Snapchat was not using the Android camera API, it was just basically taking a screenshot from the viewfinder. It is now using the Camera1 api, which was last updated 10 years ago and deprecated 4 years ago. It wouldn't shock me if this ancient api is messing up your camera.

https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/snapchat-upgraded-its-a...

I checked the sponsored stories section recently and the first one was called "WHY MY FRIENDS ATE MY SEVERED FOOT" by Vice Media. I did not inquire further.

Stopped checking Stories after that.

>"The meeting I attended started with an employee lighting a candle in the center of the circle to dedicate the session to a cause, and then proceeded with a series of free-association prompts. A moderator asked us to tell a story about our names or a memory related to summer. Outside the round room, morale at Snap has been low recently. Inside it, employees were connecting with each other, at times emotionally, about their childhoods, hopes, and fears."

This could be scene from an episode of HBO's Silicon Valley. This seems more like an exercise in humiliation than morale boosting. What's next Ayahuasca ceremonies, shaman, drum circles, primal scream therapy?

I would quit before I participated in any of this nonsense. This CEO sounds like a real piece of work. This is why you shouldn't buy stock that withholds all voting rights from public shareholders.

"Inside it, employees were connecting with each other, at times emotionally, about their childhoods, hopes, and fears. Council etiquette prohibits me from telling you what others shared, but during one of my turns with the geode, I told the group an embarrassing childhood story about getting sick during a family beach vacation. "

Scientology much?

Really. This is exactly the technique used to indoctrinate people into a cult. It is all about getting emotional hooks into the new member of the group. Secrecy, and the corresponding threat it implies, that creates loyalty. Knowing the secrets of others fosters group identity.

Snap probably doesn't realize it, but this will not end well. It does not scale. Eventually "counsel" will become a secret room for the "in" people of the leadership team. Knowledge of secrets will divide groups. Eventually something will happen and things will implode.

Nobody trusts this sector. Was the same for doctors a hundred years ago. Now doctors take an oath and lose their license if they are caught doing something unethical. Maybe the tech sector will get there one day too. Until then assume hostility.

Will probably need a high profile case before anything gets moving (since there's a LOT of money to fight back against ethical laws). We need a governing ethics body to determine ethical guidelines, otherwise people are just going to invent their own ethics hosted on Github and that's bad if you follow it and have to go to court.

Oath and licensing aside, public trust in doctors isn't great.

Still, some code of ethics and associated incentive structure for tech would be great. But as long as the industry can stay just ahead of legal ramifications and stay solvent... The hostility is an easy hoop to jump through.

> Was the same for doctors a hundred years ago. Now doctors take an oath and lose their license

The Hippocratic oath is 2200 years old.

I don't really care what oath the doctor took (especially considering the actual wording of the hippocratic oath) but I definitely take comfort in the medical board's ability to revoke their license.

The point is that the comparison with doctors doesn't make much sense (and neither is medical ethics a recent thing). Doctors are judged by their continuous practice, but developers/entrepreneurs would not be ethically "judged" because of their programming style, but because of the things they create, which transcend them and remain in their absence, much like anything in engineering.

(let alone that revokign a license does nothing to stop them from building it anyway)

Would having a "license" for companies instead of individual devs make more sense? Imagine Google losing its license to use personal data to target advertisements - this would make them much more sensitive to protecting their users from malicious entities.

You need comically gross negligence/criminality to lose your license as a doctor. Stuff like making dance videos during surgery, or raping a dozen patients, or smuggling $1M worth of drugs.

Sounds like Evan is copying Mark this time :p

https://www.fastcompany.com/3052887/mark-zuckerbergs-growth-...

Snap's recent performance and articles like this just solidify my view that Spigel is a bad CEO and that the Snap board has very little they can do to turn the company around. Evan seems like a great product guy but when it comes to executing as CEO he needs a lot of help. The fact that the board has not gotten a COO on board to help guide him is an indictment on them. Corporate governance in the valley continues to fall short.

I'm not sure he's a great product guy...what product do they have? Filters? Auto-deleting messages? Spectacles? What a boondoggle that has been. The mere fact that he says the company is a photography company should be enough to make any investor flee.

Never mind Snapchat, we all know this is Venmo's moment (if only users hadn't been so foolish as to reject the fun social media experience Venmo offers :/).

https://youtu.be/BWFLztKBrLY

Even as someone who hates typical definitions of professionalism, sitting in a kindergarten like room and having DNMs with my colleagues sounds like one of the least professional things I can think of.

Spiegel miscalculated and its cost him billions. He had multiple opportunities to sell Snapchat to the competitors who are now still growing and copying his features while his own platform has essentially stalled out.

