

How Snapchat took over Yale - shaufler
http://haufler.org/2013/02/05/how-snapchat-took-over-yale/

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sequoia
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."

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jusben1369
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.

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wmblaettler
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).

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jusben1369
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.

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digitalengineer
_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'?

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tammer
The key here is intention. While of course it's quite possible for images to
be reproduced in one way or another, the fact that they _must_ be reproduced,
and not simply 'shared' or 're-*ed,' changes the user's relation to the app.

I think this gets to the tone of the article, as communicating this way
implies a level of trust and/or intimacy usually reserved for analog methods.

Snapchat is brilliant in this regard. I think we're going to see a lot more
communication platforms built on limitations rather than sprawling features.

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001sky
_I think we're going to see a lot more communication platforms built on
limitations_

\-- This would be an interesting brainstorm.

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swohns
lets do it! I'll go first: How about a chat program based on sharing websites?
Or an email program without a subject line?

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darkarmani
> Or an email program without a subject line?

What about email with only a 140 character subject line? Who would want to
write more than that anyway?

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swohns
I've been experimenting with text summarizers, but the content of email is so
subjective that it is hard to make a meaningful summary. Anyone have
experience/thoughtspace in this area?

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rcraft
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?

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joshmlewis
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.

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drewwwwww
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?

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

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ChikkaChiChi
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.

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SeanDav
This hardly untraceable. Everything going through the networks is recordable
and the Government has access to it all.

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ChikkaChiChi
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-
fb...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57544139-38/judge-prods-fbi-over-
future-internet-surveillance-plans/)

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pekk
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.

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graue
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.

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eridius
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.

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damian2000
Given the fact you can send out messages to multiple recipients, how do they
stop it from being bombarded by spammers?

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shaufler
Users need to accept you as a friend before you can send them Snapchats

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potater
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. :)

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jpadkins
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?"

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skeletonjelly
Better in this case is subjective.

