14 ms·

They didn’t ask to go viral

212 points by DocFeind 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
roenxi 3y ago
The "everyone:1" ratio of internet criticism also has had an interesting effect on politics. Given the sheer amount of vitriol directed at politicians no sane person would run for election. A plausible base-case scenario is a group of socially disabled internet dwellers dedicate their life to hounding you for imagined wrongs. Let alone the pressure of making any decision in a situation where large groups of people are in conflict. As a result I think we'll see detectable pressure for only risk taking narcissists to run for public office. Even beyond what is usual for politics. I don't think we have a choice about allowing roving internet mobs - the cost of forcibly breaking groups up would be too high. But as always, the more protections we have to slow action down in the real world the better. Mobs make decisions that are foolish, fast and often final.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Journalists can make a controversy out of anything, and find a clique of accounts with any given opinion on anything, and therefore portray Public Opinion in any way that the editorial board directs. The accounts don't need blue checks, they don't need to be notable, they don't need to be human, to find the next Antoine Dodson ranting with a memorable sound bite.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > A plausible base-case scenario is a group of socially disabled internet dwellers dedicate their life to hounding you for imagined wrongs. The intersection between the set of chronically online people who see this content and the set of people who actually vote is much smaller than you might think. Voter turnout is consistently very low among young people, despite how actively interested they may appear on sites like Reddit. Most of this content also turns into preaching to the choir. They congregate in online communities where people already decided who they were going to vote for, so the online anger has little to no effect on the people who might actually vote for the candidate.
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    This works both ways. Weaponising the non-voting chronically online naysayers to rile up your own base who _will_ vote.
  - Mezzie 3y ago
    > The intersection between the set of chronically online people who see this content and the set of people who actually vote is much smaller than you might think. Voter turnout is consistently very low among young people, despite how actively interested they may appear on sites like Reddit. Not all chronically online people are in the young voter bucket. There are Boomers with terminal Facebook brain and a lot of Redditors have accounts that are almost old enough to vote in America.
  - raydev 3y ago
    I think it's a mistake to assume this will always be the case. A decade ago, more than half my 40+ yo extended family was still only beginning to get exposed to the internet due to touchscreen phones and basic data plans becoming the default in the US. A few of them are now brain-fried Facebook conspiracy group people. It seems reasonable that eventually most people will have a "safe space" on the internet to share their thoughts. And eventually, mass hysteria and mobs and general opinion that used to only exist online will (and clearly already has started to) become an IRL phenomenon.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  Interestingly, the most successful politicians in recent years have adopted the techniques of old-school internet trolls. It goes like this: 1. Do or say something that's a bit edgy and controversial. 2. Pull out a lawn chair as the opposition attempts to stir up a shit storm. 3. Under no circumstances engage with the criticism directed at you, just be somewhere else when anything is coming your way. Never defend or explain anything you've said or done. 4. When the shitstorm is fading, GOTO 1 to ensure all focus remains on you, depriving the opposition of any opportunity to talk about what they want to do. 5. Win the election because your opposition looks completely unhinged and you look unfairly persecuted. It's basically like watching Muhammad Ali in a boxing match. Always has the initiative somehow even when he's ducking punches left and right. If you think this describes anyone in particular, you're probably right; but the point is this playbook has been used basically all over the world with an insane degree of success.
  - spydum 3y ago
    completely agree with this. it's difficult, but the right answer is to ignore all media contexts and criticisms of political candidates AND their actions, and entirely focus on the ground truth of "what" they have achieved in the past, and not the "why". That seems risky, as motives matter, but there simply isn't a way to get an unvarnished assessment of a persons motives from the media (mass or otherwise). even still, there is a risk the only thing you learn they achieved is filtered via the spin factory, or what their achievements were by grift or illegal means, but what's the alternative?
    - macintux 3y ago
      Many of the most explicitly trollish politicians make their motives explicit and easy to recognize. I don't think ignoring "why" is a good strategy; I'd rather vote for less-effective people who aren't successfully tearing down civil society.
  - mid-kid 3y ago
    Finally someone spells it out. Ever since the first twitter US president I've noticed a great uptick in politicians and other public figures doing deplorable things for the sake of attention. They'd be publically called out and ridiculed for months on end, and meanwhile you wouldn't hear anything about other people at all. There's nothing I can describe this as other than "trolling", yet people always look at me confused when I mention that. Trolling is just being mean to people online, right? Surely there coudln't be an ulterior motive to it, right? I guess we never learned to stop feeding the trolls.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  10% of US presidents were assassinated and 20% of them had assassination attempts. Congressmen have been assassinated, judges, state politicians, mayors. If you go into politics, getting made fun of on the internet is the least of your worries, you're going to need a thick skin. If someone is making fun of you on Twitter, at least you've got name recognition.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    In my opinion that is underestimating the tidal wave of coordinated hate that seems to be on display in the era of twitter. Everyone dies eventually and a lot of us make peace with that, but human minds aren't built to be able to deal with being continuously insulted and abused publicly.
  - arp242 3y ago
    "US President" is of course not synonymous with "politician"; even if we look at just the US, minor politicians that are only of limited local interest can now run the risk of becoming a target of a sea of vitriol, in Twitter or elsewhere. If I look at Dutch Twitter then it's basically a small army of extremely motivated trolls with a lot of spare time who will comment on what seems like every single political tweet so that basically any engagement in any way has become all but impossible. These are people who call the Dutch equivalent of the Tories "extreme left" and consider anyone on the "extreme left" a traitor and fair target for seemingly anything. Imagine every single comment you make on HN having several hundred replies ranging from calling you an asshole, to accusing you of all sorts of "crimes", to threatening to literally cut your throat. These things really do wear you down, especially if you're not really looking for the limelight, which most politicians aren't really (for every MP you can name there are a dozen more backbenchers).
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  With the internet, citizens can anonymously criticize a politician, publish compromising information on the politician, ridicule the politician, and even call them insulting names! With political power, the politician can restrict the freedom of the citizen, confiscate the property of the citizen, order the citizen to the front lines, declare the citizen a non-human, torture the citizen, execute the citizen, and exterminate the citizen's family. This has happened in every country on earth, including yours. It happens right now that you're reading this. So the balance of power is far from being thrown by online free speech.
  - Bukhmanizer 3y ago
    “Don’t worry, sane people can still run for office, they just can torture and execute their constituents family” is quite the argument to make..
