'They Felt so Much More Joy': Dispo Reintroduces Retro Camera Waiting Periods to an Instant-Gratification Generation
Francesca Billington
Francesca Billington is a dot.LA editorial intern. She's previously reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. Before joining dot.LA, she was a communications fellow at an environmental science research center in Sri Lanka. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.
It's 2020 and waiting for photos to develop is cool again.
That's at least what investors in a $4 million seed round for the "disposable camera" app Dispo hope. The Los Angeles-based platform co-founded by hit YouTuber David Dobrik announced Wednesday it closed a funding round led by Alexis Ohanian's venture fund Seven Seven Six.
The app, previously known as David's Disposables, has seen 2.6 million downloads since launching on Christmas Day last year. It's a camera app that makes users wait a day for their photos to "develop," recreating the anticipation of waiting to pick up a roll of film.
"You can remember a time when you'd get disposable photos back from the pharmacy and there was this Christmas morning feeling where you were rifling through the photos and finding that one perfect shot," co-founder and CEO Daniel Liss told dot.LA.
Most Dispo users are teenagers and college students, a generation that doesn't know life without cell phones and digital cameras. Liss said they've taken to the company's concept partly because they're fans of Dobrik, 24, who has a fanbase among Generation Z. The media celebrity has over seven million followers across social media platforms.
Last week, Dobrik gave away five Teslas through an event with the voter-registration nonprofit HeadCount. Liss said that event alone brought in 10% of all Headcount's voter registrations since it was launched.
The app ushers in a new — but actually old — way of taking photos.
"A lot of his friends, who have big followings, would be so focused on taking the perfect photo," Liss said about Dobrik. "They wanted their lips to look a certain way and their butt to look a different way and the lighting and the outfits and this and that."
So the influencer started arriving at parties in L.A. with disposable cameras instead. No immediate shots to nitpick over. The idea stuck.
"They felt better about the experience. They felt so much more joy."
With the new funding, Liss said the six-person Dispo team is working to expand into a social media platform with features like user profiles, direct messages and comments.
It's too early to think about competitors, said Liss, but he imagines the platform will rival any app that captures the time of young people: social media, YouTube, Netflix — even hanging out in real life.
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Minutes into filling out my absentee ballot last week, I was momentarily distracted by my dog Seamus. A moment later, I realized in horror that I was filling in the wrong bubble — accidentally voting "no" on a ballot measure that I meant to vote "yes" on.
It was only a few ink marks, but it was noticeable enough. Trying to fix my mistake, I darkly and fully filled in the correct circle and then, as if testifying to an error on a check, put my initials next to the one I wanted.
Then I worried. As a reporter who has previously covered election security for years, I went on a mini-quest trying to understand how a small mistake can have larger repercussions.
As Los Angeles County's 5.6 million registered voters all receive ballots at home for the first time, I knew my experience could not be unique. But I wondered, would my vote count? Or would my entire ballot now be discarded?
<p>There are reasons enough to worry about mail-in-ballots counting, even without the appearance of fake ballot boxes and the unfounded rhetoric that has filled the nation's airwaves over the last months. After all, much of the information I found online told me to notify a poll worker if I made an error. Alas, no poll worker at home.</p><p>"I don't think your experience is unique, and it's exacerbated by how big L.A. is," said Eddie Perez, election administration and technology expert with the nonpartisan, nonprofit <a href="https://www.osetfoundation.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OSET Institute</a>. "These experiences are happening across the country [as] many voters are voting by mail the first time and they don't know what to do. It's a microcosm of all of this change."</p><p>Part of the problem was that I didn't receive my sample ballot beforehand and so didn't engage in the practice round I typically do. Worse though, the instructions that came with my ballot said nothing about what to do if you accidentally make the wrong choice. The only advice is to call a phone number or go online and request a new ballot. Does that mean the whole thing won't count? But it was such a small mistake.</p><p>"That's a failing right there, the fact that they didn't include it on the instruction sheet," said Perez, who previously worked for Hart Intercivic, voting technology company, and has made thousands of ballots in his career. He noted that in Colorado, the instructions for how to correct a mistake are on the ballot instructions.</p><p>I called the phone number, but couldn't get through to a person. I then sent an email to a recommended public address asking if my ballot was "spoilt" and if I needed a new one.</p><p>Then, for hours into the night and through early the next morning I searched the vastness of the internet for an answer.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDUxMjgwOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxODEyMTM1NH0.eGBNQueLJopk_XhIaWqmpFPgnsHuEk1qVeQmRMH-DY4/image.jpg?width=980" id="3663d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3a4af8f33f024f411c8cfef27e2678a1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
My distractingly sweet dog, Seamus.
