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Comment by eridius | Hacker News Reader

So basically, you spammed 42k users, and tricked them into sending what they thought were ephemeral pictures but were instead permanently saved and displayed publicly on your website. And now you're bragging about it.

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We tell users in our snap that their response will be posted online.

Ok I suppose that's better than nothing, but you're still violating the most fundamental aspect of snapchat, and I guarantee you that a good chunk of your pictures came from people who didn't realize that you were actually saving their pictures.

Check out our about page. We will remove images ASAP if the user requests it.

You have to know about it to request removal. That doesn't fix the issue of user's not understanding that you're changing the expected behavior. I'd assume you meant it would be posted online and then removed shortly after.

You know exactly what you're being called out on.

"We tell users in our snap that their response will be posted online."

Not to be rude... but are you sure people fully understand this? Snapchats are supposed to be seen at most 10 seconds. Snapchat frequently has little bugs where the snap doesn't show up for it's full amount of time.

I hate to say this because I genuinely like the idea... but this website seems shady to me. They are bragging about reverse engineering an API, and IMO, at best, spamming users with a 10 sec disclaimer saying their photo will be posted online.

Overall: Nice site. Congrats on the technical side. But I really don't think I can condone this.

This was key in my short response:

I'd assume you meant it would be posted online and then removed shortly after.

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