I wonder if it's a generational or cultural difference present in the comments here.
I am sympathetic to the author, and I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.
I therefore find the (obviously common) attitude that videos are just "something you need to accept" quite alien, but I wonder how much of that attitude is just comments coming from a younger generation that have grown up with the idea that they're recorded all the time.
I'm old enough thankfully to have grown up without video being present, that's probably not true for someone 10 years younger than me.
There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube every single week".
With the former you can still reasonably anonymous, with the latter you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship.
I find photos and videos to both be invasive and unwanted.
I’ve been a member and gyms where the owner will start taking videos and pictures of the class that ultimately end up on social media or in marketing material. I’m not ok with it and I get incredible uncomfortable when I’m in some weird position to do an exercise and a camera starts heading my way.
Any time an unwanted camera is around there is some level of anxiety that starts creeping up. Maybe this is, in part, why so many of today’s youth have anxiety disorders. How can anyone just relax if they have to worry about anything they might say or do being on camera, and then posted for the world to see.
I was at a party not too long ago where most people were 45+, and some kids that were too young to have phones. No one was on their phones, and people seemed free to dance and whatever. The second one person took out their phone to take a picture/video the vibe shifted drastically, and the owner of the house told them to put it away, so people could go back to enjoying themselves instead of being worried about an embarrassing picture of video that might surface later.
I’ve seen so many good times destroyed by cameras.
I am assuming you have no good alternatives regarding your gym? Because if you feel uncomfortable with the behaviour of the owners, you should really vote with your wallet.
I don’t go there anymore. The owner has been texting me on and off to try and get me to go back. I’ve been looking for other options, but am having trouble finding one that looks decent for me.
It’s a bit of a paradox. When I’m looking for a gym, I find pictures incredibly helpful, but I don’t want them taken of me as a member there.
> Most gyms it shouldn't be that hard to take useful pictures without people in them though?
Or much simpler: when the photos of a class are taken, simply ask beforehand who disagrees with being photographed and/or photos containing him/her made public, so that for those few minutes where the photos are taken, these people can get out of the picture.
Better yet, offer a free class to people who don't mind being photographed (of whom there are many). 'Being part of a company's marketing' isn't something that should be included in the price of a product or service.
I feel like if you announced your "picture day", you'd also get a subset of the gym members who wanted to show up that day looking their best. (And a subset of jokers who want to see if they can sneak their way into the marketing material so that there's a picture of someone exercising in a tuxedo or whatever if you look closely enough.)
Right? Somehow we've let corporations (which arent even a real life thing! They are just groups of people!) be entitled to huge swaths of our lives. You want to use my image for your marketing because you don't want to pay models? Gtfo of here! What an insane thing to do to customers.
It's almost like eroding privacy is a shared goal of corporations and government, and that both are fine with endlessly tormenting and selling out their customers/those they represent. It's as if they are the common person's adversaries rather and aren't helping or providing a service as they claim.
> Better still, pay people for the use of their image in advertising
There exist sufficiently many people who love to have pictures of them being available publicly. Just look at basically some arbitrary Instagram page. Thus, there exists no need to pay (at least until, say, 95 % of society is really reluctant to have pictures of them publicly accessible).
Classes are a different story, but at least for the legion of would-be gymfluencers that show up in gyms frequented by us zoomers, there's an easy solution: tell them to please not film you. If they don't comply, mess up their video. Deliberately walk across the camera. Deliberately get in the way. Take the machine against which they're resting a cell phone and start using it. Make funny faces. Whatever.
More people should understand you are no more morally obligated to behave sociably toward those exhibiting antisocial behavior than you are to stay your hand from a man who hits you.
Then there are those who film in the locker rooms which arguably should be reason to ban them from said gyms.
Imo these types should stick to "influencer gyms". They exist. Alphaland in Texas is a great example; a friend of mine frequented it as she started her bodybuilding page. Worked great for her. Just stay the hell out of the "normal people" gyms.
The problem with acting antisocial during someone else's filming is that they are then free to blow you up with whatever lies they feel like, just because they're angry. People get their lives ruined by doing that.
That's where my anxiety comes in when I see people filming. I am MASSIVELY aware of my face, body, and genuinely everything about myself when I run into that, because I do not want to be tried in the court of public opinion.
My kids are in elementary and middle school and there was an occasion where they were at a birthday party where an older sibling was live streaming the event.
Both my kids (and me) found it very off-putting, so there's some anecdata that at least some young kids still feel it's an invasion of privacy.
There are lots of young people who have some conception and respect of privacy and there are people who haven't. That's not a generational thing.. It's just that those without awareness of boundaries have now all the tech that screams in their face to stream everything to the world without consent. I can assure you that still lots of young folks are annoyed by those people.
Agree. I went to a family gathering recently, and my wife's cousin was walking around live streaming. People were pissed once they figured out that private conversations were uploading live to the internet.
The same guy did similar when his mom was on her death bed. Jesus Christ.
That's a good recipe for getting a black eye. The mother-to-be tends to be pretty much confined to her immediate affairs, but the partner…
(I'm sure everyone is different, but I've been there as the father-to-be, and I would have made a good effort of turning that live-stream into a live-colonoscopy.)
>The same guy did similar when his mom was on her death bed. Jesus Christ.
