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>What a blast that must be... though the immense amount of [invested|wasted] (take your pick depending on cynicism) effort spent on this game makes me a little

>What a blast that must be... though the immense amount of [invested|wasted] (take your pick depending on cynicism) effort spent on this game makes me a little sad. All of these brilliant minds just... cosplaying Sisyphus? And we wonder why such a high % of tech workers have a deep discontent & are desperately searching for meaning.

draw_down 6y ago
Dang, really? I think this sounds like fun! I would totally work on something like this. It doesn’t seem sad at all, to me. Lighten up!
meowface 6y ago
I would find that a very fulfilling and meaningful project, personally. I'd actually consider it way more fulfilling than working on the core product, which likely mostly involves trying to think of and implement clever ways to expose users to ads and sponsored content, and otherwise try to directly and indirectly monetize users. Here, the goal is to prevent phishers, fraudsters, scammers, spammers, catfish, impersonators, malware spreaders, etc. from running amok in a somewhat unprecedented way by tricking users en masse into thinking they're really receiving photos/videos in real-time, using automated tooling. My understanding is this heavy degree of obfuscation (combined with other anti-tampering tactics) has gone a very long way to mitigate a huge amount of abuse. From talking to people who've tried to bypass these mechanisms to do unauthorized and potentially risky things (like send things from a custom client in a way that could allow for mass automation), they describe this as an essentially intractable hurdle from their perspective. Of course, it isn't in actuality, but it is for most people when compared to lots of other social media apps, and I expect Snap to change things around not long after OP releases part 2. Cat-and-mouse never ends.
- deanCommie 6y ago
  > Here, the goal is to prevent phishers, fraudsters, scammers, spammers, catfish, impersonators, malware spreaders, etc. from running amok in a somewhat unprecedented way by tricking users en masse into thinking they're really receiving photos/videos in real-time, using automated tooling. My understanding is this heavy degree of obfuscation (combined with other anti-tampering tactics) has gone a very long way to mitigate a huge amount of abuse. Which is STILL in the service of trying to expose users to ads and sponsored content. I find it sad that people in our industry are so easily distracted by the technical challenge du jour without looking at the bigger picture of what their work is in service of, which was OP's point.
  - ponker 6y ago
    Are you saying you shouldn’t help an app that exposes users to ads prevent people from running automated fishing-for-nudes campaigns that have been used in the past to bully teenagers into suicide?
    - tekknik 6y ago
      No, not this way. If my goal is really to push content to users I’d get a set of account and automate the sending/scraping using a device emulator. Ultimately their efforts are better spent elsewhere if this is the actual goal. In reality the goal is to attempt to keep people from reverse engineering the api so they can create a custom, ad free, client.
  - meowface 6y ago
    >Which is STILL in the service of trying to expose users to ads and sponsored content. I agree with you; hence one of many reasons why I personally wouldn't want to work at Snap, for example. I guess just relative to the other things going on there, this at least is for a good cause at the object level, so if I were somehow forced to work there, I'd probably prefer this over product development, and, more importantly, I'd consider the goal of it a lot more worthwhile and good. >I find it sad that people in our industry are so easily distracted by the technical challenge du jour without looking at the bigger picture of what their work is in service of, which was OP's point. No, I was specifically disagreeing with OP's point: I was saying the meaning comes from preventing the abuse, rather than the enjoyment of the tech parts. The technical challenge justification was what I was trying to counter, though I maybe didn't make it clear enough. It's not about the tech, but the bigger picture of what the tech is in service of, even if that particular bigger picture is smaller than the overall big picture of the app and company as a whole. That is, preventing malevolent people, and, in many cases, criminals, from exploiting, harassing, stealing from, and abusing users (many of whom are very young) in various ways. I think even if it were a company that was a million times less ethical, that'd still be a worthy thing to do, given that the company is probably going to exist and have lots of potentially vulnerable users either way. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, you're still helping the corporation and keeping it in existence, yes. But I also don't think they're some dystopian corporation or something in this case. I myself personally do very deeply hate advertising, advertisements, adtech, whatever, you name it, but your phrasing of "what their work is in service of" makes it sound like Monsanto or something. They're not even anywhere near Facebook's level of badness (as far I'm aware, at least). They make a fun app with a fun new communication paradigm that lots of people enjoy using, and they're trying to monetize it with ads. I'm not a fan of the app or the business model, but there are tons of way worse things in the world.

