Snapchat Settles Charges with FTC That It Deceived Users (opens in new tab)

You should read Matt Taibbi's new book " The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap". It explains how this system of "well, if it's a company doing it then I guess we can't press charges" came to be.

Not to mention this "20 year of privacy policy monitoring" seems to be all but useless. They have that for Facebook, too, and I don't think it's a hassle for them in changing the privacy policy every few months without even notifying its users at all. It's just business as usual for Facebook, and I assume the same will happen with Snapchat.

I think this 20 year policy has only 2 purposes:

1) appease the public and show them that they're "doing something", no matter how useless that thing is

2) possibly blackmail these companies to give the government their data more easily next time they request it - or else.

You just gotta be big enough to scare the government in court.

It's obvious to a software person. The question is whether they made that obvious to their non-technical user. It seems to me that their marketing loves to imply that the message disappears and there is nothing that can be done to save it.

What is curious to me, is this seems like small fish compared to years of "unlimited" and "free" being abused in marketing.

Broadband market regulations like net neutrality are, to the extent any federal agency has jurisdiction, within the jurisdiction of the FCC not the FTC. I'm not clear that FCC has authority to do much more than it is on data privacy.

Also note that there is as difference between regulatory actions and enforcement actions. The later are inherently smaller in scope but necessary for the former to be meaningful.

Just another day of moving fast and being disruptive. Oh, and being dishonest to your customers.

Either that or the investors are now spooked.