6 ms·

Being less friendly to advertisers insulates Snapchat from viral hoaxes

81 points by lnguyen 9y ago

uniformlyrandom 9y ago
> Being less friendly to advertisers also insulates the service from viral hoaxes and propaganda Not being a news platform also helps a lot.
- colemannugent 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm not sure companies understand why people liked Snapchat in the first place. It's all about ephemeral interactions. It's not a news platform and it's certainly not a video streaming service or whatever they were trying to do with the stories.
- MikeKusold 9y ago
  Snapchat has an entire section dedicated to news (with a quite liberal use of that word). I get my sports news from the ESPN and Bleacher Report discover stories. NYT, WashPo, WSJ all do stories in the discover tab as well.
  - scientistem 9y ago
    it certainly is a news source.
- adiabatty 9y ago
  > Not being a news platform also helps a lot. I'm not sure what you mean. On the Stories screen, in Featured, I can see things from the WSJ, the Washington Post, National Geographic, and the NYT. I ignore this and go to my subscriptions from Tastemade, Tasty, and The Food Network, but news is available on Snapchat if you want it.
kneel 9y ago
Snapchat has also avoided the GMO debate, by not being food.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  I guess that also means Snapchat is gluten-free.
  - mar77i 9y ago
    I got that mad cow on Snapchat, though.
    - gotrecruit 9y ago
      just unfollow your girlfriend
thisisit 9y ago
Doesn't this has something to do with demographics? Most platforms have tried and expanded beyond the core social media demographics. A lot of people, currently company included, still don't get Snapchat. While it might have younger audience and "engagement numbers" I am not sure if it is the place for fake news yet. Turn this around to fake celebrity news or hoaxes and let's see how Snapchat fares.
josteink 9y ago
By not having news at all perhaps? What a weird setup of an article.
- no_protocol 9y ago
  Snapchat is full of "news". I just opened the app and swiped one panel to the right, here are some of the "news" cards I can view: The New York Times The Washington Post Wall Street Journal Daily Mail ESPN NFL NBA National Geographic Bleacher Report Wired BuzzFeed IGN VICE Mashable Cosmopolitan
  - josteink 9y ago
    It seems you’re partially right. My bad. Between posts from my contacts, there’s seemingly a “featured” section which I’ve unconsiously have ignored, just like I inadvertently started to ignore banner ads in the 90s. My mind just don’t see noise like that any more. I guess that’s not exactly representative though and some people may be using this weird news-feature in what is essentially an IM app.
linkregister 9y ago
Snapchat is my favorite social network because it is too difficult to spread political opinions or share clickbait articles. The only easy things to do on it are to record a funny video and share it with your friends. I can comfortably open Snapchat knowing I'm not going to be confronted with low-effort shares of third-party content or lazy copy+pasted political memes. Sharing that content is certainly possible to do in Snapchat, but it is difficult enough to discourage people to do so. I certainly like to hear other political perspectives --because of my past career I have lots of friends with opposite opinions from the Bay Area prevailing beliefs. I just prefer it to be on my own time and not in the cheap clickbait reductive fashion popular on Facebook and Instagram. If only Snapchat were profitable. I really hope they pull it off.
- diminish 9y ago
  Email, regular chat and other low-engagement channels have also the same advantage of being viral-free.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Just don't forget to re-send this email to ten of your contacts or Hotmail will delete your account.
    - mseebach 9y ago
      Can I combine it with the one about Bill Gates donating $10 per forwarded email, or does it have to be separate forwards? Please clarify, happy to do either.
  - paragraft 9y ago
    You don’t remember the pre-FB era of fwd’ed email chains? They were Snopes’ original raison d'être.
erikb 9y ago
Who upvotes this kind of article, btw? You know that fake news means "stories that the current encumbment doesn't like" in contrast to "stories that the current encumbment likes" which is then called news. For you as the reader one is not more helpful or valuable than the other. Having both is what we call free media. What this says is that Snapchat is a good example of government controlled media. Not something to like.
- jjjensen90 9y ago
  Actually, outside of Twitter arguments and comment section accusations, I think the real definition of fake news is news that is either partially or totally fabricated and presented as fact. For example, "Obama signs executive order banning the national anthem", or "Trump claims victory after Castro's death! 'I did it!'". These are untrue irrespective of the current incumbent... In fact, your conflation of true fake news with "politically slanted journalist" is one reason it has such power. People just assume that they are reading real news that caters to their interests and doesn't cloud the truth like the "other guys," when in fact they may be reading and sharing complete nonsense.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - erikb 9y ago
    "fake news is news that is [...] partially [...] fabricated" that is ALL news not fake news. All news are written to influence you in one direction or another. There's always stuff that is left unspoken or added and things that are expressed this way or the other. Example: Pro-Saudi news says "The people fight against Assad terror regime in Syria" and pro-Iran news says "Syrian government fights against terrorists" (that were the stories about 2014 if I remember correctly). Depending on which side you stand articles with your phrasing are the "news" and articles with the other phrasing are the "fake news". The truth would have been "ongoing battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for leadership of the Arab/Persian world". I don't remember a single news paper reporting that in US, Europe, Russia, China or local.
bambax 9y ago
> Sheryl Sandberg: “The responsibility for an open platform is to let people express themselves. We don’t check the information people put on Facebook before they run it, and I don’t think anyone should want us to do that.” What a bunch of lies. Try posting a nude pic on Facebook and see what happens. If they can check for nudity why wouldn't they check for "fake news"? Non-porn nudity is free speech, more than fake news. But fake news are viral and efficient at engaging people, while nudity scares advertisers away. Everything Facebook does is business-oriented -- which is fine, maybe, and probably inevitable. But them lecturing us about morals makes me incredibly angry.
- mseebach 9y ago
  It's a good point that it's difficult to defend the position of protecting children from seeing boobies, but not fake news. The trick, of course, is that very little of what is broadly considered fake news by various people is just biased or editorialised. Very little is actually flat out lies and fabrication presented as fact - Facebook could presumably remove this (and aren't they actually?), but few of the people shouting about fake news would notice, because what they actually want gone is on the Breitbart/Fox News/MSNBC/SNL spectrum, and that would indeed be very undesirable.
- throw2016 9y ago
  How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but they lack meaning and value. Rumour mongering is as old as society itself, global platforms amplify impact. This kind of paranoia about 'fake news' ends up in the 'ministry of truth'. There is no other alternative.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but they lack meaning and value. Fake news has a well defined, explicitly understood meaning - the presentation of falsehood as legitimate news, and its virality on the web, particularly in social media. Merely biased news isn't fake news, nor is news for which the facts are initially misunderstood at the time of reporting fake news.
calvinbhai 9y ago
I’m not a snapchat user and I’m tired of using Facebook and WhatsApp. Something I realized about the difference between these platforms (Instagram being an exception) is that Facebook benefits from the click bait fake news articles on FB and WhatsApp whereas Snapchat benefits from its users sharing the most valuable moments (no matter how quirky or lame they may seem) that wee recorded on the phone. That’s the reason why Snapchat users don’t talk about Apple Cider Vinegar as a solution to all health problems and many Facebook/WhatsApp users do :)
tbirrell 9y ago
This webpage is physically painful to read.

