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Why We Should Celebrate Snapchat and Encourage Ephemeral Communication

Posted by samzenpus on from the get-off-my-lawn dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Within a few months of launching, Snapchat has made an enormous and lasting impact on the culture of communication on the Internet – and we should all be grateful. They have simplified a security process enough to the point that anybody can use it, while validating the market of the next generation of privacy-preserving ephemeral communication. Most importantly, we may finally get a break from the forced permanence of the Facebook and Google world, where everything you do and share is a data point to be monetized and re-sold to the highest bidder."

2 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What and what? by homb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just like you can't stop someone from secretly recording a face-to-face conversation, Snapchat tries to enforce as much as possible the demands for privacy: if the recipient stores the message (through a camera screen capture for example), then it is clear s/he is going against the wishes of the sender, and that ultimately could have legal ramifications.
    Technically the data isn't transmitted in the clear. You have to do some work to crack its encryption.

  2. Snapchat doesn't disappear by anthony_greer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do the editors read the news? I first saw this yesterday morning:

    http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-privacy-watchdog-epic-files-complaint-against-snapchat-with-ftc-20130517,0,3618395.story

    and if they weren't monitoring/storing snap chat, I would think the FBI would be bitching like they do about Skype...