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      That would be quite the argument indeed.
    - LocalH 3y ago
      That doesn't really seem like a good-faith reading of the parent comment.
- jancsika 3y ago
  > As a result I think we'll see detectable pressure for only risk taking narcissists to run for public office. Even beyond what is usual for politics. I love the word "detectable" thrown in here for good scientistic measure. What exactly do you claim you'll be measuring here?
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Well when the Democrats were in their darkest hour, democracy in the US was on the brink, Congress was on the verge of falling to raging mobs, etc, etc and they faced their greatest political bogyman in the last few decades ... they put forward Joseph Biden as their best hope of defeating Trump. With benefit of hindsight now that we have a few years of opinion polling, we might suspect that he isn't actually the best that the party could come up with, and that there are a number of much better candidates who are choosing not to run. He is wildly unpopular and would basically only beat the previous generally-unliked president Trump. I don't think that is normal. We've had 2 electoral cycles now where only unelectable candidates stood up. As recently as 2007 we had the likes of Obama, and before that Clinton (who say what you will, had approval polling that trended in the right direction) out of the Democrats. And Bush was popular until the chickens came home to roost on the horrific foreign policy blunders. So we can detect that something has gone wrong in the last few electoral cycles where either the quality of the candidates has declined or the visibility into what the government is actually doing has improved. I argue both, but today I'm focusing on the former.
- tiffanyg 3y ago
  Yes, this trend has been becoming more observable - particularly in the past ~10 years IMO. Of course, as another commenter points out, it has been increasingly adopted by some politicians themselves. At some point, all of the "megaphones" we handed every single person with access to the internet, started to be more and more co-opted by actors whose primary use is propaganda, trolling, etc. And, particularly, in the sense of what has been termed "coordinated inauthentic activity" and the like. So, whereas, 15+ years ago you could look at comments on YouTube, say, and see a mix of discussion and some 'low quality' comments of various types (like trolling, random nonsense and non sequiturs, etc.), more recently, there are specific efforts to hijack comment threads, "stir the pot", etc. A lot of the "bad actor networks" hinge, as usual when it comes to humans / statistics / networks, on a small set of "high volume central nodes". Although, apparently, that has been evolving as well, presumably as a sort of war continues to play out between companies hosting various platforms, and people, groups, countries, etc. who wish to exploit their availability. [1] There are two potential mitigations I see forming more and more. One appears to be proven in a practical setting, already, though it has negatives that have also been fairly substantially discussed. The other involves a tool gaining more and more ground only even more recently: 1) Turn off / remove general (and especially unmoderated) "comment" features* 2) Use increasingly sophisticated ML and other models to handle various types of activity and language that are being deployed for corrupt purposes. The problem with "1" that is most frequently cited is that this can push "networks of bad actors" more into the shadows - where it's harder to know what they are up to etc. However, this is obviously a trade-off against their reach in general etc. In the shorter-term (and, I personally think, likely even in medium- to longer-term), this clearly "works". It substantially reduces harms to individuals, various social groups, societies as a whole (arguably), etc. The second option is of less clear value, so far. Automated moderation has been around for 30+ years - that's about the time I have personal experience with. It's only in the past 7 - 10 years that more sophisticated statistical models etc. seem to be being deployed (AFAIK). And, we are now in a period of really rather more significant change with ML capabilities and the like. I'm inclined to think we're still not at the level required to make this "easy" / "silver bullet". But, I also think there are likely significant improvements being implemented and seen in practice, currently. Of a type that is relatively "transparent" to most users ... so, not being involved in any such efforts, not having spent time looking into these efforts more closely, I'm entirely speculating here. In any case, much as "publishing" went through periods of less and more "regulation"**, we've had a reasonable period of very low "regulation" of the internet. Regulation need not, of course, mean government regulation. But, it seems increasingly likely that regulation in some form or other will increasingly need to be imposed on the internet (at least the "mass / easily accessible" parts) to diminish the influence of bad actors and keep the internet valuable for everyone (else). * Obviously, this depends on nature of platform - for many platforms, these features are far from core. Something like Twitter/X is, of course, pretty much "pure comments" ... so, irrelevant there, regardless of who is running it. ** There were periods where pamphleteers in America (where I'm more familiar with the history) were running wild in political and other discourse, and then this was brought under more of a semblance of and practical "moderation" [1] E.g., https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3522756 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3522756 (just one of a slew of relatively recent papers, more and more being published each year, of course)
- dec0dedab0de 3y ago
  ...I think we'll see detectable pressure for only risk taking narcissists to run for public office. Even beyond what is usual for politics... I know you added the "even beyond what is usual" part, but I think it's been clear since way before the US existed that decent people dont pursue power.
  - ip26 3y ago
    That doesn’t capture the whole picture. Great leaders may not have been decent people, but it’s also clear that being a decent person isn’t what makes for a good leader. The concern would be something like, only a strong narcissist would risk extreme public scrutiny, but while great leaders might exhibit narcissism, they have other more dominant traits. Is any overwhelming narcissist capable of gathering advice and delegating effectively?
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    I reject the notion that no decent person seeks to lead. I agree it is hard to stay in power without getting your hands dirty, but many good people have been leaders. And to normalize the idea otherwise would be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      It is hard to argue that Jimmy Carter is not a good person. It is also hard to argue that he was a good president.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- oro8 3y ago
  [dead]
nullindividual 3y ago
Social media truly is the opioid of today's society. While browsing /r/all, I ran across a post from a very popular sub which had an airport worker stripping in the airport, flailing on the floor, etc. No one knows why, could have been drugs, could have been a mental defect. Yet many of the thousands of responses were laughing because they could see the man's flaccid penis. While we don't know what caused the man to do this, imagine your next mental breakdown being posted to an insanely popular sub for everyone to gawk and laugh at. Oh, and of course Reddit found that the post didn't violate the "no non-consentual nudity" which according to the guidelines does cover non-consentual public nudity. https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043513411 https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004351341...
- laputan_machine 3y ago
  I often think this about Ring / permanent surveillance that exists now. Nobody can even be free in front of their own house without the threat of something ludicrous happening to you and then it being on public record until the end of the internet. It's absolutely wild to me.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    Like it or not, this is just the beginning. Fairly soon, all human life will be recorded.
    - jsemrau 3y ago
      There should be a right to be forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
      - zgluck 3y ago
