6 ms·

How Snapchat took over Yale

74 points by shaufler 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
damian2000 14y ago
Given the fact you can send out messages to multiple recipients, how do they stop it from being bombarded by spammers?
- shaufler 14y ago
  Users need to accept you as a friend before you can send them Snapchats
  - potater 14y ago
    Unless it has changed recently, I think anyone can receive Snapchats until disabled. At least, that's how it was when I opened an account a few weeks back. That was discovered when I received an unsolicited snapchat from a name I didn't recognize (I have no friends on the service aside from the default teamsnapchat). Rather than risk viewing something regrettable, I deleted the "message" and quickly found the setting to disallow unknown users from messaging me. :)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jusben1369 14y ago
My 12 year old and her group of friends are hooked on Snapchat. No idea it had reached the University/College level. My understanding is the kids love it because several parents insist that their children never delete their texts until the parent has reviewed all of them each night. People will share more when they know that content goes away. Makes a lot of sense but would have never thought of it that way prior.
- wmblaettler 14y ago
  I am not one that checks my daughter's txts every night, but I do educate her that her actions can have farther reaching consequences than a young person might think at the time. Doesn't the false sense of privacy that this app creates give you concern that your daughter and her group of friends might overshare and create problems for themselves or others? The content does not go away, there is no way to prevent that. There have already been several workarounds (hacks) to persist the images being sent and I could think of a few more low tech solutions (second camera to take a photo of the snapchat screen is one that comes to mind).
  - shardling 14y ago
    All those are much easier to fake, and thus deny.
  - jusben1369 14y ago
    A lot of things worry me about my daughter(s) and the technology that they use. It sounds like you take the same approach. I can't tackle each new app in a tactical fashion so I can only drive the 30,000 foot level stuff. "Would you be proud of this if someone else saw it? Do you think that's hurtful to other folks involved?" etc so that she asks herself those questions. Honestly the ones that seem most vulnerable are those ones where their parents are micromanaging - but that's probably just symptomatic of larger issues.
- the_watcher 14y ago
  It started at the college level. For months it was literally only on Stanford's campus (where the founders are students).
  - jusben1369 14y ago
    Did not know. Thanks for sharing.
rcraft 14y ago
Nice article - It seems lazy to me when people hastily assume snapchat is only used for sexting. From my experience with younger siblings and their friends, it seems much more mainstream among high schoolers and is genuinely being used as a legitimate communication tool, not just a sexting app. Is this true or do you think it does lend to more of a sexting crowd/behavior?
- joshmlewis 14y ago
  It does have those connotations at first when people use it I believe. It's just one of those things, I'm sure a lot of people use it for naughty behavior but there's not really a way to do know for sure except surveying. It does make it easy, but in my experience it can be used for non-sexting type things. Just a funny hello or capturing emotion of messages back and forth is quite fun.
digitalengineer 14y ago
Since snaps disappear seconds after they are opened, users feel comfortable sending spontaneous and personal messages that they would not want ingrained into digital histories. I donno but taking a screenshot and posting it on FB isn't very difficult. Do people really believe the images 'disappear'?
- landr0id 14y ago
  Seeing that someone took a screenshot will usually deter you from sending more embarrassing photos in the future.
  - ed209 14y ago
    If you're expecting something potentially embarrassing, then it's not so hard to be at the ready with a camera to take a photo of the screen.
    - smackfu 14y ago
      Heh, it's hard just because very few people have another camera nowadays.
- joshmlewis 14y ago
  Yeah they do. It's more of the fact that it alerts the other person when someone does that. If for instance I knew person a's trust in me would be decreased a lot if they knew I tried to save something they didn't want to be saved, then that gives me my own moral I guess gauge as to playing by the rules. If I didn't know the person then obviously the limiting factor my internal gauge might put in is decreased. If a friend trusted me and I let them down and risked a friendship by going around that then the barrier is higher. OF course that doesn't stop me from just being a bad friend, taking something private and making it public either. So there's still risk and trust involved.
  - digitalengineer 14y ago
    This App promotes itself with 'temporary photo's'. But they're anything but. Combine teens with 'private' photo's that really are not temporary and basically it's an accident waiting to happen. I think we've all heard our share of jealous ex(boy)friend stories dumping loads of pics when the relation crashed. If people feel save because the images are 'temporary' odd are they'll find out things were not so private. Teens doing teen-things is fine. But the sense of security they think they're getting is false.
ChikkaChiChi 14y ago
I hope I'm not coming off as a conspiracy nut, but I can't see the US Government being too keen on something like this that's truly untraceable. IANAL, but it seems to me that every service or software that is used for personal communication is forced by the Feds to allow accessibility for wiretapping circumstances. Of course, I'm completely against it and I believe the situation is completely untenable for them to persist, but I don't think a social picture app will be the ones to stand tall on user privacy.
- SeanDav 14y ago
  This hardly untraceable. Everything going through the networks is recordable and the Government has access to it all.
  - ChikkaChiChi 14y ago
    Right, but the same could be said about Facebook and other social networks. The FBI wants more specific access to social media services so that they can gather contextual evidence instead of just whatever is out there in the ether: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57544139-38/judge-prods-fbi-over-future-internet-surveillance-plans/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57544139-38/judge-prods-fb...
    - pekk 14y ago
      The point is that at a technical level, SnapChat imposes no barriers to an actor like NSA. It's not even designed to. So it's already far from "untraceable" and it's gratuitous to suggest that the government will kill the service or even need to change anything in order to see what you are sending on SnapChat when they want to.
sequoia 14y ago
4chan has a very similar dynamic vis-a-vis ephemerality and lowering social inhibitions. On 4chan nothing is saved (internally) and threads disappear minutes after people stop posting actively in them. This was the first thing I thought of when hearing (just now) about Snapchat: "Oh, it's like 4chan."
drewwwwww 14y ago
the best part of this article is that we learn even yale undergraduates have no idea how statistics work. "i estimate that the contacts in my phone are a representative sample." based on what? the fact that you want to make generalizations?
- hnriot 14y ago
  Of a typical Yale student I assume be meant. And I don't see how you can fault the author for that.
graue 14y ago
I'm curious now, is anyone over college age (say, 25+) using this thing? The way it's based on impermanence intrigues me more and more, but no one I know's on it yet.
- tg3 14y ago
  My group of friends (young 20's) all use it, although not very frequently. I have a feeling it will continue to grow outside of college populations.
- eridius 14y ago
  I have the same question. As a social phenomenon it intrigues me, but nobody I know uses (or at least, has admitted to using) Snapchat or Facebook Poke.
jpadkins 14y ago
quick tip for the author: If you are doing a 2x2 grid, the convention is you want better to be up and to the right. So you want snapchat to be in the upper right quadrant. I was initially confused when I glanced at your table and thought "Morse code is the best solution?"
- skeletonjelly 14y ago
  Better in this case is subjective.