Photo by Tami Abdollah
<p>Someone <a href="https://www.kvue.com/article/news/investigations/defenders/can-i-correct-a-mistake-on-my-mail-in-ballot-with-wite-out/269-3f248b3a-ee4d-41ec-94bd-a0af4a8670d3" target="_blank">asked about whether you could use whiteout</a> to blot out the mistaken choice. The consensus online seemed to be "no" that the ballot could seem tampered with. One <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/all-opinions-are-local/wp/2018/01/02/its-an-invalid-ballot-period/" target="_blank">Washington Post opinion article from 2018</a> argued that any efforts to rectify a ballot should invalidate it entirely. <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/11840343/how-to-make-sure-your-mail-in-ballot-isnt-rejected-in-california#mistake" target="_blank">Another recent article by KQED said</a> that you should put a line or X through the wrong choice and that would be fine. Sadly, I'd already made a different mark by the proper choice. I read <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/4-common-mistakes-that-could-get-your-mail-in-ballot-rejected-and-how-to-make-sure-your-vote-is-counted-11601579628" target="_blank">stray marks can also be a problem</a> and invalidate the ballot. Are initials considered stray marks?</p><p>Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, empathized, noting that "vote by mail shifts the responsibility of getting it right from poll worker to a voter, and that's a big change. It's not insignificant" or easy, and the rules usually differ between counties.<br></p><p>The next morning I called the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's helpline and was connected to a worker whose garbled voice seemed to match my emotions. I presented my dilemma.</p>
<p>"Hmmm it doesn't say anything about that here," the worker told me. "I'll have to put you on hold."<br/></p><p>After several more minutes of terrible hold music, she told me her connection was bad because she was working from home, and she would call me back. It didn't happen.</p><p>When I called the registrar's office back, I was told there was a 35 minute wait for a human being.</p><p>The worker who called me back told me that the specific measure I improperly filled out would not get counted, but the remainder of my votes should. I asked if my initials would present as stray marks and invalidate my ballot, and she said it shouldn't.</p><p>Over the course of those two days, I wondered if it was best to get the ballot sent in early even if one measure didn't count, or if I should just go vote early in-person.</p><p>Because Los Angeles County ballots go through an optical scanner, I wondered whether a human being would review the ballot or if any discrepancy is tossed. There is little reporting about how the county handles mail-in ballots, especially at scale. Is there a human being who reviews the process? A bipartisan team? How technically savvy is the scanner and what exactly can it differentiate?</p><p>The registrar's office never replied to repeated official calls and emails for answers to those questions.</p><p>Perez, the elections expert, told me that in his experience a mistake should not invalidate the entire ballot and that most modern digital scanning technology "should flag contests with questionable marks and present them to human reviewers" who can discern the voter's intent and make sure it's properly recorded.</p><p>Both Perez and Alexander also introduced another potential wrinkle I had not even thought about: In some states having personally identifiable information on a ballot — possibly like my initials — could invalidate the ballot because state laws could see that personal information as a violation of the secrecy of the ballot. Ack!</p><p>Perez said part of the problem with mail-in ballots is that unlike the traditional Election Day infrastructure, unless election officials make proactive efforts to provide more details, there is less knowledge about how votes are processed and counted when they are mailed in.</p><p>"It places a really big burden on the election officials [to] have resources to answer all these questions," Perez said. "How are you ensuring you have good factual information and you're passing it to all the worker bees you just hired?"</p><p>Neither Perez nor Alexander could say for sure what would happen with my initials on the ballot. Both thought it <em>should </em>probably be fine, but perhaps it would violate vote secrecy.</p><p>"You stumped the band," said Alexander, who added she was considering updating their own FAQ for voters.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDUxMjgxNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NjQzNTgwOX0.SiflyT6B6FbAoPLrIrMVk01oeGw7_HIsZS7b4jQc7Lc/image.jpg?width=980" id="ef35d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="54ab7d5c08029f153009ed6bc7ef15cd" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<small class="image-media media-caption focus-visible" data-focus-visible-added="" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">My sadly imperfect ballot.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Photo by Tami Abdollah</small></p><p>There are many more ways to make a mistake when mailing in your ballot, in one fashion or another. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/a45421048cd89938df7c882891a97db5" target="_blank">The Associated Press reported</a> this summer that "more than 100,000 mail-in ballots were rejected by California election officials during the March presidential primary." Among those were 27,525 which didn't have a signature or didn't have a signature match the one on record. A friend of mine was one of those, and she trekked out to vote early and in-person because she couldn't recall what her on-file signature looked like.<br/></p><p>I had no issues with my signature, it's been the same for decades, but I felt a little bereft over my supremely non high-tech problem. I continued to cull through the interwebs.