HACKER Q&A
📣 jenthoven

BeReal Shows Who Takes Screenshots with No Notice to Users


I've been enjoying BeReal recently, the new social media app that promises to not waste your time and encourages authentic expression. Most of human life is boring, ugly, and unfiltered, which is exactly what I see in my BeReal feed.

However, I think it is pretty sketchy of BeReal to not tell people about screenshot notifications. It turns out that if you take screenshots of BeReal photos, that person can see that you did it. It can be embarrassing to save someone's photo, on purpose or accidentally, and not realize that they will find out. There's no warning or confirmation process, so you might take a screenshot without realizing that someone else will know. The developers haven't written a blog post on this topic, don't mention this in their "Warnings" in the app store, and haven't answered open Reddit threads even though they clearly included this feature as a growth hack.

I think that BeReal should tell users explicitly that if you take screenshots, the person will know and see who you are. I believe this because I think your behavior in an app should be considered private unless explicitly stated otherwise. What do you think?


  👤 ElSinchi Accepted Answer ✓
There is no foolproof way to know if a screenshot is taken

There are many alternative ways other than the standard phone shortcut


👤 ElSinchi
Even in the "old" days when Snapchat was supposed to block screenshots, and delete posts after some time, people bstill managed to do it

👤 bil7
i only share my BeReal with my friends. I don't really mind or care if they take a screenshot of me at my desk at work.