Comment by caleb-allen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by caleb-allen | Hacker News Reader

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I would guess that you could uncover this information in Snapchat's 10K filings.

In fact, I found the answer to your question on the 4th page of their annual filing to shareholders[1]:

> While these metrics are determined based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our products are used across large populations globally. For example, there may be individuals who have unauthorized or multiple Snapchat accounts, even though we forbid that in our Terms of Service and implement measures to detect and suppress that behavior. We have not determined the number of such multiple accounts.

It seems to me that Snap is quite open about their active user counts.

[1] https://seekingalpha.com/filing/6183813

> For example, there may be individuals who have unauthorized or multiple Snapchat accounts, even though we forbid that in our Terms of Service and implement measures to detect and suppress that behavior.

Weird. If a person is not a bot, you'd expect that when they are making an nth account they are attempting to apply another use case for the service in their life. More time in app.

I'd also expect there are fewer incentives for creating bots on snap versus other platforms. Its a messaging app, people only use it with people they know.

> If a person is not a bot, you'd expect that when they are making an nth account they are attempting to apply another use case for the service in their life

No. In my experience, it's because they lost access to the older account for whatever reason. Accounts are cheap and ephemeral and forgot password flows are horrible.

Probably the quality of the content in the app goes down dramatically if you allow multiple accounts. But I can see a use case where people need to manage their business profile and their personal one, or a celebrity needing to have an unknown account for close people only. I am sure there are many more.

All 10Ks include enough weasel words that if you take them at face value they say nothing.

That's fine, but the above commenter's question was related to the definition of an "active user", and Snapchat provides an answer to that question, even if it uses weasel words.

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