Comment by Mtinie
13 hours ago
Wasn’t that the entire premise of the product when it launched? Disappearing messages and minimal footprint so you could be confident your communications were semi-private?
That was the expectation of using the product so it fits and isn’t anything like this discussion.
Yes. And because of the platforms deciding to enable that business model, we're now in a bullshit reality where the very apps that need to be screenshotted most often, are first to abuse platform features and prevent screenshots from being taken.
This deserves a longer rant, but the very premise of Snapchat was always poisonous, and is largely responsible for why, 20 years later, we're now facing extreme proposals for regulating electronic communication.
I generally disagree with the whole line of criticism techies get for "solving social problems with technology", but if there's one unambiguous case where I'd agree it was plain stupid, it's the concept of screenshot prevention, that became prominent with Snapchat. Controlling whether your recipient gets to keep the message you sent them is a purely social problem, and the answer to that in the real world has always, for good reasons, been "once sent, it's no longer yours; once received, it belongs to recipient to do with as they please".
> but the very premise of Snapchat was always poisonous
Wdym? Hooking (primarily underage) people onto "daily streaks" of sharing (often inappropriate) pictures of themselves to (sometimes random) other people via likely insecure servers is a _great_ business model!
Great customer retention. Lots and lots of engagement. So much shareholder value.
Oh and just think about how vulnerable they are. _Perfect_ for ads.
That plus product design.
Yellow.
They fuckin did it. Not construction not a warning of some type. Not yellow pages. Yellow - cool looking yellow.
Is what I said to myself as a 20-something product designer
Their entire color story was really cool at the time. Yellow with Magenta/Blue accents was super bold, especially compared to the boring ass direction everything was going. Material and Windows 10 flatshit was all the rage and here comes Snapchat like the Kool-Aid man.