        HN/YCombinator does not honor this correctly from a EU law perspective. They don't allow you to delete your content. What they do offer is renaming your account. I'm salivating for this monster lawsuit once they they have enough EU exposure. It will probably be based in Germany. @switch007: They are investing in European companies. That's exposure. @walthamstow: Look up the "Right to erasure" aspect of the GDPR. (Why am I adding these things as edits? - I was rate-limited by HN/Ycombinator so I can't reply to your individual comments. When trying to post a reply I get the message "please slow down".)
anon84873628 3y ago
It seems like existing laws could already cover some of these scenarios if judged correctly. E.g. if a TikTok'er uploads a video lying about you, isn't that slander? The size of their audience and known effect of internet mobs makes it very clear to a reasonable observer that harm to the victim is expected/intended. And gaslighting children or abusing the elderly is already illegal, right?
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >TikTok'er uploads a video lying about you This is quite rare and any lawsuit is hard and likely not worth it. >And gaslighting children or abusing the elderly is already illegal, right? Depends. And then again, what are you going to do about it?
- brightball 3y ago
  This is actually what I’ve been waiting for for years. Should only take a couple of successful ones to stop it.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  “Lying” is not really all that illegal in the United States because of that pesky first amendment that people love to apply (and ignore) when it suits them.
- gochi 3y ago
  No, most countries don't have very aggressive libel laws. EFF has a post about online defamation laws and one of the examples they go into is Vogel v Felice where the claim was about videos that used titles like "Top 10 Dumbasses" among other things. They got away with it because they couldn't prove actual malice and because despite nobody being want to be publicly known as a "dumbass" it's not a statement that can be proven true or untrue. They also go into how private and public figures are viewed differently. It's all very interesting and worth reading. Also I had no idea insurance was now covering online libel claims for small businesses/bloggers. https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/defamation https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/defamati...
newsclues 3y ago
Part of the power of social media, is that powerful people acting badly in public finally might face some public backlash or justice. Banning this, will certainly protect the powerful, and will likely continue to be unenforced for the average person.
- junon 3y ago
  Meh I've never liked this argument. It becomes a question of who is "blessed" and "unblessed" enough for you, subjectively.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  Whenever this argument comes up I think of what happened to Logan Paul and Justine Sacco. One desecrated what was effectively a burial site and faced few consequences, the other told a dumb joke and had their life destroyed over it. The powerful continue to thrive while the weak suffer.
  - foogazi 3y ago
    We need more forgiveness in this world
  - evandale 3y ago
    Justine Sacco is such a sad story, but she is doing better now thankfully. Last I heard she was rehired by the company who fired her when she made the tweet.
- gochi 3y ago
  This argument doesn't hold up in practice, because currently, the powerful are already protected. Look at how many cops got away with abuse, how many high profile celebrities got away with heinous things, so many examples of the powerful (in their respective realm) never facing consequences. So what actually ends up happening is most of this "public backlash" only affects people already easily accessible. Whether or not they actually did "act badly" which is important to bring up because people too easily buy into narratives online that are very one-sided. These easily accessible people could have been talked to 1 on 1 to solve the problem, that's how accessible they are. I don't think banning this is the solution, but we absolutely do need to check this behavior and evaluate the incentives in place because right now they're terrible. The fact that people can profit off these kind of videos/posts on social media (two times btw: by the platform itself and if the story picks up by news orgs who pay for rights to display the content), especially during a time when people feel financial unease, is a recipe for disaster. Logically with these incentives in place, it makes far more sense to just be a bystander and film, rather than stepping in and helping or looking for help.
blueflow 3y ago
The online shaming culture at tumblr, twitter and reddit was what convinced me that you need to stay pseudonymous on the internet at all cost. There are so many people that participate in this and haven't realized yet that they are being an asshole to random strangers.
- iJohnDoe 3y ago
  100% this. Learned in the 90s early internet about the emotional harm that I’ve seen happen to people. Slightly different topic. I think state and federal laws need to be passed regarding medical, police, evidence, and other types of private videos and photos from being leaked online. Too much of it magically leaks out and it’s just the people that are trusted with the data that are posting it online.
  - iambateman 3y ago
    For sure. There was a show called “LivePD” that took live video as someone was arrested by the police. I watched for years. Now it feels so gross…if someone is having the potentially-worst moment of their life, society should offer them the decency of not putting it on live TV.
    - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
      Didn’t those people all sign releases?
      - function_seven 3y ago
        Maybe, and kinda. From a NYT opinion piece[0] a few years ago: > But “Cops” cameras, of course, are not news cameras, so unlike a traditional news crew, the shows’ producers have to obtain the written legal consent of every suspect whose face appears on camera. The producers of “Cops” claim they do. We found a different reality. Tracking down the people who have been filmed by “Cops” is not easy. But of the 11 suspects we interviewed, all but one said they either did not give their legal consent to appear on the show, were too inebriated to consent knowingly or were coerced into signing — with the police and producers, troublingly, working together to get those signatures. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/opinion/cops-podcast-investigation-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/opinion/cops-podcast-inve...
yosito 3y ago
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy when in public. While it's certainly polite not to take photos of strangers and post them without asking if it's ok, you shouldn't morally or legally need permission. They're in public. Their actions can be seen by anyone else in public who crosses paths with them, whether online or off. There are cameras everywhere, and a random person with their smartphone should not be held to a higher standard than a surveillance company or security camera. I recently had someone give me a hard time because I had posted a selfie where someone else was in the background smoking a cigarette. The person was recognizable but far from being the focus of the photo. It was a complete coincidence that they were in the background, but a friend of theirs recognized them was angry that I had posted a photo of them without consent doing something that they didn't want shared on social media. Well, I'm sorry, but if you don't want people to see you doing something, don't do it in public. I chose to immediately remove the photo out of politeness and to avoid drama, but in my opinion, people have no right to be upset if a photo of them doing something in public goes viral.
- hattmall 3y ago
  I think it's actually pretty reasonable to have an expectation of relative privacy even while in public. As in I'm obviously expecting to be seen by the people in my immediate vicinity but not by people who aren't nearby. For the entirety of human existence until it very slowly started changing with cameras, but that rate of change has accelerated exponentially in the last ~15 years with ubiquitous camera phones and social media.
  - yosito 3y ago
    > As in I'm obviously expecting to be seen by the people in my immediate vicinity but not by people who aren't nearby. If you're in a forest, maybe that's reasonable. But it would really be interesting to see some statistics about how many security cameras the average person is recorded on in a day, with the images broadcasted to servers around the world. I'd wager a guess that in modern cosmopolitan cities, it's probably upwards of 100 cameras a day. Meanwhile we're completely unaware of this fact and get upset when a stranger points a smartphone at us.
