
Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed - Vaslo
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/09/24/kik-a-1-billion-app-plagued-by-child-abuse-closes/
======
chx
Cryptocurrencies are scam. End. This is very simple.

Yes, they are a new kind of scam, a good name suggested is Nakamoto Scheme.

[https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/)

Also notable: [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-
bu...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-but-bitcoin-
is-like-the-early-internet/) which doesn't outright call it a scam but
certainly points out

> Git gives you pretty much everything offered by the business case for
> blockchains. The one thing it doesn’t do is add a ridiculously wasteful
> proof-of-work mechanism for who’s allowed to add transactions to the
> <del>blockchain</del> repository. Multiple examples of actually useful
> software branded “blockchain” turn out to be simplified versions of Git.

> Git was released in 2005, four years before Bitcoin — none of the good ideas
> in blockchains are new, and none of the new ideas have turned out to be much
> good.

~~~
coralreef
Right. I'm going to challenge you to:

\- prevent or reverse any of my transactions

\- confiscate my bitcoin, or even find out how much I have

You can't, and never will.

 _Some_ cryptocurrencies are scams. But if you're saying all cryptocurrencies
are scams, you're simply saying math and economics are a scam.

~~~
WA
Calling them _currrency_ is already a scam. They are not a currency. They are
hardly money (look up the difference yourself), because you mostly can’t buy
stuff with it. And for sure, you can’t pay taxes with them.

I read a great question here on HN a while back to enthusiasts:

If you were the last person in earth to receive coins, would you still like
them and endorse them?

So many comments can be traced to the idea of becoming richer. Compare this to
the Euro: When the Euro was introduced as a currency in the EU in 2001, people
gave zero fucks whether they were first to exchange their old currency for the
new one or the last.

~~~
malux85
I buy heaps of stuff with bitcoin. Not drugs or anything illegal, but computer
equipment, membership fees, server hosting, domains and 2nd hand goods from
friends.

And you can pay your taxes with crypto:
[https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/07/16/canadian-town-
pay...](https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/07/16/canadian-town-pay-taxes-
cryptocurrency/)

Nothing is going to replace fiat overnight, but crypto is far from "not a
currency"

~~~
close04
> I buy heaps of stuff with bitcoin

You're _bartering_ for heaps of stuff. I get heaps of stuff by offering
services or other stuff in exchange. Yet my services or other stuff are not a
currency. And some towns accept taxes in form of community work for example
which is also not a currency.

> crypto is far from "not a currency"

It's explicitly called "not a currency" by both Fed and the ECB as far as I
know. Now it all boils down to whether you prefer your personal definition of
currency over the one coming from central banks and laws.

 _Alternative currencies_ are the same as _alternative facts_ or _alternative
truth_. They can have the same effect as the real thing and be used
successfully achieve the same purpose. But they shouldn't be confused.

~~~
celticninja
But I'm bartering if I use £/$/€ too then. I barter my work for tokens, I
exchange the tokens for goods. Does it matter what the tokens are if I can
exchange them?

~~~
buran77
It matters because currencies, securities, and commodities are regulated
differently and by different institutions. It may sound to you like they
should be the same but they're not. They are different financial instruments,
just like bonds and stocks are different from cash. What would you think if
someone called an L3 cache "a CPU RAM", or an SD card a "micro hard disk"?