81 points by lnguyen 9y ago

> Being less friendly to advertisers also insulates the service from viral hoaxes and propaganda Not being a news platform also helps a lot.

colemannugent 9y ago
Yeah, I'm not sure companies understand why people liked Snapchat in the first place. It's all about ephemeral interactions. It's not a news platform and it's certainly not a video streaming service or whatever they were trying to do with the stories.
MikeKusold 9y ago
Snapchat has an entire section dedicated to news (with a quite liberal use of that word). I get my sports news from the ESPN and Bleacher Report discover stories. NYT, WashPo, WSJ all do stories in the discover tab as well.
- scientistem 9y ago
  it certainly is a news source.
adiabatty 9y ago
> Not being a news platform also helps a lot. I'm not sure what you mean. On the Stories screen, in Featured, I can see things from the WSJ, the Washington Post, National Geographic, and the NYT. I ignore this and go to my subscriptions from Tastemade, Tasty, and The Food Network, but news is available on Snapchat if you want it.

kneel 9y ago

Snapchat has also avoided the GMO debate, by not being food.

craftyguy 9y ago
I guess that also means Snapchat is gluten-free.
- mar77i 9y ago
  I got that mad cow on Snapchat, though.
  - gotrecruit 9y ago
    just unfollow your girlfriend

thisisit 9y ago

Doesn't this has something to do with demographics? Most platforms have tried and expanded beyond the core social media demographics. A lot of people, currently company included, still don't get Snapchat. While it might have younger audience and "engagement numbers" I am not sure if it is the place for fake news yet. Turn this around to fake celebrity news or hoaxes and let's see how Snapchat fares.

josteink 9y ago

By not having news at all perhaps? What a weird setup of an article.

no_protocol 9y ago
Snapchat is full of "news". I just opened the app and swiped one panel to the right, here are some of the "news" cards I can view: The New York Times The Washington Post Wall Street Journal Daily Mail ESPN NFL NBA National Geographic Bleacher Report Wired BuzzFeed IGN VICE Mashable Cosmopolitan
- josteink 9y ago
  It seems you’re partially right. My bad. Between posts from my contacts, there’s seemingly a “featured” section which I’ve unconsiously have ignored, just like I inadvertently started to ignore banner ads in the 90s. My mind just don’t see noise like that any more. I guess that’s not exactly representative though and some people may be using this weird news-feature in what is essentially an IM app.