draw_down 6y ago

Dang, really? I think this sounds like fun! I would totally work on something like this. It doesn’t seem sad at all, to me. Lighten up!

meowface 6y ago

I would find that a very fulfilling and meaningful project, personally. I'd actually consider it way more fulfilling than working on the core product, which likely mostly involves trying to think of and implement clever ways to expose users to ads and sponsored content, and otherwise try to directly and indirectly monetize users. Here, the goal is to prevent phishers, fraudsters, scammers, spammers, catfish, impersonators, malware spreaders, etc. from running amok in a somewhat unprecedented way by tricking users en masse into thinking they're really receiving photos/videos in real-time, using automated tooling. My understanding is this heavy degree of obfuscation (combined with other anti-tampering tactics) has gone a very long way to mitigate a huge amount of abuse. From talking to people who've tried to bypass these mechanisms to do unauthorized and potentially risky things (like send things from a custom client in a way that could allow for mass automation), they describe this as an essentially intractable hurdle from their perspective. Of course, it isn't in actuality, but it is for most people when compared to lots of other social media apps, and I expect Snap to change things around not long after OP releases part 2. Cat-and-mouse never ends.

deanCommie 6y ago
> Here, the goal is to prevent phishers, fraudsters, scammers, spammers, catfish, impersonators, malware spreaders, etc. from running amok in a somewhat unprecedented way by tricking users en masse into thinking they're really receiving photos/videos in real-time, using automated tooling. My understanding is this heavy degree of obfuscation (combined with other anti-tampering tactics) has gone a very long way to mitigate a huge amount of abuse. Which is STILL in the service of trying to expose users to ads and sponsored content. I find it sad that people in our industry are so easily distracted by the technical challenge du jour without looking at the bigger picture of what their work is in service of, which was OP's point.
- ponker 6y ago
  Are you saying you shouldn’t help an app that exposes users to ads prevent people from running automated fishing-for-nudes campaigns that have been used in the past to bully teenagers into suicide?
  - tekknik 6y ago
    No, not this way. If my goal is really to push content to users I’d get a set of account and automate the sending/scraping using a device emulator. Ultimately their efforts are better spent elsewhere if this is the actual goal. In reality the goal is to attempt to keep people from reverse engineering the api so they can create a custom, ad free, client.
- meowface 6y ago
  >Which is STILL in the service of trying to expose users to ads and sponsored content. I agree with you; hence one of many reasons why I personally wouldn't want to work at Snap, for example. I guess just relative to the other things going on there, this at least is for a good cause at the object level, so if I were somehow forced to work there, I'd probably prefer this over product development, and, more importantly, I'd consider the goal of it a lot more worthwhile and good. >I find it sad that people in our industry are so easily distracted by the technical challenge du jour without looking at the bigger picture of what their work is in service of, which was OP's point. No, I was specifically disagreeing with OP's point: I was saying the meaning comes from preventing the abuse, rather than the enjoyment of the tech parts. The technical challenge justification was what I was trying to counter, though I maybe didn't make it clear enough. It's not about the tech, but the bigger picture of what the tech is in service of, even if that particular bigger picture is smaller than the overall big picture of the app and company as a whole. That is, preventing malevolent people, and, in many cases, criminals, from exploiting, harassing, stealing from, and abusing users (many of whom are very young) in various ways. I think even if it were a company that was a million times less ethical, that'd still be a worthy thing to do, given that the company is probably going to exist and have lots of potentially vulnerable users either way. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, you're still helping the corporation and keeping it in existence, yes. But I also don't think they're some dystopian corporation or something in this case. I myself personally do very deeply hate advertising, advertisements, adtech, whatever, you name it, but your phrasing of "what their work is in service of" makes it sound like Monsanto or something. They're not even anywhere near Facebook's level of badness (as far I'm aware, at least). They make a fun app with a fun new communication paradigm that lots of people enjoy using, and they're trying to monetize it with ads. I'm not a fan of the app or the business model, but there are tons of way worse things in the world.