We're on a highly technical site so I would expect the same degree of accuracy
when using terms from other fields as you expect when talking computers.

~~~
celticninja
Well I think your expectations are wrong, but think of it like this, the end
user doesn't care if the work is being done by an L3 cache or a "CPU ram",
they could call it a "CPU cache", and as long as it does what they expect it
to do they don't care for the specifics.

In this example, bitcoin can be exchanged for goods and services, much like an
approved currency,so the end user doesn't care what you call it just that it
works,and in that respect bitcoin does work.

------
Animats
Another unregistered security disguised as an ICO. What did they expect? There
was this mindset in the "crypto" community that they'd found a way to make
"take the money and run" legal. They were wrong. SEC info on ICOs: [1] The SEC
has been shutting down about one ICO operation a week, starting with the
really sleazy ones.[1]

It's possible to have a legit token that's not a security, but it has to
mostly be used for something like buying music or games, and not primarily
cashed out as a speculative investment. You can ask the SEC for a "no action
letter" for a legit token.

The latest thing is virtual reality world ICO tokens. See "Decentraland" and
"Sominium Space". They're both frantically trying to put enough reality behind
their virtual worlds that they can argue that their "blockchain based virtual
land sales" are to people who want to use the VR world, not to people who want
to flip virtual land.

Howeycoins: [https://www.howeycoins.com](https://www.howeycoins.com)

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/ICO](https://www.sec.gov/ICO)

[2] [https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/cybersecurity-enforcement-
acti...](https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/cybersecurity-enforcement-actions)

------
lemagedurage
One and a half year ago, I built an (unofficial) bot, Ragebot [0], that would
function as spam protection for the many bot accounts joining public Kik
groups. The project took off and was added to hundreds of thousands of groups
by Kik users.

Two days ago, Ted Livingston announced the closure and Kik has been chaos
throughout ever since, with people adopting Discord and Telegram to retain
their online friend circles.

One way in which Kik stood out from other popular chat clients was the ability
to search for public groups. Even though this feature came with some amount of
darkness, people could easily find peers with common interests and make
friends.

It's a real shame that this platform has to go. At the moment not much
information is available beyond Ted's original blog post, I hope more
clarification will follow soon.

[0] [https://ragebot.net](https://ragebot.net)

~~~
baroffoos
Searchable groups are an antifeature to me. They encourage random strangers to
come and go which prevents ever building any sense of community. One of the
things I like about the group chats I am in are that the same people are there
from years ago.

~~~
feanaro
I don't know... It's sometimes nice to be able to meet random strangers
instead of remaining in your own filtered little bubble. My formative years
were spent on IRC like a few of the other commenters here and I would judge
that as a strictly positive experience.

~~~
buboard
yep, IRC comes to mind as the ultimate walk down an endless street of
strangers. It has its place

------
jo-wol
npm must return the kik project to Azer now!

[https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-
np...](https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm)

~~~
rk06
I came here for this. In fact, that fiasco is the only reason I recognize Kik
the company.

------
swiley
Ok so I've used kik for years (I have a pen pall in Germany, we both went
through the transition to and from university together.) Their app was delay
tolerant and had decent read receipts which was amazing when I lived in the
country side with my parents and had a worthless internet connection. That
being said...

kik never built a desktop application, if you didn't have your phone you
couldn't even know if you had a message waiting. Even if you went through the
trouble to run an android emulator it deleted all your messages each time you
switched devices.

Kik got pretty caught up in the whole bot thing, and kept cutting the legs out
from the third party developers that was stupid.

They were so weird about groups, and the 50 person limit per group made them
pretty useless when combined with the reputation the app had.

discourd really kind of ate their lunch (and personally I really don't like
discourd but at least I can connect to it with pidgen and join the popular
groups.)

EDIT: oh its for securities fraud with their stupid crypto currency that
literally no one used? That's dumb.

~~~
unicornfinder
The lack of a desktop app really hurt it in my eyes, but to be honest I think
it was really just killed by the fact that WhatsApp, Telegram etc are
downright better (and most people are pretty happy just using Facebook
anyway).

------
smallgovt
Sorry but it’s hard for me to believe an app with so many users is just going
to close down for a reason that’s largely tangential to the strength of its
core business.

It’s much more likely this is a ploy to get the SEC or other litigating
parties to settle for a smaller amount.

~~~
mikepurvis
But do those users actually make the app any money? If not, there may not be a
lot of real value there? Or at least, not enough to interest the kind of
buyers capable of taking on the technical and social maintenance required.

------
colechristensen
Wow.

People are ridiculous about cryptocurrencies and the SEC's authority to
regulate securities (and decide what a security is).

To have an enormously engaged platform with a moderation problem and a
cryptocurrency with an SEC problem and to pick the SEC problem is ...

I'm sorry for the workers, their families, and their investors that they're
losing their jobs and the work they put into the platform will just be gone
because the founders have dreams about money laundering and securities fraud
(and delusions about labeling what they are doing as something else).