A verge article detailed its decline a few months ago:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/18/17366528/snapchat-decline...

And the previous HN discussion on said article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431663

Facebook went up against Snapchat directly, pushing Stories as hard as possible in all their apps. There's nothing inherently wrong with the product, it just got out-competed by a bigger player.

I have to admit I heard about Snapchat for the first time when they turned down IIRC a billion dollars from Facebook. Then I looked into it and realized that the CEO must be crazy because his audience was almost entirely composed of fickle teenagers.

i agree with everything you said except he is a currently supposedly worth 3B which is more than he would have gotten if he sold to facebook -- no?

Didn’t read the article, but just noting my impression based on the title (which is currently “Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter is a Hot Mess, What is Snapchat Doing?”)... maybe social media is in a “trough of disillusionment” akin to Gartner’s Hype Cycle? I’m suggesting this based on my interpretation that there seems to be a pervasive dissatisfaction and mistrust of social media in general.

Mastodon is growing on me. These big ol' VC driven social media giants are all overgrown and the cracks are showing. With mastodon, if one instance screws up, just go to another and still contact friends. I can even choose an instance with the economic and decision making model of my choosing, or run one myself and just engage with the federation on my own terms.

>just go to another and still contact friends

the only problem is that you can only have friends of the type of people that use Mastodon

are you sure this is not actually an advantage

It is and it isn't. I imagine your humor implies that technical people are using Mastadon, ie the same type that would be using HN, but the reality is that while that is true, Twitter "rejects" are also using Mastadon. Sometimes this means communities filled with very.. controversial people.

Yeah again I guess this is the choice isn't it? Those communities spring up everywhere, but instances can still block one-another. I'd say it's better to have a choice of moderation style than one grand overseer.

>It is and it isn't. I imagine your humor implies that technical people are using Mastadon, ie the same type that would be using HN, but the reality is that while that is true, Twitter "rejects" are also using Mastadon. Sometimes this means communities filled with very.. controversial people.

Mastodon being federated, though, means that while the controversial people may be using it, the rest of the Mastodon-Verse doesn't need to interact with them.

The big trouble with Twitter is that if those people want to harass you, you as a user have very little choice but to sit there and take it.

So my mom and aunt wont be on it? Sign me up

Yeah, exactly. Look at the content Facebook wants you to see. Would you rather consume that?

Have you met people on twitter?

Have you met people?

Much like here, where I only talk to the kind of person who would sign up for Hacker News. Oh, wait... that’s a good thing.

Thing is, I've seen performance issues on some of the instances out there. Also, the UI could use a lot of work before it goes mainstream.

That's like saying "I've seen performance issues on websites", of course someone can have poor resourcing on their own servers — I think the biggest barrier for Mastodon is understanding how instances aren't individual monoliths and your choice can directly impact everything you do.

Fail Whale on line three.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/the-s...

Yeah but Mastadon has to compete with Twitter, which already works pretty well. To go mainstream, they'll need to do better.

Mastodon has no burn rate. It can improve incrementally and snipe valued users.

My impression when I looked into Mastodon was that it doesn't solve any of the issues with Twitter. It's just a bunched of servers owned by different entities, I doubt this will scale socially and technologically

Well it's choice. That's what it gives you. No more, no less, really.

Mastodon will go nowhere unless they fix their branding and user experience first.

>just go to another

Does Mastadon have a way to migrate your posts/followers/etc from one instance to another?

You can only contact friends from other instances if your instance hasn't blocked the other instance.

Also most instances are everything but free speech friendly. I don't understand where the improvement over Twitter is. It's a Twitter clone with fewer users, a more complicated UX, and where you can get banned faster.

> What is Snapchat doing?

Going bankrupt?

> The meeting I attended started with an employee lighting a candle in the center of the circle to dedicate the session to a cause, and then proceeded with a series of free-association prompts. A moderator asked us to tell a story about our names or a memory related to summer.

This seems to me more like a cult than a company but maybe it works.

I'd be inordinately curious to hear from anyone as to how it works though.

There was an article very recently about how rituals help. Let's see... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17817912

Cults do the same thing, but doesn't mean it's inherently culty. It just easily lends itself to that.

Well yes, I can certainly understand the impact of rituals, I'm curious to know more about this specific one. Sorry but in a workplace context, lighting a candle and commemorating the moment like this just feels...kitschy to me

Nobody that is smart trusts a company that provides services for free. If you are not paying you are the product and not the client.

Unrelated:

Chrome extension that changes the sentence "If you are not paying you are the product and not the client" to white space.

