Snapchat Responds To Change.Org Petition Complaining About the App's Redesign (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Snapchat has posted an official response to users who signed a petition on Change.org asking the company to reverse its controversial update, which people say makes the app more difficult to use. In the response, Snapchat promises to make a few more changes to the Friends and Discover section in order to address user complaints. These changes were announced yesterday, along with GIF stickers from Giphy. The backlash against Snapchat has been growing in the months since the company rolled out a major revamp, which aimed to make the social app more accessible to a mainstream audience. Snapchat users have left the app bad reviews, complained on social media, turned to rival Instagram, and they signed a Change.org petition entitled, "Remove the new Snapchat update."

Last night, Snapchat posted an official response to the petition, reiterating its stance but also promising a few tweaks that may help to address users' concerns. Specifically, the company said that "beginning soon on iOS and with Android in the coming weeks" it will introduce tabs in the Friends section and in Discover, which it says will make it easier for users to find the Stories they want. This update will let users sort things like Stories, Group Chats, and Subscriptions. Whether these tabs will placate users who just want the old Snapchat back remains to be seen.

Comments

Re:I'm so old

[enjar]

I think it's an "app" the young people use to send naked pictures to each other with the naive belief that they magically disappear from the other end, and that they can disguise themselves with cat noses. I believe it used to pride itself on being incomprehensible to old people. Somehow it has a valuation in the tens of billions despite losing $500M a year.

No, I don't get it, either

Re:I'm so old

[darkain]

It started out as a "security" based messaging application, where you could send images peer-to-peer with others, and they'd auto-delete themselves after being viewed, so government couldn't request to see user content (because it was never stored)

And WALP, nobody gave two shits about security, so they turned it into a hipster trendy company instead focusing on funny little video loops people could publish. And thus, success was found!

Re:Online petitions are useless

[alvinrod]

The whole thing just seems likes like a sleazy way to collect contact information and other personal information about what kinds of petitions people are signing. Even if online petitions weren't useless as you suggest, I'd stay the hell away from any site that isn't dedicated to a single position and intent on dissolving itself after some point in the near future.

A quick Google search indicated that they (Change.org) have 300 employees, which at a very conservative estimate means $15,000,000 in worker salaries, never mind all of the other expenses. They are absolutely selling user data in order to pay the bills.

Re:I'm so old

[tlhIngan]

I think it's an "app" the young people use to send naked pictures to each other with the naive belief that they magically disappear from the other end,

Old fart here. I think people underestimate security through obscurity.

Security through obscurity won't save you from a determined attacker like the NSA. But, security through obscurity will save you from the majority fo attackers who are looking for an easy target.

Except the workaround is so easy, anyone can do it.

As in, if you wanted to preserve the image, you took a screenshot. That's it.

Now, on Android, the app would disable the screenshot service, while on iOS this wasn't possible, so it would detect that it would happen (and thus supposedly send a message to the sender that their image was saved). This of course broke in iOS 8 or 9 when the mechanism Snapchat used no longer worked due to changes in the OS (since screenshots should be done with as little impact as possible)

Then it was discovered the app was not deleting the images as promised, and on both Android and iOS it was possible to recover the "deleted" images.

I think it was that, plus the iOS change that did Snapchat in - because they could no longer rely on images being fleeting that they had to pivot. That and well, I believe on Android some people had apps that simply scanned Snapchat's data directory and snatched a copy of the files too.