~~~
dehrmann
I bet the core business was in trouble, so they downsized, threw a Hail Mary,
and are pitching it as a pivot.

Odd that they didn't try to sell the core product, though.

~~~
colechristensen
It seems like their plan for monetizing it had been going on a long time and
failed to get them off the runway before it ended so now they're doubling down
on the monetization but dropping the platform it was supposed to monetize.

------
quickthrower2
... but will it take out a bunch of NPM packages with it?

~~~
choward
At least they brought attention to how bad it was to rely on NPM. If anyone
doesn't remember, this is how the whole left-pad issue started:
[https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-
np...](https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm)

~~~
soneca
> _" Given two packages vying for the name kik, we believe that a substantial
> number of users who type npm install kik would be confused to receive code
> unrelated to the messaging app with over 200 million users."_

So apparently the former Kik package would have outlived the company Kik
despite its number of users.

~~~
jessaustin
I think that was predicted on HN at the time...

------
dvt
I don't really understand how they screwed this one up. I don't really think
their closure has much to do with the child abuse stuff (Snapchat had their
fair share of controversies), but rather their focusing on their nonsense ICO
-- not sure if this was idealism, stupidity, or greed.

Kik filled a fantastic niche shared by both WhatsApp and Snapchat (and to a
lesser extent Instagram), how did they drop the ball?

~~~
grawprog
>Kik filled a fantastic niche shared by both WhatsApp and Snapchat (and to a
lesser extent Instagram), how did they drop the ball?

Kik actually provided something WhatsApp (I'm not sure about Snapchat) didn't:
the ability to chat fairly anonymously without needing to provide a phone
number. It sure was full of bots though.

------
sequoia
Does this mean we can add leftpad back to npm?

------
nikolay
Kik, Telegram, and Skype has a spam issue. Until they solve it, they are
doomed. I have "nikolay" on Telegram and get tends of messages from scammers
daily. Same with Skype, and Kik. I don't get spam on Viber and Messenger and
that's why I use those. All the rest are not worth my time although I love
both Telegram and Skype more than the rest, but don't have the nerves to deal
with their basic design issues.

~~~
reilly3000
It seems more appropriate to me to start punishing spammers rather than
holding platforms accountable for their customer’s behavior.

~~~
nikolay
Guess what happened - I kept blocking every offender and suddenly Microsoft
locked me out of my account for more than 2 weeks. My Outlook, my Xbox, my
Office, and many other paid services - gone! Why? Because, according to them,
I had hundreds of blocked people! Well, there's no way to report for spam or
scam - you can either delete a chat (they can message you again) or block
them. At least these are the options on desktop. Skype has my contacts synced
- why I don't have an option to block any contact from a person who's not in
my contacts?! Or at least put them in second queue like Facebook Messenger
does? Or allow messages only from people with verified phone? Of course, Skype
is guilty as they don't bother to solve this problem.

------
throwaway4729
Kik is super common among certain online kink communities, it’ll be
interesting to see where they move to. And given the underage problem those
communities constantly have I wouldn’t find it at all hard to imagine Kik
having some pretty grim stuff going on particularly in their new-ish group
chats.

------
criddell
What was the $1B valuation based on? It seems absurd.

~~~
tgv
I've discovered a foolproof way to make billions of dollars and take
controlling interest in the major corporation of your choice. I'll share my
secret with you, since I'm all done using my system (hint: if you want to buy
any corporation known by three capital letters... forget it.).

Step 1:

Find somebody you trust to work with you as your partner. Your wife is a good
choice, although in a pinch your pet hamster will suffice.

