[damnfinecoffee]

meh, making what is essentially a complete clone of snapchat within Instagram hardly seems like "ethically out-competing them" in my opinion. They took the ideas directly from Snapchat and just stuck them in an app that already has a huge sticky userbase, relying on the convenience factor to get people to use it.

Totally made up and arbitrary example but it would be like if Starbucks started serving some widely popular menu item based on a recipe from a competing chain. They already have a huge loyal customer base that's coming into their stores all the time, so it's more convenient for these people to get this new item at Starbucks since they're going there anyway, but Starbucks didn't come up with the idea or recipe, they just saw that it was popular elsewhere and knew they could leverage the convenience factor to get people to buy it from their stores (which people were already coming to) instead of going to a second store for it. That's not really ethical competition.

[dkrich]

Why not? At the risk of sounding like a hand-wringing capitalist, at the end of the day, isn't the purpose of a business to charge money in exchange for providing a good or service that is useful to a customer? If Starbucks can greater serve the needs of their customers by providing a new item (regardless of where they got the idea from), then why shouldn't they? Some might argue that they are actually doing their customers a disservice by not providing it and making them go elsewhere.

[reducesuffering]

Isn't the problem that at an extreme this gives no incentive for smaller coffee ships to experiment and roll the dice on new ideas that may not work, because if they succeed, Starbucks will end up reaping the rewards.

[theseatoms]

Except Facebook doesn't charge money. I wish they would.

[dkrich]

Neither does Snapchat, but I don't see how that changes the argument anyway. If Facebook greater serves its users needs, then that brings in more users who spend more time on its network of apps which greater serves its paying customers (advertisers).

[mattnewton]

What's wrong with Starbucks doing that? Mcdonald's tried to capture the morning coffee crowd multiple times and failed. It's not dirty, it's how competition works. It's offering the same product more conveniently or otherwise improved- that's not far off a textbook definition of competition.

[slackstation]

How is offering a similar application with similar modes of communication, similar formatting unethical but, copying an API like the Java API for Android not considered unethical in the same vein?

I'd have to think there isn't a legal case or the billion dollar company that is Snapchat would have mounted a case. They didn't patent an interface (code or visual). They didn't try to protect it or even make a public case that it was somehow copying.

Yet, here we are on Hacker News saying it's somehow unethical? At this level, all social networks are "clones" of each other. Twitter is a clone of the FB news feed. Android is a clone of the iPhone. All of the food delivery startups are clones of each other. They all should do the moral thing and close up shop or at least pivot to something else.

Except we would all be poorer for it. We would have less options, less innovations and fewer ways to communicate. If any of the parties thought this was unethical stealing of their work, they are big boys and well funded; they'd at the very least say so.

You may not like FB/Instagram because of it but, if it's a superior free product and no one is making a case then I don't think it's immoral.

[MacsHeadroom]

How is providing an identical or inspired product/service unethical? It sounds like you're implying that their size or position as a market leader makes somehow makes it unethical. I don't follow.

[damnfinecoffee]

Think about it this way: Let's say you invented some brand new technology that was revolutionary and extremely useful. You're just a single person, so you don't have the resources to bring it to mass markets right away, but you start small-scale production and it quickly gains popularity. Big Company A who has massive manufacturing facilities notices the growth of your product and the value it has and decides to make a clone of it, but they already have huge production facilities and a refined supply chain, so they can produce many many more than you are capable of producing, so they flood the market with clones, which are easier for the public to get.

Is this really fair to you? Big Company A stole your invention and leveraged their market power to basically shove you into a corner and out-produce you, but if it weren't for your original idea, they would have never done any of this. It's the concept of a company stealing an idea/invention from someone else and using it to profit themselves that doesn't sit well with me.

[tenjack85]

If a company is able to clone your idea and able to execute it better then your idea wasn't unique enough and your product is lacking something that the other company has.

Take for instance Google Plus, clearly a clone of every other social media. But it didn't work out too well. Facebook on the other hand was a copy of other platforms as well but well executed. Plus can Snapchat still be considered a small company, I guess in comparison to Facebook sure.

[MacsHeadroom]

>Is this really fair to you?

Yes, that's perfectly fair to me. That's how competition works.

The world would be a dark place if nobody copied other peoples' ideas and made products/better products out of them.

[cerved]

It's like if they started making a shitty Big Mac clone. Instagram stories is shit..

[hbosch]

I use both and actually prefer Instagram stories. I use Stories more than my feed, and the feed is where the ads are – on Instagram, I can (as of now) bypass the advertising and chat directly with my friends and view/create stories... in Snapchat, ads are inserted between my friends stories.

I have a feeling this will change eventually.