> Yeah, absolutely, so one of the biggest purposes of the social feed when Venmo first launched was around this concept of social proof. So if you think about a product like Venmo, it’s really only useful to you if people that you want to transact with are also using Venmo. So when Venmo launched, we had two feeds, we had the public feed and the friend feed. And immediately when a new user signed up for Venmo, you could see in the public feed that Venmo was something other people were using.
From a Venmo product lead - https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/14/16643192/venmo-stalking-...
I feel pretty confident that they could have come up with a better solution if they had considered the privacy aspect at all. One really simple, basic step might be not exposing the exact datetime when the transaction was made. Not linking both parties to the transaction in one display would be another choice that would still serve the purpose of demonstrating volume.
I go to instagram to see nice pictures sometimes and contact friends and family. I never, ever go to venmo to see how people are spending money.
It might not be for everyone, but there's plenty of people that are aware of the feature and aren't bothered by it.
Like I get that this is another place to use cheeky emojis (Steve bought some weed and gave his dealer a tree emoji! Classic Steve!) but just...why?
Most transactions between parties are simply "drinks", pizza emojis, or "rent" to a roommate. It's about showing who you are, what you do, and who you're with.
How young are you talking? My peers in their 20s have the same attitude towards Internet privacy as towards factory farming and abusive labor practices at clothing manufacturers: " I know I should care, but it doesn't affect me right now so I will worry about caring later"