Step 2:

Create a dot.com company. Building a company with strong technical
underpinnings and lead by a passionate and visionary leader is best. However,
you can also cycle through e-<word>.com, choosing <word>'s from the dictionary
until you find one which isn't used. Whatever.

If you find all the names are used, try the dictionary of a foreign language.

Step 3:

Go public! Issue 1,000,000,000 shares of stock. Keep 999,999,999 shares for
yourself, and sell the other share.

Step 4:

Have your partner buy that share for $100.

Step 5:

Party!!!!! You now have a $100 billion market cap. Make sure you give
interviews to Time, WSJ, and so forth. (If you don't understand why you have a
$100 billion market cap, please close your AOL account and go back to your day
job; this system isn't for you.)

Step 6:

Buy the company of your choice, using your $100 billion in stock. (Note: avoid
companies created using this system.)

Step 7:

Retire. You've worked hard, and you deserve it.

(edit: source unknown, found on r.h.f a long time ago)

~~~
i_am_nomad
Step 6 is the difficult part these days, specifically finding companies not
built using this system.

------
arthurcolle
Next up Telegram!

TON whitepaper was full of so much nonsense that its hard to even comprehend
any alternative basis in reason outside of "moneygrab!"

~~~
davidgerard
I admired the way that for the TON offering, Telegram very specifically gouged
only a few very rich investors who totally had all the knowledge and
information they needed to know better, and nobody else.

I understand (from industry gossip) that most of the Telegram TON VCs have
already written it off.

------
chataway
side note with the downfall of Kik, If anyone has experience with building
group chat apps that scale, or is solid with react native, I am building a
group chat app that eliminates the need to have invite codes or an admin to
regulate who comes in to the group chat. People with association are in,
randos cant even see the group exists.

Basic MVP with messing is already done, made with react native. Just need help
with adding images, some login stuff, make it look a tad slicker, and most of
all, the on going backend tweaking.

yes the world need yet another messaging app.

email is in the profile.

~~~
cj
Why create a throwaway account to solicit contributors to your chat app? Comes
across as sketchy.

~~~
chataway
I am a regular HN reader. I just would prefer to not make it public just yet,
hence the throwaway.

I am based in the Bay Area, happy to meetup with whoever thinks they might be
interested in joining the project and has skills. (or skype if someone is
outside the bay)

edit: I see two posts calling post/idea sketchy, I will maybe choose my
wording better next time, and I promise it isn't.

------
SolarNet
Most apps have child abuse problems. Of all the examples of how modern
corporations externalize risk and internalize profits, I think the child abuse
for ad revenue on content is particularly egregious (one example link here is
that the children are the viewers and consumers of the ads (advertising to
children being worth more money in many contexts), and the child abusers post
massive amounts of content that children will consume (and hence watch the ads
on), which the abusers then leverage into contact (and from there abuse);
there are plenty of examples).

Google researched this, it would take 30,000 employees to manage their
communities against child abuse effectively ( _not_ watch all content; a
mistake people always seem to make when I say this). This would be about a
fourth of youtube's suspected profits, so of course that isn't happening.
Instead relying on machine learning and other clever solutions which are
either ineffective or make the problem worse (youtube heroes for example).

Tumblr had similar problems and got temporarily banned from app stores over
it. They of course banned all NSFW content, which didn't actually fix the
problem (notably the beacon posts, and their crappy design (click share on
child pornography to report it), and the ease of access to children; problems
that Kik shares as it happens). And lets not even get started on the easily
accessible chat rooms and online games targeted at children (quick, how hard
is it to make a chat app, download some shitty cartoon graphics, and access a
webcam? what like a day of effort? yeaaa... search "kid" and "chat" see what
comes up, go on, I'll wait).

I would say that this would be a way to disrupt the chat market, but I don't
even think anyone cares (worse than that, it will probably come off as
idiotic, "kids are early adopters" anyone?). People will care when it comes to
invading privacy: "think of the children" will be used to introduce stricter
controls like it always has. But children are being harmed by companies that
actively invade our privacy already (and hence cooperate with the powers that
be), they get a free pass because it was never really about the children. Of
course the irony is that this app wasn't shut down because of child abuse
problems, but because of financial/regulation problems and a pivot. Running a
cryptocurrency actually probably does have less criminal risk (and for that
matter moral hazard) than running a chat platform (which is an insane
statement, but that's where we are).

