I don't really have much experience with Snapchat, but is this striking a chord with its users/community?
I have been a vocal Snapchatter on Hubski. It really makes me lose any good opinion of the CEO that I had, and it makes me think that to be a start-up these days you don't need much beyond a great idea and a semblance of a way to make it go - Snapchat's security issues have made that clear. It makes me think more about who could be behind my apps. It's not making me stop using it...I'd be sad to lose Snapchat... And I think most of Snapchat's users/community are frankly too young - younger even than the 23-year-old CEO - for this to really impact their use. Not to imply the youth aren't socially conscious but I think they tend to value use over ideals. Heck, I tend to value use over ideals - not unilaterally, of course. But - the true question is - where's the harm here? Who did those emails hurt? So the CEO partied a lot and did a lot of drugs and maybe doesn't have the most respectful opinion of sorority women...There is no physical or clear-cut harm here. There is harm in terms of propagating an anti-feminist environment, but physically no one is hurt, visibly, no one is hurt, so it's hard to be vehemently against him, I think.
There's a missed opportunity, though. Snapchat is the poster child for "the Ephemeralnet" (fuck you, TC). Their whole raison d'etre is disappearing peccadilloes down the memory hole. Here we have a CEO being hurt by the #1 credibility problem faced by anyone who grew up after Google: the infinite memory of the Internet. In a perfect world, a 23-year-old Wunderkind whose fortune has been made on allowing users to not worry about sexts would have been thinking about the inevitability of his past becoming his present since his company first gained traction. In a perfect world, these revelations are part of a pre-packaged media strategy to further the advance of Snapchat's ideology. In a perfect world, this becomes a talking point. In a perfect world, Snapchat hadn't been revealed to pay "privacy" the barest of lipservice while proclaiming the exact opposite to anyone who would listen. That's the harm. Our society desperately needs to have this discussion. This was the perfect opportunity. Instead, we have a punchline.But - the true question is - where's the harm here? Who did those emails hurt? So the CEO partied a lot and did a lot of drugs and maybe doesn't have the most respectful opinion of sorority women...There is no physical or clear-cut harm here.
I agree. This kind of banter is par for the course among many groups of boys/young men. It's distasteful, ignorant, and wrong-headed, but many of us have passed through similar waters, and all of us are friends and family with some who have. There's little reason to think that he hasn't grown up since then. If he was 35 when he sent these emails, I would feel more comfortable judging him.But - the true question is - where's the harm here? Who did those emails hurt? So the CEO partied a lot and did a lot of drugs and maybe doesn't have the most respectful opinion of sorority women...There is no physical or clear-cut harm here. There is harm in terms of propagating an anti-feminist environment, but physically no one is hurt, visibly, no one is hurt, so it's hard to be vehemently against him, I think.