[turs0und]

Quoted from article:

“You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods,” the Terms of Service state.

This is what it takes for the company to start monetizing seriously. I certainly expected it. Facebook did this like 20 times.

[hkmurakami]

For a platform that promised an empty promise of privacy, that change seems particularly onerous.

[calinet6]

The mistake is to assume that their main differentiator is secrecy or privacy. It isn't. It's convenience, immediacy, ephemerality and its effect on how you communicate, and one-to-one direct visual communication—in that order, in combination. It's the experience, not the immaterial promises they make.

Privacy was always an empty promise, and it never mattered to the vast majority of their users.

[onewaystreet]

Snapchat hasn't promised privacy since the FTC told them to stop last year.

[loceng]

Maybe they're lining up their TOS to be acquired by FB.

[mkolodny]

I think they're past that point. Lining up their TOS to go public.

[turs0und]

Who knows, good old Microsoft may want to put more cash down than FB or others on an app that gave then a legit piece of millennial mobile activity.

[onewaystreet]

Snapchat already turned down two offers from Facebook. Maybe a third will be the charm.

[jeffmould]

Completely agree. It seems that some people tend to think that each time a new social network emerges there is going to be some moment where suddenly the terms are going to change completely in favor of the user. These new terms are no different than any other terms of service I have read for a social network.

You can find almost a word-for-word copy of this text in the LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and I could probably go on, but those are only the ones I verified the wording on. IANAL, but I would agree that without this line it would be very difficult from a legal perspective to monetize the site alongside the user content.

[frostmatthew]

> These new terms are no different than any other terms of service I have read for a social network.

Snapchat's selling point is that the messages/images are deleted after the recipients have seen them - this isn't the case for other social networks.