CEO Evan Spiegel publicly criticizes Facebook for copying Snapchat

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have copied quite a few features of Snapchat and seems like this has not sat well with CEO Evan Spiegel, as he has publicly taken a dig at Facebook.

In the past, Facebook has copied Snapchat more than once by including the Stories feature, and Snapchat is pretty much aware of it. Facebook was also under Cambridge Analytica controversy recently for data breaching. CEO Evan Spiegel took full advantage of the situation and taunted Facebook publicly.

Speaking at the Code Conference on Tuesday, when he was asked about his reaction over Facebook continuing to copy Snapchat, Spiegel, while referring to Cambridge Analytica controversy, said, “We would really appreciate it if they copied our data protection practices also.”

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He also said that he was flattered that Facebook found Snapchat great enough to copy. “If you design something that is so simple and so elegant, that the only thing other people can do is copy it exactly... that as a designer is really is the most fantastic thing in the world,” reported Engadget.

Moreover, Spiegel said that his company’s product is more than just Stories, “Snapchat is not just a bunch of features. It has an underlying philosophy that really runs counter to traditional social media.”

Instead, he believes Snapchat is more of a communication platform among friends, “[People] realize that competing with their friends for Likes and attention is kind of unpleasant and really not that great.” He added that Facebook’s DNA is more about competitiveness for online attention than togetherness, wrote Mashable.

Not only this, Spiegel also targeted when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defends the company’s privacy issues by saying that he created the site in his dorm room. “When it was just us back in my dorm room, we cared about data protection,” said Spiegel, who co-founded Snapchat while a student at Stanford.

Moreover, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos responded to Spiegel’s claims about their data protection practices being better than Facebook’s. He tweeted, “Snapchat’s implicit promise that photos really disappear combined with poor API security has lead to serious mass leaks of revenge porn. So no, I don’t think copying Snapchat would be a smart move.”

Snapchat’s implicit promise that photos really disappear combined with poor API security has lead to serious mass leaks of revenge porn. So no, I don’t think copying Snapchat would be a smart move.https://t.co/FSfTA8ry5A

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) May 30, 2018