linkregister 9y ago

Snapchat is my favorite social network because it is too difficult to spread political opinions or share clickbait articles. The only easy things to do on it are to record a funny video and share it with your friends. I can comfortably open Snapchat knowing I'm not going to be confronted with low-effort shares of third-party content or lazy copy+pasted political memes. Sharing that content is certainly possible to do in Snapchat, but it is difficult enough to discourage people to do so. I certainly like to hear other political perspectives --because of my past career I have lots of friends with opposite opinions from the Bay Area prevailing beliefs. I just prefer it to be on my own time and not in the cheap clickbait reductive fashion popular on Facebook and Instagram. If only Snapchat were profitable. I really hope they pull it off.

diminish 9y ago
Email, regular chat and other low-engagement channels have also the same advantage of being viral-free.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Just don't forget to re-send this email to ten of your contacts or Hotmail will delete your account.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    Can I combine it with the one about Bill Gates donating $10 per forwarded email, or does it have to be separate forwards? Please clarify, happy to do either.
- paragraft 9y ago
  You don’t remember the pre-FB era of fwd’ed email chains? They were Snopes’ original raison d'être.

erikb 9y ago

Who upvotes this kind of article, btw? You know that fake news means "stories that the current encumbment doesn't like" in contrast to "stories that the current encumbment likes" which is then called news. For you as the reader one is not more helpful or valuable than the other. Having both is what we call free media. What this says is that Snapchat is a good example of government controlled media. Not something to like.

jjjensen90 9y ago
Actually, outside of Twitter arguments and comment section accusations, I think the real definition of fake news is news that is either partially or totally fabricated and presented as fact. For example, "Obama signs executive order banning the national anthem", or "Trump claims victory after Castro's death! 'I did it!'". These are untrue irrespective of the current incumbent... In fact, your conflation of true fake news with "politically slanted journalist" is one reason it has such power. People just assume that they are reading real news that caters to their interests and doesn't cloud the truth like the "other guys," when in fact they may be reading and sharing complete nonsense.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- erikb 9y ago
  "fake news is news that is [...] partially [...] fabricated" that is ALL news not fake news. All news are written to influence you in one direction or another. There's always stuff that is left unspoken or added and things that are expressed this way or the other. Example: Pro-Saudi news says "The people fight against Assad terror regime in Syria" and pro-Iran news says "Syrian government fights against terrorists" (that were the stories about 2014 if I remember correctly). Depending on which side you stand articles with your phrasing are the "news" and articles with the other phrasing are the "fake news". The truth would have been "ongoing battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for leadership of the Arab/Persian world". I don't remember a single news paper reporting that in US, Europe, Russia, China or local.

bambax 9y ago

> Sheryl Sandberg: “The responsibility for an open platform is to let people express themselves. We don’t check the information people put on Facebook before they run it, and I don’t think anyone should want us to do that.” What a bunch of lies. Try posting a nude pic on Facebook and see what happens. If they can check for nudity why wouldn't they check for "fake news"? Non-porn nudity is free speech, more than fake news. But fake news are viral and efficient at engaging people, while nudity scares advertisers away. Everything Facebook does is business-oriented -- which is fine, maybe, and probably inevitable. But them lecturing us about morals makes me incredibly angry.

mseebach 9y ago
It's a good point that it's difficult to defend the position of protecting children from seeing boobies, but not fake news. The trick, of course, is that very little of what is broadly considered fake news by various people is just biased or editorialised. Very little is actually flat out lies and fabrication presented as fact - Facebook could presumably remove this (and aren't they actually?), but few of the people shouting about fake news would notice, because what they actually want gone is on the Breitbart/Fox News/MSNBC/SNL spectrum, and that would indeed be very undesirable.
throw2016 9y ago
How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but they lack meaning and value. Rumour mongering is as old as society itself, global platforms amplify impact. This kind of paranoia about 'fake news' ends up in the 'ministry of truth'. There is no other alternative.
- krapp 9y ago
  >How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but they lack meaning and value. Fake news has a well defined, explicitly understood meaning - the presentation of falsehood as legitimate news, and its virality on the web, particularly in social media. Merely biased news isn't fake news, nor is news for which the facts are initially misunderstood at the time of reporting fake news.

calvinbhai 9y ago

I’m not a snapchat user and I’m tired of using Facebook and WhatsApp. Something I realized about the difference between these platforms (Instagram being an exception) is that Facebook benefits from the click bait fake news articles on FB and WhatsApp whereas Snapchat benefits from its users sharing the most valuable moments (no matter how quirky or lame they may seem) that wee recorded on the phone. That’s the reason why Snapchat users don’t talk about Apple Cider Vinegar as a solution to all health problems and many Facebook/WhatsApp users do :)

tbirrell 9y ago

This webpage is physically painful to read.