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I was blown away to discover venmo was public by default. I still can't really believe it works like that. Crazy.

It's usually done as a joke.

I’ve definitely sent payments to friends with various sexual favors as the description for fun.

Venmo also just scans your phone book (I believe) and adds contacts it finds in your 'friends' feed. I have quite a few professional contacts who are quite different in the way they express themselves with their friends than in the professional setting (as one would expect). They're older (50+) and not in a tech field, and I don't think they realize that it's public by default.

Yeah it's called a joke...

I heard someone at a storytelling event talk about a job interview with one of the payments companies. The job was to build an internal database of local market prices for different sex acts and drugs.

That sounds fun! Even if just a thought experiment.