</p><p>It was only much later, after searching diligently online by various keywords, that I stumbled upon a seemingly definitive answer in the latest version of <a href="https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/uniform-vote-counting-standards" target="_blank">California's Uniform Vote Counting Standards</a>. It turns out, whiteout, check marks, X marks and even writing "no" or "yes" can help confirm the vote you meant to cast. It's unclear what the optical scanner can do or whether the county has a human involved in the process though. And there was, sadly, nothing about whether initialing a choice would invalidate the secrecy of my ballot or be considered an invalid "random marking."</p><p>My angst was alleviated when the decision was taken out of my hands. The registrar's office emailed me back, and without answering my question about if the ballot would have been counted, they told me a new one would arrive in five days.</p><p>The reply did open up a whole new line of unanswered questions. I mean, is the existence of a second ballot invalidating? I emailed back: "What happens to my old ballot? How do I get rid of it?"</p><p>(The first ballot is automatically suspended to issue a second one, I later learned. And you can tear it up or put it through a paper shredder.)</p><p>And still, the question remains — what if I had mailed in that ballot.</p><p>Alexander also went down the rabbit hole with me, emailing me on a Saturday morning that she "woke up annoyed by our collective inability to answer" the question. She dug around and found that a <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120SB183" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2011 California law known as the "Doodle Law"</a> would have likely been applied in my case. <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0151-0200/sb_183_cfa_20110824_171242_asm_floor.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">It states</a> that rather than reject a ballot that is marked in a way to identify a voter, that election workers separate and duplicate the ballot (without the problematic identifier) like for other defective ballots, before running it through the scanner.</p><p>So there it is, my vote would have probably counted if I had mailed in my ballot. But now I'll be sending a brand new on instead. In the end, it's clear that the state and local authorities have tried and are trying their best to ensure that all mail-in ballots count regardless of very normal human mistakes (see <a href="https://dot.la/voting-by-mail-tips-how-to-avoid-pitfalls-2648194341.html" target="_blank">this sidebar</a> on how to up those chances).</p><p>But my takeaway lesson from all this is that it's probably <a href="https://dot.la/voting-by-mail-tips-how-to-avoid-pitfalls-2648194341.html" target="_blank">best not to make a mistake in the first place</a> when voting by mail, oh, and maybe put your dog in a separate room while you vote.</p><p><em>___</em></p><p><em>Hit me up if you have any other election and voting-related questions. My DMs are open on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/latams" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Twitter @latams</em></a><em> You can also email me at tami(at)dot.la, or ask for my contact on Signal, for more secure and private communications.</em></p>Related Articles Around the Web
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Fiction Riot, the L.A.-based entertainment company behind mobile streaming app Ficto, raised $250,000 this week. Chief executive Mike Esola says the company has intentionally grown slowly, eschewing venture capital in favor of incremental fundraising from family offices, institutions and friends and family.
<p>In total, the company has raised $3.5 million, according to an internal document.</p><p>Ficto is free to download on iOS and Android, but is currently in a testing phase, says Esola, a former agent at WME and UTA. He and his team – which includes Jeff Mayo (employee #80 at YouTube and #300 at LinkedIn) and Nick Mitchell (former head of engineering at Technicolor) – plan to launch the fully fledged service in Q4 of this year. That will receive a boost from distribution partnerships that will guarantee them 1.3 million automatic downloads of the Ficto app, according to Esola and the document.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQyMDQ2Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MDE2NTQ1NX0.xa6ZQZ_n0xxgO1AI1b1zLTMbENXqfDhu59w6yffovwk/img.jpg?width=980" id="0e69c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7190798bf266237fed12a4ca078c446b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Courtesy Ficto
<p>The company's business model is based on advertising and providing white label streaming technology to third parties such as festivals, conferences and broadcasters, Esola says.</p><p>Ficto aims to leverage mobile-oriented tech to offer a unique user experience. In the future its shows will include features like interactive choice-based storytelling; content that is unlocked if a user goes to a specific location; and real-time chats. The tech stack is also built to provide unique opportunities to advertisers and financial transparency to creators.</p><p>dot.LA caught up with Esola to talk about his plans for the Q4 launch, what short-form video competitor Quibi got wrong, and how Ficto will do it differently.</p><p><span style="background-color: initial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 700;">How did Ficto come about?</span><br></p><p>It started out as one primary thing but it has evolved. The original focus was on backend compensation for artists. I was an agent for about 16 years and I made 95% of my revenue on 5% of my deals; it's the same with most artists. And most of the time that comes from the backend.</p><p>But when streaming came along it eradicated the backend. Everything's going to streaming. Consumers love it, but like many tech companies they don't reveal their metrics – it's inherent in the tech culture.</p><p>I was really impressed with Netflix; they basically invented streaming, and production is up because of them. But I love this industry and I didn't like what I was seeing for the creators. If you take away content performance metrics, it changes everything. So that was my inspiration. I couldn't sit around.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQyMDQ3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NTkzNjQ0Mn0.qZN4wekbHyVAE7RR9zLtl6mqMdB2IkSmif_UOqzqxYk/image.jpg?width=980" id="98961" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f3cc284e2b9451e1978f880a8e045357" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Mike Esola is Fiction Riot's CEO
