4 ms·

"If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet" https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309 http

by jrandm 11y ago

"If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet" https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309 https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309 - and first result searching for anything like 'Twitter hashtag'. I think that's pretty clearly publishing and explicitly choosing to make your image/thought/whatever available to whatever you #mention. That does seem like granting permission for the #brand to share the content through social spaces. I'd expect them to ask permission before using it in "actual" advertisements (billboards, signs, commercials, etc), but anything shy of that seems like fair game. The nearest thing I can think to compare it to (pre-Internet) would be mailing a photo to the company; what would you expect them to do with it?

cgm616 11y ago
It's more like pinning a photo on a pinboard you share with a group of friends. Mailing it would be like sending it to them directly. I think hashtags are more of a way to share to a group, where as mentioning with @ is a driect way of communicating that you want to give them the picture. This is because hashtags aren't owned by anyone, but usernames are.
- jrandm 11y ago
  But it's nothing like a pinboard with a group of friends. Instagram (I wrongly assumed it was Twitter) allows you to only share with friends; this post would be more like posting on a public bulletin board with a giant flashing sign that says 'CROCS(tm) PLZ LOOK.' Hashtags are generic, certainly, but this usage was contextually relevant (with photographic proof) and clearly meant to represent that entity. Additionally, crocs is their registered trademark -- it's not unreasonable for them to search a massively popular image publishing platform for images their customers choose to share attached to their brand, nor for them to take those images and say 'Look at these happy customers!' in a non-commercial context (ie: on their website, in a photo gallery of customer photos). I believe it's straightforwardly analogous to mailing the photo directly, though perhaps posting to every bulletin board in the country with a giant label might be a more exact match. If anything a (public) hashtag implies you want it to be easily seen by the entity tagged -- or anyone interested in it -- as a tag doesn't specify an individual.
scintill76 11y ago
Just because content is discoverable by anyone, does not give them license to reproduce it. (In this case, it was reproduced on their website.) I think you are putting too much weight on hashtags' "meaning", too. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367901
- jrandm 11y ago
  What's ambiguous about #crocs (which is a registered trademark) in that context? I don't believe they should directly use other's content for material gain (in advertisements, essentially), but a photo/comment the creator willingly released to the public and attached to the brand logically allows for re-sharing that content to me, especially by the entity explicitly mentioned. I wouldn't be on the business's side had this been a private account or even a blog somewhere, but she published an image to the public on a hugely popular platform and tagged it with the company's name. How is that different than sending the image to the company saying "Look at how cute my daughter is in these crocs?" Other than that millions of people could see the image prior to the company reproducing it.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    >a photo/comment the creator willingly released to the public and attached to the brand logically allows for re-sharing that content to me, especially by the entity explicitly mentioned. I don't see why you think that at all. Re-tweeting, sure, but that's because it's an expected result of putting something on twitter, with or without tags or even text. Sending someone a picture on twitter in no way implies I am giving it to them to do whatever they want, in the absence of external context. Or in other words: The tweet as a whole is released to the public of twitter. There's no license to derive or take elsewhere. Sending it directly in the mail doesn't let them use it to advertise either.
    - jrandm 11y ago
      You are explicitly allowing them to reshare your image via the platform -- whether that's an embedded view, iframe, img tag pointing to the original, or copy with attribution seems academic to me. The point is you allow them to send your content on to other people, right? They weren't advertising with it, the article mentions they did ask for permission before doing that. As-is all I'm aware of Crocs doing is taking an image that was published and willingly tagged to their brand and putting it in a public collection of similar photos. If I posted a picture of myself on every bulletin board I could find posing with [popular_brand] and labeled it with a big, flashing sign that said '[brand] LOOK HERE', is it unreasonable for that brand to share my image on their website? I don't think so.

by jrandm 11y ago

cgm616 11y ago

It's more like pinning a photo on a pinboard you share with a group of friends. Mailing it would be like sending it to them directly. I think hashtags are more of a way to share to a group, where as mentioning with @ is a driect way of communicating that you want to give them the picture. This is because hashtags aren't owned by anyone, but usernames are.

jrandm 11y ago
But it's nothing like a pinboard with a group of friends. Instagram (I wrongly assumed it was Twitter) allows you to only share with friends; this post would be more like posting on a public bulletin board with a giant flashing sign that says 'CROCS(tm) PLZ LOOK.' Hashtags are generic, certainly, but this usage was contextually relevant (with photographic proof) and clearly meant to represent that entity. Additionally, crocs is their registered trademark -- it's not unreasonable for them to search a massively popular image publishing platform for images their customers choose to share attached to their brand, nor for them to take those images and say 'Look at these happy customers!' in a non-commercial context (ie: on their website, in a photo gallery of customer photos). I believe it's straightforwardly analogous to mailing the photo directly, though perhaps posting to every bulletin board in the country with a giant label might be a more exact match. If anything a (public) hashtag implies you want it to be easily seen by the entity tagged -- or anyone interested in it -- as a tag doesn't specify an individual.

scintill76 11y ago

Just because content is discoverable by anyone, does not give them license to reproduce it. (In this case, it was reproduced on their website.) I think you are putting too much weight on hashtags' "meaning", too. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367901

jrandm 11y ago
What's ambiguous about #crocs (which is a registered trademark) in that context? I don't believe they should directly use other's content for material gain (in advertisements, essentially), but a photo/comment the creator willingly released to the public and attached to the brand logically allows for re-sharing that content to me, especially by the entity explicitly mentioned. I wouldn't be on the business's side had this been a private account or even a blog somewhere, but she published an image to the public on a hugely popular platform and tagged it with the company's name. How is that different than sending the image to the company saying "Look at how cute my daughter is in these crocs?" Other than that millions of people could see the image prior to the company reproducing it.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  >a photo/comment the creator willingly released to the public and attached to the brand logically allows for re-sharing that content to me, especially by the entity explicitly mentioned. I don't see why you think that at all. Re-tweeting, sure, but that's because it's an expected result of putting something on twitter, with or without tags or even text. Sending someone a picture on twitter in no way implies I am giving it to them to do whatever they want, in the absence of external context. Or in other words: The tweet as a whole is released to the public of twitter. There's no license to derive or take elsewhere. Sending it directly in the mail doesn't let them use it to advertise either.
  - jrandm 11y ago
    You are explicitly allowing them to reshare your image via the platform -- whether that's an embedded view, iframe, img tag pointing to the original, or copy with attribution seems academic to me. The point is you allow them to send your content on to other people, right? They weren't advertising with it, the article mentions they did ask for permission before doing that. As-is all I'm aware of Crocs doing is taking an image that was published and willingly tagged to their brand and putting it in a public collection of similar photos. If I posted a picture of myself on every bulletin board I could find posing with [popular_brand] and labeled it with a big, flashing sign that said '[brand] LOOK HERE', is it unreasonable for that brand to share my image on their website? I don't think so.