Got Snapchat recently and want your opinion on it.
Some things I like: public snaps that can keep you up to date and more aware of the world around you.
Things I don’t like: 24/7 friend locations, from the fact that anyone knows where you are and that Snapchat will sell your location data to advertisers.
Would also like to know more about etiquette on the app.
Proprietary centralized corporate mass surveillance and propaganda platform, like the rest of them. Trash garbage, avoid at all costs.
I never understood the appeal. I watched it explode in popularity among the people around me, my family and friends. And the whole time I was like, “so it’s a messaging app that automatically deletes your conversations?”
But TBF I’ve never understood the appeal of any social media.
I dont know anyone who uses it as a routine way to text. A couple commenters said it’s popular for some people that way, though, so maybe it is. I guess it allows for more natural conversation if you are talking like you aren’t making a permanent record.
If you don’t use it, it doesn’t seem that useful, but it actually offers a pretty good utility. There are a lot of situations where you want to show something to someone, but you don’t want/need to permanently have a picture of it in your phone. Just looking at a text conversation with a friend who doesn’t have it, I see pictures we’ve sent back and forth with screenshots of restaurant reservation times and movie show times that have already passed. There’s things they’ve seen at the store that they wanted to know if they should buy for me. That kind of stuff doesn’t need to be permanently stored on my phone, but it is. Yeah, both of us could go in and delete those pictures, but realistically, we won’t.
It’s all extra true for video.
It also didn’t delete conversations. It kept everything on its servers and only removed visibility for users.
I think the main appeal is that it would auto-delete the nudes you send to someone you don’t quite trust. I’m too sober to contemplate why you’d send nudes to someone you don’t quite trust, but I know it’s a thing.
Of course, once it’s on someone else’s device, Snapchat can’t really guarantee they haven’t kept a copy. From what I’ve read about the implementation, it doesn’t even try very hard. The fact that you can’t trust the client is basic network security.
Snapchat scans all of your messages for CSAM, which might sound like a good idea, but it’s just an excuse for mass surveillance. I’d avoid Snapchat.
My opinnion is, that any comercial social media is bad for privacy.
Not just privacy, mental health too
It’s funny how Snapchat was huge in Europe like a decade ago, this was before it even introduced chat feature or stories, it was only disappearing photos, then it died, then 3 or 5 years ago Americans picked it up as the foremost alternative to SMS/iMessage, and at the moment the European Gen-Z is getting into Snapchat again, or so I believe judging by the sample of 2 (two) cousins I have
I had no idea people still used it, it sort of just died after Instagram came out with stories or whatever. Most people I know just prefer text messaging now since no one can agree vs fb messenger apple messenger what’s app or signal
I just use it to chat with friends. I like that the conversations disappear. I don’t give it location permission and I don’t use any of the other stuff it has. Honestly I don’t even know what else is on there.
From the bottom of my heart - I hate it.
For some reason it caught on as the go-to messaging app for casual conversations for folks my generation (in my country at least).
Deleted my account roughly a year ago.
Do not confuse any of the content you see on Snapchat as news. It is an advertisement. It is a free service and the content is highly competitive, so it must be enticing to pull you in and it has one objective: to generate revenue.
If you want news, you need to find a new platform with different incentives. Lemmy removes the profit incentive, a news website keeps the profit incentive but add transparency.
If you want to keep up with friends and they’re on Snapchat, then by all means use Snapchat, but the idea that you can use it as a platform to keep up with news is delusional.
Everyone I know that uses Snapchat only uses it to take pictures with filters, and save them to the gallery.
I really don’t care about it, and I don’t think I ever will.
I have snapchat and I only use the chat feature hence why I haven’t given it location, microphone, or even camera permission. That’s right, Snapchat with no snaps, so all that’s left is chats. At that point, it’s basically Whatsapp for zoomers meets tiktok or something along those lines (depending on which features you use).
I tried it over a decade ago, the 3rd party app on windows phone I was using was pulled and so I had no desire to use it once I was on iOS and android a few years later.
Never really saw the appeal of “stories” feels like attention seeking to me. Sending shitpost photos that you don’t care to keep to friends makes a little more sense but still not my bag
The public snaps are absolutely not a good way to keep up with the world around you. When I still used it, it was just celebrity slop on the public snaps. If that has changed then idk.
Jsyk you can disable the location stuff, but they do scan everything for “WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDRENNN” purposes which means it could just as easily be scanned for [ARBITRARY_NATIONAL_SECURITY_REASON] or whatever else they want so not sure it’s a very privacy friendly solution.
Their support also sucks ass - they bombed me with like 100+ emails the one day because their system must’ve glitched out. Never have gotten a real person before, it’s almost always a bot with a human name and the cam girl bot farms come through every now and then spamming you with friend adds
I’ve never understood the point of it. So I can send pictures and message people? How is that different from any other messaging app I can use? 🤷
Aside from all the very valid criticisms everyone else has pointed out, there’s one thing that always made it totally unusable for me… When you open the app, the very first thing it does is show your front-facing camera?? What kind of unhinged behavior is that, are they trying to ruin my day?!