junon 3y ago
While I agree, humans are immoral, and will always be immoral. We're inherently flawed and self-serving (speaking collectively, not individually as a rule). This is why cryptocurrency is at its core a very good idea (I personally found the Satoshi whitepaper very beautiful), yet in practice is completely and utterly abused and useless to society - it failed to take into account that humans will do anything and everything to abuse a system for a dopamine hit or for status, etc. As soon as technology catches up to this reality, we'll start to see change there. I don't think regulators will ever catch on to this, honestly. I think we need to stop thinking they will. I don't know the solutions here, but this is my pessimistic take. It makes the problems harder (but IMO not unsolvable).
donatj 3y ago
> In reality we already practice social media consent; it is not unusual to ask a friend if they’re alright with having a picture posted Is this common practice? The author keeps insisting it is. I don’t think it is, I think the author is just a member of a particularly inclined friend group. It would be a nice consideration but I can honestly say I have never asked nor been asked. I’ve certainly asked after the fact to have particularly unflattering pictures I’ve been tagged in taken down and friends have always apologetically complied. I don’t generally post many pictures of people outside my direct family, and can only think of one occasion where my sister had me take a photo down.
- brabel 3y ago
  I've been asked to remove photos the other person thought was too unflattering (which I found pretty petty), but yeah, no one has ever asked me my permission to post pictures including me, and I've never asked that of others myself.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    We should. Understand it’s ok that we’re learning for a period when all this was new, but the time has passed and now clear we should.
karaterobot 3y ago
The week Facebook released a feature that allowed people to be tagged in photos by other people is when I deleted my account. 2008 or so? The writing was on the wall by that point: in these platforms, your identity is as much controlled by other people as by yourself. Not good, very bad, get me out of here.
throwingtoofar 3y ago
I stay away from the kind of content the article refers to however I think there are cases where it's important to highlight the behaviour of those who would prefer you didn't such as recording the bad behaviour of public workers. Popular 1st Amendment auditor Long Island Audit has highlighted much of this and shown how many police officers lack knowledge of laws they are supposed to be upholding. Here's a video that went viral[0] and a recent follow up[1] where things went kind of differently i'm assuming because of the exposure in the first. [0] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=AsxNf54ep1Q https://yewtu.be/watch?v=AsxNf54ep1Q [1] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=CZtgVrYC4f0 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=CZtgVrYC4f0
crazygringo 3y ago
But what about the legality? You don't need people to sign a release form if you're a photojournalist or anything considered to be an editorial source. But as professional filmmakers know, you absolutely do need a release form if you're producing anything commercial (for sale). Or if you're pushing the boundaries of this like they do when filming Law & Order, to at least put up prominent signs so Manhattan pedestrians know they might wind up on the show if they walk down a particular patch of sidewalk that day. Isn't there a strong argument to be made that posting on social media without consent is therefore illegal? Because while you're not explicitly selling the video, you and/or the site is monetizing it via ads, which these days is the same thing. Has this been tested in court?
- dml2135 3y ago
  AFAIK, there is no requirement to gather release forms from someone you happen to film in public. It is simply something done to reduce exposure to possible civil liability on commercial shoots. Avoiding lawsuits is the point of those forms, not winning them.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    > there is no requirement to gather release forms from someone you happen to film in public. It probably depends on where you are. France and Germany for instance have stricter rules on the subject of photographing people in public places.
    - dml2135 3y ago
      Yes, sorry -- I'm only talking about a US legal context here.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    > there is no requirement to gather release forms from someone you happen to film in public Right, the filming is fine -- it's the commercial distribution that's the problem. And I'm assuming those civil suits have existing and succeeded in the past? So my question is still whether social media ought to be considered commercial distribution, since it's generally ad-supported. I mean, broadcast TV is entirely ad-supported too. E.g. posting on Mastodon is fine because there are no ads, but posting on Facebook/YouTube is not, because they're monetized with ads.
mvncleaninst 3y ago
> Still, a blanket law against posting strangers without their consent would be draconian and unworkable. There are too many variables, too many circumstances, and simply too many cases. I disagree. If someone (who is a non public figure) is the subject of a photo/video and has their likeness used without consent by a third party, the third party should be liable. There should be legal recourse for the victim to sue and force the third party to take it down (plus compensate for legal fees) Courts already deal with situations where there are "too many variables", the law isn't black and white for everything. The way that the author just brushes any legal solution aside seems like a cop-out
- ryukoposting 3y ago
  Such a law would create the perfect environment for police brutality.
  - str3wer 3y ago
    recording a video of someone ≠ posting a video of them
deleted 3y ago
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mcntsh 3y ago
Living in Germany I always appreciated their privacy laws related to being filmed/photographed in public. The US should do something similar.
ipqk 3y ago
This would be about 90% of Reddit's front page. Just look at /r/tinder: people just casually posting screenshots of ostensibly private conversations with the person's face & first name visible. It's frankly ridiculous.
26fingies 3y ago
Off topic but reading articles on mobile is a goddamn nightmare these days. Reader mode is the only thing saving it.
FreshStart 3y ago
But this has beauty too. Hideous crimes go punished, for the world is watching. Surveillance by the many for the many prevents warcrimes, prevents police brutality, chills a uncivilized humanity, idealized by to many into a civilized humanity. If you aspire to see a unwatched world goto den Haag, travel to auschwitz, to Xinjiang and the Archipel gulag. When the world is not watching and authority story reigns supreme, monsters walk the earth. The cybernetic augmentation of society, the leviathan-cybernetics is a great societal achievement.
ryukoposting 3y ago
> Another law being considered in France would make parents responsible for their children’s privacy rights. Le Monde cites, as an example of fame-seeking behavior that France is hoping to discourage, TikTokkers scaring their children by pretending to call the police on them, and an Instagrammer who smeared chocolate on her 4-year-old and convinced them they were covered in feces. It's a depressing state of affairs that any country has to consider passing laws for this kind of behavior. Shouldn't we, as a society, have enough shame to prevent this, or at least prevent it from becoming trendy? I worry about how these laws could be bent to authoritarian ends. "You can't record me without my consent" laws have worrisome implications for police encounters. I think (well, honestly, I hope) the populace has the capacity to prevent fame-seeking behavior by shaming it out of existence, rather than leaning on government to punish people for an activity that we would be doing little else to disincentivise. I truly believe the solution is to not engage with malicious fame-seeking content in any way. Avoid platforms where it is regularly shared. Vocally villify it. It can't be shamed out of existence until we start shaming it.