74 points by shaufler 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

damian2000 14y ago

Given the fact you can send out messages to multiple recipients, how do they stop it from being bombarded by spammers?

shaufler 14y ago
Users need to accept you as a friend before you can send them Snapchats
- potater 14y ago
  Unless it has changed recently, I think anyone can receive Snapchats until disabled. At least, that's how it was when I opened an account a few weeks back. That was discovered when I received an unsolicited snapchat from a name I didn't recognize (I have no friends on the service aside from the default teamsnapchat). Rather than risk viewing something regrettable, I deleted the "message" and quickly found the setting to disallow unknown users from messaging me. :)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jusben1369 14y ago

My 12 year old and her group of friends are hooked on Snapchat. No idea it had reached the University/College level. My understanding is the kids love it because several parents insist that their children never delete their texts until the parent has reviewed all of them each night. People will share more when they know that content goes away. Makes a lot of sense but would have never thought of it that way prior.

wmblaettler 14y ago
I am not one that checks my daughter's txts every night, but I do educate her that her actions can have farther reaching consequences than a young person might think at the time. Doesn't the false sense of privacy that this app creates give you concern that your daughter and her group of friends might overshare and create problems for themselves or others? The content does not go away, there is no way to prevent that. There have already been several workarounds (hacks) to persist the images being sent and I could think of a few more low tech solutions (second camera to take a photo of the snapchat screen is one that comes to mind).
- shardling 14y ago
  All those are much easier to fake, and thus deny.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  A lot of things worry me about my daughter(s) and the technology that they use. It sounds like you take the same approach. I can't tackle each new app in a tactical fashion so I can only drive the 30,000 foot level stuff. "Would you be proud of this if someone else saw it? Do you think that's hurtful to other folks involved?" etc so that she asks herself those questions. Honestly the ones that seem most vulnerable are those ones where their parents are micromanaging - but that's probably just symptomatic of larger issues.
the_watcher 14y ago
It started at the college level. For months it was literally only on Stanford's campus (where the founders are students).
- jusben1369 14y ago
  Did not know. Thanks for sharing.

