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> public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive The problem is that "public" 20 years ago (before cell phone cameras,

> public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive The problem is that "public" 20 years ago (before cell phone cameras, photo rolls, social media, growth/engagement algorithms, attention economy, virality, etc) vs now just doesn't mean the same thing anymore. There's a difference between "no expectation of privacy" and "no expectation of having every moment of your life in public be liable to be published". And at that point, the only thing left is the "well if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't care if your life is published" type of logic, and I don't love that. I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public" that doesn't account for how much things have changed. Edit: and I use "published" as a direct reference to the "publish" or "post" buttons on various social media apps.

aspenmayer 1y ago
> I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public" that doesn't account for how much things have changed. I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live. The times may have changed, and we didn’t start the fire. We could put it out if we wanted, or if the lick of the flames brought us undue harm. Perhaps most folks just don’t want to change as much as the times, and that’s okay. The future is not yet written, and justice is a living thing. We can always go a different way if the future we arrive upon necessitates it. I don’t mind if we have to change, but I do admire the view. The camera can only capture what’s inside the frame, and it would be a shame to stop living, and the greater loss would be to give up on life in pursuit of capturing a fleeting moment. I think for many, like me, who admire the hobby and have a love of photography as an art form, it’s akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. If it were outlawed or constrained, a true loss to society would occur, as that would be a material change in living conditions. Others are free to disagree, and I wouldn’t find fault with them for simply doing so. When it comes to curtailing my rights to preserve history and my place in it, I don’t think I’m the one who is entitled, but those who would prevent me from freely expressing myself through my chosen medium. If you see something, you ought be free to say something or remain silent. Forestalling my speech is not for you to say. Freedom to photograph is a free speech issue, to my view.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Photography is my favorite art form to consume, so I'm not in favor of any kind of ban of it. I also agree that freedom to photograph is a free speech issue. I just happen to think the ability to live your life without having it being recorded everywhere is also a freedom issue. I think it's a challenge for us to solve and I don't pretend to have a solution. I just don't agree with a "change nothing" stance on grounds of "no expectation of privacy" because I think things have changed to a point that it needs to be addressed. Side note: > I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live. If that's directed at me, then I think you're reading something in my comment that I haven't expressed.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    I don’t mean to direct anything at anyone, other than my viewfinder. I believe in home rule, and not dictates from bureaucrats. As a sort of journalist, I’m going to keep taking pictures, and to keep writing journals. Anything less or different would be to be someone other than myself the best and only way I know how, and that isn’t being true to myself or to others. If you felt that I directed my comments at you, I apologize; I almost certainly wasn’t. If anything, I am directing them at myself, as an affirmation of what I believe and why. Freedom of expression is one of the few issues that I will take a principled stance on, and if you feel that I was directing my comment at you, I don’t mean to, though you are free to express whatever you feel led to if you feel that I have given you short shrift or unalloyed fire, friendly or otherwise.
bborud 1y ago
Well, there is also the fact that in a lot of cities, you will be filmed, often by multiple cameras, most of the time, without you being aware of it. By law enforcement, security cameras (private and otherwise), cars etc. on top of that you carry around a phone that streams intimate information about your location, behavior, preferences to a bunch of data aggregators. And then there are the signal surveillance networks that are peppered around your environment as your phone shouts traceable signals to your surroundings. (Heck, you can set up a a RPi with a few ESP32s hooked up to dump wifi probe frames, cross reference the networks phones scan for and create a map of where people come from by cross referencing wardriving data. Lots of ISPs make it easy by giving people wireless routers with unique network names. And from there you can figure out things like «someone living at address X is at location Y. People who live at X work for Z and location Y is the office of a competitor». And that’s just by collecting one kind of wifi frame and correlating a bunch of publicly available information) Privacy is dead. Someone taking pictures hardly even registers.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I agree we're already in a bad place but I don't find the "ship has sailed" take particularly engaging. Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    > Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change. Presupposing that some strategies for change are less suitable than others is no argument against the status quo, either. Sometimes the way things are is just the way folks in a given time and place do things, and is simply contingent as much as it’s worthwhile. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you don’t like the way things are done here, you either care to make a change, including hearts and minds, or you don’t. If you aren’t from here, that might be an uphill battle, perhaps even both ways: coming and going. It’s a kind of double standard to judge folks for their customs without wanting to do the work to disabuse them of their notions, lest they warn you not to let the door hit you on your way out, especially after it was opened unto you in the first place. Wanting to have it both ways is a sort of special pleading.
rocqua 1y ago
There's legally usually quite a big gap between what pictures you can take of people, and how you can publish them. In places where you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, you can generally be photographed. But there are significant limits to how such pictures can be published (including social media).
- sbarre 1y ago
  The law doesn't matter much if someone is convicted in the public square by intentionally misrepresented (or even just context-collapsed) images of them going viral to a global audience at Internet speed. By the time the law, or the terms and conditions of social networks, catches up, the damage is already done.
  - bborud 1y ago
    This is a double edged sword. Two good events that should make us think about this are the Charlie Kirk funeral and the No Kings protest. The former was a relatively small event broadcast live. The latter was a huge protest involving more people than the populations of some small countries. However, their media footprint was very different. The No Kings protest produced no iconic visuals and was rapidly forgotten by international media. It had considerably less staying power than, say, the arab spring. Arguably because there existed no compelling visuals. It might as well have been a small protest of 100k people for the footprint it occupies in international consciousness. The Charlie Kirk funeral, on the other hand, produced half a dozen memorable images that circulated for weeks. It bears thinking about.