212 points by DocFeind 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

The "everyone:1" ratio of internet criticism also has had an interesting effect on politics. Given the sheer amount of vitriol directed at politicians no sane person would run for election. A plausible base-case scenario is a group of socially disabled internet dwellers dedicate their life to hounding you for imagined wrongs. Let alone the pressure of making any decision in a situation where large groups of people are in conflict. As a result I think we'll see detectable pressure for only risk taking narcissists to run for public office. Even beyond what is usual for politics. I don't think we have a choice about allowing roving internet mobs - the cost of forcibly breaking groups up would be too high. But as always, the more protections we have to slow action down in the real world the better. Mobs make decisions that are foolish, fast and often final.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Journalists can make a controversy out of anything, and find a clique of accounts with any given opinion on anything, and therefore portray Public Opinion in any way that the editorial board directs. The accounts don't need blue checks, they don't need to be notable, they don't need to be human, to find the next Antoine Dodson ranting with a memorable sound bite.
Aurornis 3y ago
> A plausible base-case scenario is a group of socially disabled internet dwellers dedicate their life to hounding you for imagined wrongs. The intersection between the set of chronically online people who see this content and the set of people who actually vote is much smaller than you might think. Voter turnout is consistently very low among young people, despite how actively interested they may appear on sites like Reddit. Most of this content also turns into preaching to the choir. They congregate in online communities where people already decided who they were going to vote for, so the online anger has little to no effect on the people who might actually vote for the candidate.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  This works both ways. Weaponising the non-voting chronically online naysayers to rile up your own base who _will_ vote.
- Mezzie 3y ago
  > The intersection between the set of chronically online people who see this content and the set of people who actually vote is much smaller than you might think. Voter turnout is consistently very low among young people, despite how actively interested they may appear on sites like Reddit. Not all chronically online people are in the young voter bucket. There are Boomers with terminal Facebook brain and a lot of Redditors have accounts that are almost old enough to vote in America.
- raydev 3y ago
  I think it's a mistake to assume this will always be the case. A decade ago, more than half my 40+ yo extended family was still only beginning to get exposed to the internet due to touchscreen phones and basic data plans becoming the default in the US. A few of them are now brain-fried Facebook conspiracy group people. It seems reasonable that eventually most people will have a "safe space" on the internet to share their thoughts. And eventually, mass hysteria and mobs and general opinion that used to only exist online will (and clearly already has started to) become an IRL phenomenon.
marginalia_nu 3y ago
Interestingly, the most successful politicians in recent years have adopted the techniques of old-school internet trolls. It goes like this: 1. Do or say something that's a bit edgy and controversial. 2. Pull out a lawn chair as the opposition attempts to stir up a shit storm. 3. Under no circumstances engage with the criticism directed at you, just be somewhere else when anything is coming your way. Never defend or explain anything you've said or done. 4. When the shitstorm is fading, GOTO 1 to ensure all focus remains on you, depriving the opposition of any opportunity to talk about what they want to do. 5. Win the election because your opposition looks completely unhinged and you look unfairly persecuted. It's basically like watching Muhammad Ali in a boxing match. Always has the initiative somehow even when he's ducking punches left and right. If you think this describes anyone in particular, you're probably right; but the point is this playbook has been used basically all over the world with an insane degree of success.
- spydum 3y ago
  completely agree with this. it's difficult, but the right answer is to ignore all media contexts and criticisms of political candidates AND their actions, and entirely focus on the ground truth of "what" they have achieved in the past, and not the "why". That seems risky, as motives matter, but there simply isn't a way to get an unvarnished assessment of a persons motives from the media (mass or otherwise). even still, there is a risk the only thing you learn they achieved is filtered via the spin factory, or what their achievements were by grift or illegal means, but what's the alternative?
  - macintux 3y ago
    Many of the most explicitly trollish politicians make their motives explicit and easy to recognize. I don't think ignoring "why" is a good strategy; I'd rather vote for less-effective people who aren't successfully tearing down civil society.
- mid-kid 3y ago
  Finally someone spells it out. Ever since the first twitter US president I've noticed a great uptick in politicians and other public figures doing deplorable things for the sake of attention. They'd be publically called out and ridiculed for months on end, and meanwhile you wouldn't hear anything about other people at all. There's nothing I can describe this as other than "trolling", yet people always look at me confused when I mention that. Trolling is just being mean to people online, right? Surely there coudln't be an ulterior motive to it, right? I guess we never learned to stop feeding the trolls.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
10% of US presidents were assassinated and 20% of them had assassination attempts. Congressmen have been assassinated, judges, state politicians, mayors. If you go into politics, getting made fun of on the internet is the least of your worries, you're going to need a thick skin. If someone is making fun of you on Twitter, at least you've got name recognition.
- roenxi 3y ago
  In my opinion that is underestimating the tidal wave of coordinated hate that seems to be on display in the era of twitter. Everyone dies eventually and a lot of us make peace with that, but human minds aren't built to be able to deal with being continuously insulted and abused publicly.
- arp242 3y ago
  "US President" is of course not synonymous with "politician"; even if we look at just the US, minor politicians that are only of limited local interest can now run the risk of becoming a target of a sea of vitriol, in Twitter or elsewhere. If I look at Dutch Twitter then it's basically a small army of extremely motivated trolls with a lot of spare time who will comment on what seems like every single political tweet so that basically any engagement in any way has become all but impossible. These are people who call the Dutch equivalent of the Tories "extreme left" and consider anyone on the "extreme left" a traitor and fair target for seemingly anything. Imagine every single comment you make on HN having several hundred replies ranging from calling you an asshole, to accusing you of all sorts of "crimes", to threatening to literally cut your throat. These things really do wear you down, especially if you're not really looking for the limelight, which most politicians aren't really (for every MP you can name there are a dozen more backbenchers).
carlosjobim 3y ago
With the internet, citizens can anonymously criticize a politician, publish compromising information on the politician, ridicule the politician, and even call them insulting names! With political power, the politician can restrict the freedom of the citizen, confiscate the property of the citizen, order the citizen to the front lines, declare the citizen a non-human, torture the citizen, execute the citizen, and exterminate the citizen's family. This has happened in every country on earth, including yours. It happens right now that you're reading this. So the balance of power is far from being thrown by online free speech.
- Bukhmanizer 3y ago
  “Don’t worry, sane people can still run for office, they just can torture and execute their constituents family” is quite the argument to make..
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    That would be quite the argument indeed.
  - LocalH 3y ago
    That doesn't really seem like a good-faith reading of the parent comment.
jancsika 3y ago
> As a result I think we'll see detectable pressure for only risk taking narcissists to run for public office. Even beyond what is usual for politics. I love the word "detectable" thrown in here for good scientistic measure. What exactly do you claim you'll be measuring here?
- roenxi 3y ago
  Well when the Democrats were in their darkest hour, democracy in the US was on the brink, Congress was on the verge of falling to raging mobs, etc, etc and they faced their greatest political bogyman in the last few decades ... they put forward Joseph Biden as their best hope of defeating Trump. With benefit of hindsight now that we have a few years of opinion polling, we might suspect that he isn't actually the best that the party could come up with, and that there are a number of much better candidates who are choosing not to run. He is wildly unpopular and would basically only beat the previous generally-unliked president Trump. I don't think that is normal. We've had 2 electoral cycles now where only unelectable candidates stood up. As recently as 2007 we had the likes of Obama, and before that Clinton (who say what you will, had approval polling that trended in the right direction) out of the Democrats. And Bush was popular until the chickens came home to roost on the horrific foreign policy blunders. So we can detect that something has gone wrong in the last few electoral cycles where either the quality of the candidates has declined or the visibility into what the government is actually doing has improved. I argue both, but today I'm focusing on the former.
tiffanyg 3y ago
Yes, this trend has been becoming more observable - particularly in the past ~10 years IMO. Of course, as another commenter points out, it has been increasingly adopted by some politicians themselves. At some point, all of the "megaphones" we handed every single person with access to the internet, started to be more and more co-opted by actors whose primary use is propaganda, trolling, etc. And, particularly, in the sense of what has been termed "coordinated inauthentic activity" and the like. So, whereas, 15+ years ago you could look at comments on YouTube, say, and see a mix of discussion and some 'low quality' comments of various types (like trolling, random nonsense and non sequiturs, etc.), more recently, there are specific efforts to hijack comment threads, "stir the pot", etc. A lot of the "bad actor networks" hinge, as usual when it comes to humans / statistics / networks, on a small set of "high volume central nodes". Although, apparently, that has been evolving as well, presumably as a sort of war continues to play out between companies hosting various platforms, and people, groups, countries, etc. who wish to exploit their availability. [1] There are two potential mitigations I see forming more and more. One appears to be proven in a practical setting, already, though it has negatives that have also been fairly substantially discussed. The other involves a tool gaining more and more ground only even more recently: 1) Turn off / remove general (and especially unmoderated) "comment" features* 2) Use increasingly sophisticated ML and other models to handle various types of activity and language that are being deployed for corrupt purposes. The problem with "1" that is most frequently cited is that this can push "networks of bad actors" more into the shadows - where it's harder to know what they are up to etc. However, this is obviously a trade-off against their reach in general etc. In the shorter-term (and, I personally think, likely even in medium- to longer-term), this clearly "works". It substantially reduces harms to individuals, various social groups, societies as a whole (arguably), etc. The second option is of less clear value, so far. Automated moderation has been around for 30+ years - that's about the time I have personal experience with. It's only in the past 7 - 10 years that more sophisticated statistical models etc. seem to be being deployed (AFAIK). And, we are now in a period of really rather more significant change with ML capabilities and the like. I'm inclined to think we're still not at the level required to make this "easy" / "silver bullet". But, I also think there are likely significant improvements being implemented and seen in practice, currently. Of a type that is relatively "transparent" to most users ... so, not being involved in any such efforts, not having spent time looking into these efforts more closely, I'm entirely speculating here. In any case, much as "publishing" went through periods of less and more "regulation"**, we've had a reasonable period of very low "regulation" of the internet. Regulation need not, of course, mean government regulation. But, it seems increasingly likely that regulation in some form or other will increasingly need to be imposed on the internet (at least the "mass / easily accessible" parts) to diminish the influence of bad actors and keep the internet valuable for everyone (else). * Obviously, this depends on nature of platform - for many platforms, these features are far from core. Something like Twitter/X is, of course, pretty much "pure comments" ... so, irrelevant there, regardless of who is running it. ** There were periods where pamphleteers in America (where I'm more familiar with the history) were running wild in political and other discourse, and then this was brought under more of a semblance of and practical "moderation" [1] E.g., https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3522756 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3522756 (just one of a slew of relatively recent papers, more and more being published each year, of course)
dec0dedab0de 3y ago
...I think we'll see detectable pressure for only risk taking narcissists to run for public office. Even beyond what is usual for politics... I know you added the "even beyond what is usual" part, but I think it's been clear since way before the US existed that decent people dont pursue power.
- ip26 3y ago
  That doesn’t capture the whole picture. Great leaders may not have been decent people, but it’s also clear that being a decent person isn’t what makes for a good leader. The concern would be something like, only a strong narcissist would risk extreme public scrutiny, but while great leaders might exhibit narcissism, they have other more dominant traits. Is any overwhelming narcissist capable of gathering advice and delegating effectively?
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  I reject the notion that no decent person seeks to lead. I agree it is hard to stay in power without getting your hands dirty, but many good people have been leaders. And to normalize the idea otherwise would be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    It is hard to argue that Jimmy Carter is not a good person. It is also hard to argue that he was a good president.
deleted 3y ago
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oro8 3y ago
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nullindividual 3y ago