The only sorta-workable solution I have (that isn't stricter regulation of
tech companies and chat platforms) for this issue is federation. Creating
local chat platforms backed by local moderators (who have a stake in a
positive platform) tied to real people (removing anonymity at the local level,
but keeping pseudo-anonymity on the broader internet, but then you also know
your system admin), this should overall encourage better behavior. But also
children can be restricted to the local community (where it is safe, and they
also can't make a nuisance of themselves), the federation would bring them
content they could comment on and discuss with their friends (e.g. they could
watch and comment on their favorite youtuber's videos, but conversations would
be kept local). And of course a parent could white list remote friends, and
communities can have "penpal" or "sister" communities that they whitelist in
their entirety because they have close ties. Mastodon and other open federated
social media platforms are working towards things like this.

This of course comes back to the parental control issue (most notably that
parents suck at using them). But the point I would make is that such systems
would be community backed, and offer better parental controls. Mixing in
things like community ran game servers, document clouds, and so on would also
do wonders.

~~~
pentae
I don’t see how any of these chat apps you described is any different to IRC
which I frequented as a kid. It had wll the horrors you describe but
navigating that jungle made it exciting and fine tuned my radar against
scammers and dodgy people.

Without it, i wouldn’t have formed life long friendships, learned how to code
and had a huge positive contribution on where I am today.

But yeah, you can see porn on there and child predators can also access it..
so uh, child abuse or something. Lets just ban everything.

~~~
Fnoord
As someone who grew up in the 90s as kid and IRC (and ICQ, and chats) I
disagree.

The first time I used IRC I used mIRC. It was in 1997. It asked for my real
name. I filled it in. Fast forward a few days, I get into an argument with
someone, and they call me by my real name. I was flabbergasted. How do they
know my name? I never knew that the real name was shared with IRC networks; I
assumed it was shared with mIRC only. I had the same on ICQ, including my
phone number, which was once abused to stalk me. Did I learn from this? Hell
yes, I got more private and careful. And it isn't as if I already wasn't. I
never gave _people_ my hometown or last name. Heck, I met strange people who
wanted to cyber on a web chat when I was 14 years old. But I never gave them
my PII (oh and I found it more funny than that it got me horny as I could not
take it serious). Only thing was my first name which is a common one. My
mistake was to trust the software.

The reason I disagree is the following: in the 90s I did not have a webcam or
camera. I had a mic but it was not connected 24/7, and I could not use it to
make a phone call. I did not even have my own cellphone yet, let alone a
smartphone. I did have a walkman and discman, I'll admit that, but I don't see
how such devices were harmful. Nowadays teenagers have smartphones, and they
willfully share personal information with the Internet; that is, with
companies, with the government (as a result of that), and with strangers and
family & friends alike. Because of the snowball/network effect, many of them
are being on these networks (Facebook, Snapchat, etc). The papertrail /
records are more permanent than ever before. And it isn't just sex-related. It
is also bullying-related ie. cyberbullying, making videos of bullying and
putting it on YouTube. The point is, we created a monster. The monster is
called data.

------
pcunite
_... the FBI had taken control of a Kik user 's account to run groups sharing
such illegal imagery for over a year ..._

Think about that for moment.

~~~
mirimir
That's a standard tactic. I mean, the FBI ran Playpen, a Tor onion site for
sharing CP, for almost two weeks, while dropping phone-home malware on users'
devices.

Edit: I forgot to include a link.[0] And this was just one operation. I
suspect that there are teams at the FBI that specialize in CP operations.

0) [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkj8vv/the-fbis-
unprecede...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkj8vv/the-fbis-
unprecedented-hacking-campaign-targeted-over-a-thousand-computers)

~~~
seph-reed
I'm not sure if this is what OP meant, but a year is long time. It was
literally some teams job to share CP on kik for a whole year. That's a long
damn job.

~~~
jessaustin
Everyone at FBI is there voluntarily.

