How Snapchat Is Sending #MeToo Down the Memory Hole
0How Snapchat Is Sending #MeToo Down the Memory Hole,
If you have something personal or private to communicate, you know where to turn. If you’re at work, it might be Slack. If you’re dating, it could be Tinder. For friends, maybe WhatsApp, or Messenger, or Snapchat, or any of a hundred other messaging apps. But it’s less likely—and growing even less likely every year—that you’ll be using email. Indeed, if you’re Indian or Chinese, there’s a good chance you don’t use email at all.
Just a decade ago, email’s technical and social protocols seemed permanent and universal; now, like countless technological institutions before them, their once-assured dominance has been replaced by an unstable messaging universe with none of the permanence and searchability of the email archives of old. Most of it is mobile-only, which prevents its contents from living on PC hard drives for years. What’s more, a growing subset of Snapchat-inspired messaging apps is deliberately ephemeral, with communications self-destructing after 24 hours or even immediately upon receipt.
Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED. He hosts the Slate Money podcast and the Cause & Effect blog. Previously he was a finance blogger at Reuters and at Condé Nast Portfolio. His WIRED cover story on the Gaussian copula function was later turned into a tattoo.