Social media truly is the opioid of today's society. While browsing /r/all, I ran across a post from a very popular sub which had an airport worker stripping in the airport, flailing on the floor, etc. No one knows why, could have been drugs, could have been a mental defect. Yet many of the thousands of responses were laughing because they could see the man's flaccid penis. While we don't know what caused the man to do this, imagine your next mental breakdown being posted to an insanely popular sub for everyone to gawk and laugh at. Oh, and of course Reddit found that the post didn't violate the "no non-consentual nudity" which according to the guidelines does cover non-consentual public nudity. https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043513411 https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004351341...

laputan_machine 3y ago
I often think this about Ring / permanent surveillance that exists now. Nobody can even be free in front of their own house without the threat of something ludicrous happening to you and then it being on public record until the end of the internet. It's absolutely wild to me.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  Like it or not, this is just the beginning. Fairly soon, all human life will be recorded.
  - jsemrau 3y ago
    There should be a right to be forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
    - zgluck 3y ago
      HN/YCombinator does not honor this correctly from a EU law perspective. They don't allow you to delete your content. What they do offer is renaming your account. I'm salivating for this monster lawsuit once they they have enough EU exposure. It will probably be based in Germany. @switch007: They are investing in European companies. That's exposure. @walthamstow: Look up the "Right to erasure" aspect of the GDPR. (Why am I adding these things as edits? - I was rate-limited by HN/Ycombinator so I can't reply to your individual comments. When trying to post a reply I get the message "please slow down".)