rcraft 14y ago

Nice article - It seems lazy to me when people hastily assume snapchat is only used for sexting. From my experience with younger siblings and their friends, it seems much more mainstream among high schoolers and is genuinely being used as a legitimate communication tool, not just a sexting app. Is this true or do you think it does lend to more of a sexting crowd/behavior?

joshmlewis 14y ago
It does have those connotations at first when people use it I believe. It's just one of those things, I'm sure a lot of people use it for naughty behavior but there's not really a way to do know for sure except surveying. It does make it easy, but in my experience it can be used for non-sexting type things. Just a funny hello or capturing emotion of messages back and forth is quite fun.

digitalengineer 14y ago

Since snaps disappear seconds after they are opened, users feel comfortable sending spontaneous and personal messages that they would not want ingrained into digital histories. I donno but taking a screenshot and posting it on FB isn't very difficult. Do people really believe the images 'disappear'?

landr0id 14y ago
Seeing that someone took a screenshot will usually deter you from sending more embarrassing photos in the future.
- ed209 14y ago
  If you're expecting something potentially embarrassing, then it's not so hard to be at the ready with a camera to take a photo of the screen.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    Heh, it's hard just because very few people have another camera nowadays.
joshmlewis 14y ago
Yeah they do. It's more of the fact that it alerts the other person when someone does that. If for instance I knew person a's trust in me would be decreased a lot if they knew I tried to save something they didn't want to be saved, then that gives me my own moral I guess gauge as to playing by the rules. If I didn't know the person then obviously the limiting factor my internal gauge might put in is decreased. If a friend trusted me and I let them down and risked a friendship by going around that then the barrier is higher. OF course that doesn't stop me from just being a bad friend, taking something private and making it public either. So there's still risk and trust involved.
- digitalengineer 14y ago
  This App promotes itself with 'temporary photo's'. But they're anything but. Combine teens with 'private' photo's that really are not temporary and basically it's an accident waiting to happen. I think we've all heard our share of jealous ex(boy)friend stories dumping loads of pics when the relation crashed. If people feel save because the images are 'temporary' odd are they'll find out things were not so private. Teens doing teen-things is fine. But the sense of security they think they're getting is false.

ChikkaChiChi 14y ago

I hope I'm not coming off as a conspiracy nut, but I can't see the US Government being too keen on something like this that's truly untraceable. IANAL, but it seems to me that every service or software that is used for personal communication is forced by the Feds to allow accessibility for wiretapping circumstances. Of course, I'm completely against it and I believe the situation is completely untenable for them to persist, but I don't think a social picture app will be the ones to stand tall on user privacy.

SeanDav 14y ago
This hardly untraceable. Everything going through the networks is recordable and the Government has access to it all.
- ChikkaChiChi 14y ago
  Right, but the same could be said about Facebook and other social networks. The FBI wants more specific access to social media services so that they can gather contextual evidence instead of just whatever is out there in the ether: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57544139-38/judge-prods-fbi-over-future-internet-surveillance-plans/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57544139-38/judge-prods-fb...
  - pekk 14y ago
    The point is that at a technical level, SnapChat imposes no barriers to an actor like NSA. It's not even designed to. So it's already far from "untraceable" and it's gratuitous to suggest that the government will kill the service or even need to change anything in order to see what you are sending on SnapChat when they want to.

sequoia 14y ago

4chan has a very similar dynamic vis-a-vis ephemerality and lowering social inhibitions. On 4chan nothing is saved (internally) and threads disappear minutes after people stop posting actively in them. This was the first thing I thought of when hearing (just now) about Snapchat: "Oh, it's like 4chan."

drewwwwww 14y ago

the best part of this article is that we learn even yale undergraduates have no idea how statistics work. "i estimate that the contacts in my phone are a representative sample." based on what? the fact that you want to make generalizations?

hnriot 14y ago
Of a typical Yale student I assume be meant. And I don't see how you can fault the author for that.

graue 14y ago

I'm curious now, is anyone over college age (say, 25+) using this thing? The way it's based on impermanence intrigues me more and more, but no one I know's on it yet.

tg3 14y ago
My group of friends (young 20's) all use it, although not very frequently. I have a feeling it will continue to grow outside of college populations.
eridius 14y ago
I have the same question. As a social phenomenon it intrigues me, but nobody I know uses (or at least, has admitted to using) Snapchat or Facebook Poke.

jpadkins 14y ago

quick tip for the author: If you are doing a 2x2 grid, the convention is you want better to be up and to the right. So you want snapchat to be in the upper right quadrant. I was initially confused when I glanced at your table and thought "Morse code is the best solution?"

skeletonjelly 14y ago
Better in this case is subjective.