This comes to my mind: https://xkcd.com/2015/

Trusting people you don't know personally is just bad practice in general. And never trust anything that comes from the mouth of PR. Facebook was smart by having Zuckerberg act as public relations because he could act like he's one of us(not so much anymore), and people trusted him when he said things like "I just want to make the world more connected."(paraphrasing) Bad move, folks.

I trust duck duck go.

I feel old to use Snapchat but what I care about : word on the street - possible crypto integration shhh...

I don't know anyone over 18 who uses Snapchat besides celebrities.

a lot of college students.

Opposite for me. I don't know many people over 18 who don't use Snapchat. Even parents of most my peers(late 20s - mid 30s) use it. It has largely replaced iMessage or SMS for exchanging dumb pictures of day-to-day things (e.g. Your dog doing something silly/cute)

I'm pushing 40. It's split in my circle. Less than half use it. Of the other half, it's mostly women. I personally tried it and rejected it after getting a feel for how it works.

As some anecdata, my mid-twenties group of friends and I use snapchat frequently. My brother is a freshman in college and he uses it with his friends as well.

For whatever reason, starting "streaks" has become popular with my friends, where the same friends will snap me everyday and expect a snap in reply so that our counter of consecutive days increases over time. I hate to admit it, but I enjoy this gamification of the service, and it has resulted in me checking snapchat everyday for more than 650 consecutive days. I know it's been that long because that is my longest snap streak, but the truth is that I am rarely the one that breaks the streak so it has probably been much longer than that. There is also definitely a feeling of disappointment and relief when a large streak is broken.

650 consecutive days?! Lock your phone in a safe for a weekend and take a walk in the woods, I beg you.

Just wanted to say as a 20-25 year old, snapchat is still extremely popular among people I know. The perception is snapchat for friend's daily lives, instagram for following celebs/creators and permanent posts, facebook for events and extended family, and messenger for email/wechat/whatsapp functionality. It's the primary way I keep in contact with acquaintances, and many other people I know are the same.

It's a more intimate version of social media that is typically only used by smartphone-savvy people and it's perfect for this. I see nothing besides my friend's content and a few ads between viewing their stories, while instagram inserts ads and algorithmically sorts content in the feed. Once I go through every one of my friend's stories, there's nothing to keep me on the app and endlessly scrolling like instagram. To me and others, insta is intentionally addictive Posting permanent posts there about your life can sometimes come across as vain, while snapchat is more of a window to view your friend's world through and gives very open statistics like who has seen a story, if someone has opened a snap, etc.

I have my problems with snapchat, like poor android support, slow startup time, bloat, and sponsored stories on the right side are tabloid trash. But it's still very heavily used in America. Most friends outside of the US say that it declined in use in their European or african countries like a fad, but it's become a standard in the US. Those of you saying it's useless besides teenagers using it to sext or not knowing anyone above 18 that uses snapchat look out of touch or like you're pushing an agenda. It might be declining but it is still a large force and very used!

> The perception is snapchat for friend's daily lives, instagram for following celebs/creators and permanent posts, facebook for events and extended family, and messenger for email/wechat/whatsapp functionality.

That sounds exhausting! Stereotypical “old person” here. I can’t imagine having my social life so completely moderated by and tied to web services. It sounds like a full time job just to manage it all.

I've never used Snapchat, but I like this description where there's an "end" to the content, rather than infinite scrolling. You can catch up, and be done.

To reply to another commenter here, I, too, am "old" and generally find any video content exhausting. I like text and pictures; the idea of an experience to which I am captive feels suffocating; I feel like I have no choice. Oh, it has sound, great, now I have to put my headphones on. Or I have to watch this youtube video eventually get to the point, or a gif of indeterminate length.

I feel the same way about Instagram stories and video, BUT I think generally these platforms (I'm sure Snap included) at least have a scrubber so you know when it will be over.

>Employees show up in groups of about a dozen, sit cross-legged on black cushions, and take turns with the “talking piece,” a heart-shaped purple geode that gives the bearer the right to confidentially share deep thoughts.

Is this SOP in sillicon valley?

At this point I just take everything I hear about the valley as gospel - but always assume there's a healthy dose of harassment. So, so happy there's other options for tech.

I HAVE THE CONCH

lavish parties for Halloween and New Year’s Eve, which came with their own code of secrecy: no photos.

That speaks volumes in and of itself about the company culture. When a company bans its staff from using their own product what does that tell you?

It tells you they didn't want any evidence for potential sexual harassment lawsuits resulting from drunken antics at company parties.

Nobody trusts facebook? Is that why half the world is on facebook readily giving them their private info?

Twitter is a hot mess? Is that why the president and most of the journalists are on twitter?

Who cares what snapchat is doing?

I don't get articles like this. What's the point?

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