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Comment by snailmailman | Hacker News Reader

Spotify uses this and it annoys me all the time.

If you screenshot what you are listening to, after the screenshot is taken spotify will open a full-screen popup to "share" the song you are listening to. This is quite dumb, especially since if you wanted to share a song via the screenshot, you can do so in the OS-level screenshot UI, and then you would close it and see Spotify's own similar version of the same UI. Spotify just really wants you to use their own share button so that they can track you.

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I’ve seen another app do that but for a different reason. It’s for security cameras and they use it to show a “hey idiot just press the save a picture button, don’t take screenshots” popup, which is also hostile.

I’m not sure why the app needs to be notified. There must be some use but I can’t think of it off the top of my head.

Yeah it’s Snapchat. If you take a screenshot of a (potentially extremely private, intended to be ephemeral) image, it notifies the person who sent it.

Anyone can take a "snap" of the phone screen with another phone's camera so this is a losing battle anyway.

It amuses me that browsers in incognito mode refuse to allow screenshots on mobile. But same browser running incognito on a desktop can be merrily screenshotted. What is the difference they are trying to enforce based purely on device form factor/OS.

Actually I was referring to the Eufy app. How nice there are others.

> I’m not sure why the app needs to be notified. There must be some use but I can’t think of it off the top of my head.

My pet theory: it's because Snapchat got big early, platforms added the feature to facilitate Snapchat's business model, and then banks started abusing it, and it stuck around "because sekhurity".

No, that feature long predates Snapchat. In fact, I think it predates iOS, but I don’t remember for sure.

Yes, it is very annoying. But I think they are already tracking you.

They want use to use the share button so your recipient is more likely to open Spotify (or whatever app) themselves.

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