anon84873628 3y ago

It seems like existing laws could already cover some of these scenarios if judged correctly. E.g. if a TikTok'er uploads a video lying about you, isn't that slander? The size of their audience and known effect of internet mobs makes it very clear to a reasonable observer that harm to the victim is expected/intended. And gaslighting children or abusing the elderly is already illegal, right?

constantcrying 3y ago
>TikTok'er uploads a video lying about you This is quite rare and any lawsuit is hard and likely not worth it. >And gaslighting children or abusing the elderly is already illegal, right? Depends. And then again, what are you going to do about it?
brightball 3y ago
This is actually what I’ve been waiting for for years. Should only take a couple of successful ones to stop it.
madeofpalk 3y ago
“Lying” is not really all that illegal in the United States because of that pesky first amendment that people love to apply (and ignore) when it suits them.
gochi 3y ago
No, most countries don't have very aggressive libel laws. EFF has a post about online defamation laws and one of the examples they go into is Vogel v Felice where the claim was about videos that used titles like "Top 10 Dumbasses" among other things. They got away with it because they couldn't prove actual malice and because despite nobody being want to be publicly known as a "dumbass" it's not a statement that can be proven true or untrue. They also go into how private and public figures are viewed differently. It's all very interesting and worth reading. Also I had no idea insurance was now covering online libel claims for small businesses/bloggers. https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/defamation https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/defamati...

newsclues 3y ago

Part of the power of social media, is that powerful people acting badly in public finally might face some public backlash or justice. Banning this, will certainly protect the powerful, and will likely continue to be unenforced for the average person.

junon 3y ago
Meh I've never liked this argument. It becomes a question of who is "blessed" and "unblessed" enough for you, subjectively.
tjpnz 3y ago
Whenever this argument comes up I think of what happened to Logan Paul and Justine Sacco. One desecrated what was effectively a burial site and faced few consequences, the other told a dumb joke and had their life destroyed over it. The powerful continue to thrive while the weak suffer.
- foogazi 3y ago
  We need more forgiveness in this world
- evandale 3y ago
  Justine Sacco is such a sad story, but she is doing better now thankfully. Last I heard she was rehired by the company who fired her when she made the tweet.
gochi 3y ago
This argument doesn't hold up in practice, because currently, the powerful are already protected. Look at how many cops got away with abuse, how many high profile celebrities got away with heinous things, so many examples of the powerful (in their respective realm) never facing consequences. So what actually ends up happening is most of this "public backlash" only affects people already easily accessible. Whether or not they actually did "act badly" which is important to bring up because people too easily buy into narratives online that are very one-sided. These easily accessible people could have been talked to 1 on 1 to solve the problem, that's how accessible they are. I don't think banning this is the solution, but we absolutely do need to check this behavior and evaluate the incentives in place because right now they're terrible. The fact that people can profit off these kind of videos/posts on social media (two times btw: by the platform itself and if the story picks up by news orgs who pay for rights to display the content), especially during a time when people feel financial unease, is a recipe for disaster. Logically with these incentives in place, it makes far more sense to just be a bystander and film, rather than stepping in and helping or looking for help.

blueflow 3y ago

The online shaming culture at tumblr, twitter and reddit was what convinced me that you need to stay pseudonymous on the internet at all cost. There are so many people that participate in this and haven't realized yet that they are being an asshole to random strangers.

iJohnDoe 3y ago
100% this. Learned in the 90s early internet about the emotional harm that I’ve seen happen to people. Slightly different topic. I think state and federal laws need to be passed regarding medical, police, evidence, and other types of private videos and photos from being leaked online. Too much of it magically leaks out and it’s just the people that are trusted with the data that are posting it online.
- iambateman 3y ago
  For sure. There was a show called “LivePD” that took live video as someone was arrested by the police. I watched for years. Now it feels so gross…if someone is having the potentially-worst moment of their life, society should offer them the decency of not putting it on live TV.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    Didn’t those people all sign releases?
    - function_seven 3y ago
      Maybe, and kinda. From a NYT opinion piece[0] a few years ago: > But “Cops” cameras, of course, are not news cameras, so unlike a traditional news crew, the shows’ producers have to obtain the written legal consent of every suspect whose face appears on camera. The producers of “Cops” claim they do. We found a different reality. Tracking down the people who have been filmed by “Cops” is not easy. But of the 11 suspects we interviewed, all but one said they either did not give their legal consent to appear on the show, were too inebriated to consent knowingly or were coerced into signing — with the police and producers, troublingly, working together to get those signatures. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/opinion/cops-podcast-investigation-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/opinion/cops-podcast-inve...

yosito 3y ago

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy when in public. While it's certainly polite not to take photos of strangers and post them without asking if it's ok, you shouldn't morally or legally need permission. They're in public. Their actions can be seen by anyone else in public who crosses paths with them, whether online or off. There are cameras everywhere, and a random person with their smartphone should not be held to a higher standard than a surveillance company or security camera. I recently had someone give me a hard time because I had posted a selfie where someone else was in the background smoking a cigarette. The person was recognizable but far from being the focus of the photo. It was a complete coincidence that they were in the background, but a friend of theirs recognized them was angry that I had posted a photo of them without consent doing something that they didn't want shared on social media. Well, I'm sorry, but if you don't want people to see you doing something, don't do it in public. I chose to immediately remove the photo out of politeness and to avoid drama, but in my opinion, people have no right to be upset if a photo of them doing something in public goes viral.

hattmall 3y ago
I think it's actually pretty reasonable to have an expectation of relative privacy even while in public. As in I'm obviously expecting to be seen by the people in my immediate vicinity but not by people who aren't nearby. For the entirety of human existence until it very slowly started changing with cameras, but that rate of change has accelerated exponentially in the last ~15 years with ubiquitous camera phones and social media.
- yosito 3y ago
  > As in I'm obviously expecting to be seen by the people in my immediate vicinity but not by people who aren't nearby. If you're in a forest, maybe that's reasonable. But it would really be interesting to see some statistics about how many security cameras the average person is recorded on in a day, with the images broadcasted to servers around the world. I'd wager a guess that in modern cosmopolitan cities, it's probably upwards of 100 cameras a day. Meanwhile we're completely unaware of this fact and get upset when a stranger points a smartphone at us.

