What is always strange is how everyone expects the default is this Not happening. People are often bored and nosy and if given the opportunity, they will spy on each other. All primates do this.
Here's what you aren’t seeing, if I may: Consumers see the end product. They intuit rules based on what they see. I only see pictures and videos sent to me, and then they are gone. From this their mental model becomes No one can see media that is not sent to them, and the media is gone after it has been seen. This is strikingly different from the way a developer at Snapchat models the world: We run a big warehouse full of data and media. We present this media to users based on logic that prevents arbitrary non-admin users from seeing others' content and from experiencing that content repeatedly. Oh, and we should eventually get around to writing that cronjob to delete old media. And once we rule the world, we can spend time playing with end-to-end encryption, maybe.
People aren’t stupid (mostly). They are just ignorant (in the literal sense). They are extrapolating in a way that makes sense in a physical world but not in the digital world.
The clearest analogy is that of actual dice vs. video gambling or the virtual spinner in a free-to-play game. With actual dice, what you see is what you get: fair odds. But that virtual wheel is 'weighted' to end on the worthless prize right after the jackpot space nearly every time.
alanh|6 years ago
Here's what you aren’t seeing, if I may: Consumers see the end product. They intuit rules based on what they see. I only see pictures and videos sent to me, and then they are gone. From this their mental model becomes No one can see media that is not sent to them, and the media is gone after it has been seen. This is strikingly different from the way a developer at Snapchat models the world: We run a big warehouse full of data and media. We present this media to users based on logic that prevents arbitrary non-admin users from seeing others' content and from experiencing that content repeatedly. Oh, and we should eventually get around to writing that cronjob to delete old media. And once we rule the world, we can spend time playing with end-to-end encryption, maybe.
People aren’t stupid (mostly). They are just ignorant (in the literal sense). They are extrapolating in a way that makes sense in a physical world but not in the digital world.
The clearest analogy is that of actual dice vs. video gambling or the virtual spinner in a free-to-play game. With actual dice, what you see is what you get: fair odds. But that virtual wheel is 'weighted' to end on the worthless prize right after the jackpot space nearly every time.