aspenmayer 1y ago

> I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public" that doesn't account for how much things have changed. I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live. The times may have changed, and we didn’t start the fire. We could put it out if we wanted, or if the lick of the flames brought us undue harm. Perhaps most folks just don’t want to change as much as the times, and that’s okay. The future is not yet written, and justice is a living thing. We can always go a different way if the future we arrive upon necessitates it. I don’t mind if we have to change, but I do admire the view. The camera can only capture what’s inside the frame, and it would be a shame to stop living, and the greater loss would be to give up on life in pursuit of capturing a fleeting moment. I think for many, like me, who admire the hobby and have a love of photography as an art form, it’s akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. If it were outlawed or constrained, a true loss to society would occur, as that would be a material change in living conditions. Others are free to disagree, and I wouldn’t find fault with them for simply doing so. When it comes to curtailing my rights to preserve history and my place in it, I don’t think I’m the one who is entitled, but those who would prevent me from freely expressing myself through my chosen medium. If you see something, you ought be free to say something or remain silent. Forestalling my speech is not for you to say. Freedom to photograph is a free speech issue, to my view.

rkomorn 1y ago
Photography is my favorite art form to consume, so I'm not in favor of any kind of ban of it. I also agree that freedom to photograph is a free speech issue. I just happen to think the ability to live your life without having it being recorded everywhere is also a freedom issue. I think it's a challenge for us to solve and I don't pretend to have a solution. I just don't agree with a "change nothing" stance on grounds of "no expectation of privacy" because I think things have changed to a point that it needs to be addressed. Side note: > I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live. If that's directed at me, then I think you're reading something in my comment that I haven't expressed.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  I don’t mean to direct anything at anyone, other than my viewfinder. I believe in home rule, and not dictates from bureaucrats. As a sort of journalist, I’m going to keep taking pictures, and to keep writing journals. Anything less or different would be to be someone other than myself the best and only way I know how, and that isn’t being true to myself or to others. If you felt that I directed my comments at you, I apologize; I almost certainly wasn’t. If anything, I am directing them at myself, as an affirmation of what I believe and why. Freedom of expression is one of the few issues that I will take a principled stance on, and if you feel that I was directing my comment at you, I don’t mean to, though you are free to express whatever you feel led to if you feel that I have given you short shrift or unalloyed fire, friendly or otherwise.

bborud 1y ago

Well, there is also the fact that in a lot of cities, you will be filmed, often by multiple cameras, most of the time, without you being aware of it. By law enforcement, security cameras (private and otherwise), cars etc. on top of that you carry around a phone that streams intimate information about your location, behavior, preferences to a bunch of data aggregators. And then there are the signal surveillance networks that are peppered around your environment as your phone shouts traceable signals to your surroundings. (Heck, you can set up a a RPi with a few ESP32s hooked up to dump wifi probe frames, cross reference the networks phones scan for and create a map of where people come from by cross referencing wardriving data. Lots of ISPs make it easy by giving people wireless routers with unique network names. And from there you can figure out things like «someone living at address X is at location Y. People who live at X work for Z and location Y is the office of a competitor». And that’s just by collecting one kind of wifi frame and correlating a bunch of publicly available information) Privacy is dead. Someone taking pictures hardly even registers.

rkomorn 1y ago
I agree we're already in a bad place but I don't find the "ship has sailed" take particularly engaging. Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  > Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change. Presupposing that some strategies for change are less suitable than others is no argument against the status quo, either. Sometimes the way things are is just the way folks in a given time and place do things, and is simply contingent as much as it’s worthwhile. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you don’t like the way things are done here, you either care to make a change, including hearts and minds, or you don’t. If you aren’t from here, that might be an uphill battle, perhaps even both ways: coming and going. It’s a kind of double standard to judge folks for their customs without wanting to do the work to disabuse them of their notions, lest they warn you not to let the door hit you on your way out, especially after it was opened unto you in the first place. Wanting to have it both ways is a sort of special pleading.

rocqua 1y ago

There's legally usually quite a big gap between what pictures you can take of people, and how you can publish them. In places where you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, you can generally be photographed. But there are significant limits to how such pictures can be published (including social media).

sbarre 1y ago
The law doesn't matter much if someone is convicted in the public square by intentionally misrepresented (or even just context-collapsed) images of them going viral to a global audience at Internet speed. By the time the law, or the terms and conditions of social networks, catches up, the damage is already done.
- bborud 1y ago
  This is a double edged sword. Two good events that should make us think about this are the Charlie Kirk funeral and the No Kings protest. The former was a relatively small event broadcast live. The latter was a huge protest involving more people than the populations of some small countries. However, their media footprint was very different. The No Kings protest produced no iconic visuals and was rapidly forgotten by international media. It had considerably less staying power than, say, the arab spring. Arguably because there existed no compelling visuals. It might as well have been a small protest of 100k people for the footprint it occupies in international consciousness. The Charlie Kirk funeral, on the other hand, produced half a dozen memorable images that circulated for weeks. It bears thinking about.