<h3>Where is Ficto headed from here?<br></h3><p>Q4 will be significant for us. The last couple months have been a beta period; we're testing, not spending money on marketing. We'll have 10 original shows coming in Q4, but we can't premier those now because we can't shoot them.</p><p>The filming moratorium looks like it'll lift soon and we'll go back into production. These shows will give users more empowerment and engagement than the shows that are on our beta version.</p>
<p> Those are good shows, too, and there's an element of empowerment there, since we accepted several of them through a submission portal; and also some engagement, with micro-donations from viewers. But we'll take all of that to the next level. To be able to do that how we want, you have to bake it in from the start.</p><p>We also have a number of great distribution deals coming in Q4, which will come with automatic pre-downloads that will allow us to exceed the downloads that Quibi got.<br/></p><h4>What will you do with the money you've just raised?</h4><p>That was almost all convertible debt, and it will go to content, marketing, and operating expenses – which includes technology development. </p><p>We're not opposed to VC money but it's got to be the right moment and the right value proposition for them. We don't want to rush the valuation. And it seems lately there's been a bit of a reckoning in VC because of overvaluations and a have-or-have not mentality. VCs are really smart but like everyone they spread themselves thin<em>.</em> These are generalizations but I think there needs to be a more diverse approach to how VCs invest. </p><h4>What do you think Quibi got wrong?</h4><p>It's very simple: their value proposition is not correct. What problem are they trying to solve? They're aware there's an amazing amount of people, especially young people, watching on mobile. But content on mobile and content on normal streaming is not apples to apples, and they didn't adequately adjust their approach to production or programming. You've got to do the other things that people expect on mobile, and the way we think about that is it's all about empowerment and engagement. </p><p>Quibi raised and spent all this capital and assumed people would adopt their product, without hardly testing it – they just went straight into a big launch. If you do that in any industry the odds are against you. Every other app is built how we've built, but Quibi didn't care about history. (They figured) this is what people will accept — that they'll like what we make. It's not the first time this has happened to (Quibi chairman and founder Jeffrey) Katzenberg. Look at<a href="http://pop.com" target="_blank"> </a>pop.com – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/sep/10/internet.filmnews" target="_blank">it didn't launch</a>. Dreamworks' live-action business <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4799205" target="_blank">sold for pennies on the dollar</a>.</p><p>Quibi also disregarded the importance to young people of a free service. It's not easy to get someone to pay for a service with no established brand or content, especially young people. </p><p>The people making decisions at streaming services are focused on a mature, established market — long-form, primarily over-the-top, in front of the TV. They're missing this explosion, this cultural gap of mobile viewing. Quibi caught onto that, but it's not just about the length of the content. That's where Quibi got it wrong — it's about empowerment and engagement. </p><p>It's a different type of offering and different type of expectation that comes along with the internet, with mobile, with social and lots of things that aren't necessarily obvious. But people have a different value proposition in mind when they pick up their mobile phones. With any offering, whether you're talking about movies or Dropbox, you've got to deliver to consumers' expectations; and if you're lucky, you've got to exceed them. So if you're going to create content for mobile you have to meet those mobile expectations. </p><h4>What exactly do you mean by engagement and empowerment? </h4><p>Engagement is a fancy word for interactivity. It's about making people feel like they're part of something. It could be a choice-based show, or a location-based show that you unlock based on your location. It could be livestream; livestream is the longest anyone spends on average on mobile by far – you know why? Because with livestream, you feel like you're part of something, since it's happening in real time. You can do live-chat functionality, commentary, opinion, social integration — it's easy to do that for our shows. Quibi completely cut all that out.</p><p>And empowerment is basically about allowing people to submit content or opinions. Polling is its most basic form, or clicking to donate. Beyond that you see people submitting a video to be a part of something – TikTok is the most successful at that. We haven't premiered it yet but we have an interactive dating show that will empower viewers to win a date with a celebrity. And we'll do other competitive shows where people will have to submit a 10-second video to win a prize.</p><p>Most of the services are focused on long-form content and they're ignoring the twenty-somethings and teens because they don't understand it. They scratch their heads at why Quibi doesn't work and why TikTok does, and they dismiss TikTok as crap user-generated content. But it doesn't have to be that. It can be a hybrid. And that's where we see ourselves. </p><p><em>This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity</em>.</p>From Your Site Articles
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