~~~
rolltiide
living out their dream of sharing CP

“Yes, it was I! My machinations lay undetected for years for I am a master of
deception”

------
kizer
Too many people sharing nudes (their own and not their own) and other
pornography; for those normal people who stay 50+ miles away from the "chans".

Also, I agree with other that spam is cancerous in these messaging apps. Think
about how much spam your email client filters; "publicly addressable" apps
need the same logic.

------
jugg1es
Forbes is totally unreadable. Even when you ignore the side-bar ads, you then
get a new one 30 seconds into the visit that slides in over-top the text you
are reading. What has the internet become.

------
jonathankoren
The weird thing about Kik was that everyone I met that used it thought it had
some sort automatic message deletion like Telegram, but I don't think it did.
Old messages would stay forever.

~~~
djsumdog
Messages were stored to the device. If you installed and logged into Kik on
another device, the chat history would clear.

------
somebodythere
So Kin, according to Kik, is not a security, but a utility token. Now that Kik
is dead, what's "utility" about it? They should have stuck to calling it a
security.

------
StanislavPetrov
Another unicorn goes extinct.

------
giancarlostoro
> "While we are ready to take on the SEC in court, we underestimated the
> tactics they would employ. How they would take our quotes out of context to
> manipulate the public to view us as bad actors. How they would pressure
> exchanges not to list Kin. And how they would draw out a long and expensive
> process to drain our resources."

Anything you say, can and WILL be used against you in a court of law. Without
good lawyers you are screwed. Careful what you say publicly and to officers or
anybody like the SEC. Bring a lawyer, discuss your battle plan.

If a cop says only guilty people need lawyers you pay no attention to such
ignorance. Lawyer the hell up.

~~~
thinkingkong
Whats makes you think they didnt have lawyers the entire time?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Good lawyers would likely not have provided advice suggesting this course of
action.

~~~
echelon
> this course of action

Which course of action?

Closing? Doing an ICO?

~~~
wavefunction
Air-dropping financial instruments to minors.

------
Deimorz
This is just Forbes blogspam of the original blog post:
[https://medium.com/@tedlivingston/moving-forward-boldly-
with...](https://medium.com/@tedlivingston/moving-forward-boldly-with-kin-
ec6290a6453)

It was submitted to HN here, and I noted that it would be unlikely to get
attention because of its title:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21055034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21055034)

HN's strict title rules encourage submitting blogspam that writes
sensationalized titles like this (and it's even been dialed back now).

~~~
SolarNet
Except it adds context about the child abuse on Kik and some of the issues
facing it.

It's half blogspam, but it isn't entirely.

------
edude03
Not to diminish the importance of the child abuse but the real problem seems
to be "securities fraud" not child abuse, so I'm not sure why the title and
the article bring up the child abuse as if it's the reason for the closure?

~~~
dooglius
There's been child abuse on Facebook too, but it doesn't seem to get the
moniker "app plagued by child abuse".

~~~
Kostchei
Unfortunately from a ex-LEO perspective, it has been very popular with
children and heavily hunted by sex offenders, at least in the communities I
served in. Doing digital forensics, almost every police officer in a child
protection case would be asking "can we get the kik history off that phone?"
Not be cause they were guessing but based on experience or admissions by the
victim. Part of the seedy underbelly that 75% of the community don't get
exposed to. People found it hard to believe when these sort of network-related
offences occurred in churches too. Some religious groups are/were more prone
to it than others, often based on opportunity or expectations.

------
bradhe
If anyone reading this works on Forbes’ web team: Your page hijacking ads and
modals begging me to “sign up” are just destroying the reading experience.
Please, fix your shit before you ask people for money!

~~~
jessaustin
Are you really browsing _without_ uBlock Origin? Yikes.

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