junon 3y ago

While I agree, humans are immoral, and will always be immoral. We're inherently flawed and self-serving (speaking collectively, not individually as a rule). This is why cryptocurrency is at its core a very good idea (I personally found the Satoshi whitepaper very beautiful), yet in practice is completely and utterly abused and useless to society - it failed to take into account that humans will do anything and everything to abuse a system for a dopamine hit or for status, etc. As soon as technology catches up to this reality, we'll start to see change there. I don't think regulators will ever catch on to this, honestly. I think we need to stop thinking they will. I don't know the solutions here, but this is my pessimistic take. It makes the problems harder (but IMO not unsolvable).

donatj 3y ago

> In reality we already practice social media consent; it is not unusual to ask a friend if they’re alright with having a picture posted Is this common practice? The author keeps insisting it is. I don’t think it is, I think the author is just a member of a particularly inclined friend group. It would be a nice consideration but I can honestly say I have never asked nor been asked. I’ve certainly asked after the fact to have particularly unflattering pictures I’ve been tagged in taken down and friends have always apologetically complied. I don’t generally post many pictures of people outside my direct family, and can only think of one occasion where my sister had me take a photo down.

brabel 3y ago
I've been asked to remove photos the other person thought was too unflattering (which I found pretty petty), but yeah, no one has ever asked me my permission to post pictures including me, and I've never asked that of others myself.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  We should. Understand it’s ok that we’re learning for a period when all this was new, but the time has passed and now clear we should.

karaterobot 3y ago

The week Facebook released a feature that allowed people to be tagged in photos by other people is when I deleted my account. 2008 or so? The writing was on the wall by that point: in these platforms, your identity is as much controlled by other people as by yourself. Not good, very bad, get me out of here.

throwingtoofar 3y ago

I stay away from the kind of content the article refers to however I think there are cases where it's important to highlight the behaviour of those who would prefer you didn't such as recording the bad behaviour of public workers. Popular 1st Amendment auditor Long Island Audit has highlighted much of this and shown how many police officers lack knowledge of laws they are supposed to be upholding. Here's a video that went viral[0] and a recent follow up[1] where things went kind of differently i'm assuming because of the exposure in the first. [0] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=AsxNf54ep1Q https://yewtu.be/watch?v=AsxNf54ep1Q [1] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=CZtgVrYC4f0 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=CZtgVrYC4f0

crazygringo 3y ago

But what about the legality? You don't need people to sign a release form if you're a photojournalist or anything considered to be an editorial source. But as professional filmmakers know, you absolutely do need a release form if you're producing anything commercial (for sale). Or if you're pushing the boundaries of this like they do when filming Law & Order, to at least put up prominent signs so Manhattan pedestrians know they might wind up on the show if they walk down a particular patch of sidewalk that day. Isn't there a strong argument to be made that posting on social media without consent is therefore illegal? Because while you're not explicitly selling the video, you and/or the site is monetizing it via ads, which these days is the same thing. Has this been tested in court?

dml2135 3y ago
AFAIK, there is no requirement to gather release forms from someone you happen to film in public. It is simply something done to reduce exposure to possible civil liability on commercial shoots. Avoiding lawsuits is the point of those forms, not winning them.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  > there is no requirement to gather release forms from someone you happen to film in public. It probably depends on where you are. France and Germany for instance have stricter rules on the subject of photographing people in public places.
  - dml2135 3y ago
    Yes, sorry -- I'm only talking about a US legal context here.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  > there is no requirement to gather release forms from someone you happen to film in public Right, the filming is fine -- it's the commercial distribution that's the problem. And I'm assuming those civil suits have existing and succeeded in the past? So my question is still whether social media ought to be considered commercial distribution, since it's generally ad-supported. I mean, broadcast TV is entirely ad-supported too. E.g. posting on Mastodon is fine because there are no ads, but posting on Facebook/YouTube is not, because they're monetized with ads.

mvncleaninst 3y ago

> Still, a blanket law against posting strangers without their consent would be draconian and unworkable. There are too many variables, too many circumstances, and simply too many cases. I disagree. If someone (who is a non public figure) is the subject of a photo/video and has their likeness used without consent by a third party, the third party should be liable. There should be legal recourse for the victim to sue and force the third party to take it down (plus compensate for legal fees) Courts already deal with situations where there are "too many variables", the law isn't black and white for everything. The way that the author just brushes any legal solution aside seems like a cop-out

ryukoposting 3y ago
Such a law would create the perfect environment for police brutality.
- str3wer 3y ago
  recording a video of someone ≠ posting a video of them

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mcntsh 3y ago

Living in Germany I always appreciated their privacy laws related to being filmed/photographed in public. The US should do something similar.

ipqk 3y ago

This would be about 90% of Reddit's front page. Just look at /r/tinder: people just casually posting screenshots of ostensibly private conversations with the person's face & first name visible. It's frankly ridiculous.

26fingies 3y ago

Off topic but reading articles on mobile is a goddamn nightmare these days. Reader mode is the only thing saving it.

FreshStart 3y ago

But this has beauty too. Hideous crimes go punished, for the world is watching. Surveillance by the many for the many prevents warcrimes, prevents police brutality, chills a uncivilized humanity, idealized by to many into a civilized humanity. If you aspire to see a unwatched world goto den Haag, travel to auschwitz, to Xinjiang and the Archipel gulag. When the world is not watching and authority story reigns supreme, monsters walk the earth. The cybernetic augmentation of society, the leviathan-cybernetics is a great societal achievement.

ryukoposting 3y ago

> Another law being considered in France would make parents responsible for their children’s privacy rights. Le Monde cites, as an example of fame-seeking behavior that France is hoping to discourage, TikTokkers scaring their children by pretending to call the police on them, and an Instagrammer who smeared chocolate on her 4-year-old and convinced them they were covered in feces. It's a depressing state of affairs that any country has to consider passing laws for this kind of behavior. Shouldn't we, as a society, have enough shame to prevent this, or at least prevent it from becoming trendy? I worry about how these laws could be bent to authoritarian ends. "You can't record me without my consent" laws have worrisome implications for police encounters. I think (well, honestly, I hope) the populace has the capacity to prevent fame-seeking behavior by shaming it out of existence, rather than leaning on government to punish people for an activity that we would be doing little else to disincentivise. I truly believe the solution is to not engage with malicious fame-seeking content in any way. Avoid platforms where it is regularly shared. Vocally villify it. It can't be shamed out of existence until we start shaming it.