I am so sorry for your loss and I am out of words. Just, I just want to be with ya in silence for a while. I am sorry that you had to go through this. I am really speechless
I was definitely feeling something as I didn't think of the stranger's wife's cousin's mother? as dying but rather the stranger's wife dying and that cousin recording it.
But even now, yes you may have proved your point but death is so fucking weird and not talked about and sometimes I just get speechless, like someone just left the earth, let that sink in...
Honestly, I can somewhat both understand why he was live streaming now wanting more comments/everyone's final messages to go to her mother but at the same time, its definitely privacy invasive and might show their last moments and something of a behaviour I don't condone but I just don't know, now my opinion is mixed.
I didn't know the lady at all. I didn't even end up meeting the cousin, I heard about all this after the fact. My wife isn't broken up either - kind of distant family.
I get that for whistleblowers, journalists, investigators, ... I don't think it's relevant for a birthday party with children.
If it's me, I'm leaving the party. If it's my children attending, I'm strongly recommending them to leave the party (or just leave with them, depending on their age). Live-streaming a birthday party of children is obnoxious behavior that should not be tolerated.
This is the case where I find law in Europe better than USA. In germany you need consent to film or record other people.
The downside is the misuse of the law, what happens constantly, to basically prohibit (at least in practice) ANY recording activity. Is not unheard of, I have seen and experienced myself quite a few times, for example, a tourist being stopped and asked to delete a video of a simple recording in a park (police called immediately), because a random stupid person was around and wants to show how good he knows his rights… (see sister comment)
If it’s me, in Germany, I would instantly tell this person to stop filming and to delete any recordings. And if they streamed live to expect a letter from the (German equivalent of the) DA soon, as I would - as soon as back home - I would press charges and search damages.
Because in German publishing images/recordings of an individual without consent violates basic constitutional rights. And that’s nothing to f** with.
If minors were involved you’d be in a whole different can of soup even.
So while I don’t advocate for violence - as others have hinted in this thread - a black eye could actually be the lesser negative outcome for such a person.
And most states also allow you to leave a bar thirty seconds after your friend you arranged to meet there arrives, it would still be considered rude to do so and probably you wouldn’t be welcome in the future if you kept doing it.
Under US federal law one-party consent requires that you actually be a party to the conversation. This is why most security cameras do not record audio.
If you're wandering around livestreaming and picking up conversations you're not a participant in, it's a violation of federal wiretapping laws.
I watched multiple videos from Portland ICE protest, multiple videos of ICE arresting people, all with audio. Half the people at protests are recording.
If you were right all that would be illegal.
The magic word is: "reasonable expectation of privacy".
If you're in public, like in streets, in the mall etc. you don't have reasonable expectation of privacy. You can be recorded, with audio, and it's legal.
The two party consent rules only apply to private conduct e.g. you have a phone conversation. In states with two party consent the other person can't record the conversation without notifying you.
What you describe as "US federal law" sound more like anti-wiretapping law i.e. I can't plant a bug in your house and record your conversations. Which is duh, but not relevant to being recorded while in public.
I figured that "reasonable expectation of privacy" was a given in the scenario. It's a family gathering, the livestreamer is not being obvious about their recording, there's a "reasonable expectation of privacy".
Your ICE protest example is performed in public, its a protest, its not meant to be private, thus fails the test of "reasonable expectation of privacy". Action taken by agents of the state are also public actions, this has been tried many times in court.
Two-party consent is not federal law and varies state-by-state. But again it requires that you actually be a party to consent.
And yes by "US Federal Law" I am referencing the anti-wiretapping laws which prohibit, among other things, interception of oral communication via electronic means unless at least one party consents.
I'm not so sure that the family gathering scenario is well-defined, though. If I'm at a gathering in someone's house, and I'm in a room with only the person/people that I'm actively talking to, then I feel reasonably private in the sense that my words are falling only on the ears of intended recipients. But if I'm in a room with the people I'm talking to and also people I'm not talking to, then I acknowledge that ears beyond those involved in the conversation can catch wind of what I'm saying, which roughly equates to the absense of expectations of privacy.
It's important to remember that you're making this up. You're just sort of spontaneously interpreting "reasonable expectation of privacy" off the top of your head.
It's usually simpler than that: if you see them recording you, and if they aren't trespassing (i.e. breaking the law otherwise); or you are on their property or on public property that they are legally permitted to use, which carries a posted sign telling you that you may be recorded, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Otherwise you do.*
Somebody could possibly hear something has nothing to do with it. Consenting to being heard is not consenting to being recorded. But maintaining your presence in a place where people are allowed to record is. If it's your party, tell them to put it away or leave. If it's their party, you leave. If you are recording surreptitiously and you are not working with law enforcement, it's probably not going to be admissible in court and if you publish it, you're going to get sued. Depending on your state and local laws, you are likely to lose badly.
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[*] All of this depending specifically on how the term is defined in your state and local laws. For example, video has often been separated from audio for pragmatic reasons; security cameras are meant to record physical acts, not conversations. For a second example, many states have decided that sending your voice over a wire to a designated recipient as an electronic signal is already consenting for the person receiving that signal to be able to record it and use it as they please; others have not. For a rationale in the second case, imagine that you didn't have the right to reveal a letter that was sent to you.
If everyone is inside a private home, the host has not given permission to stream, and the streamer is deliberately keeping the camera/phone hidden, then no-one has waived their expectation of privacy, and the streamer is intercepting a conversation they are not a party to
> If you're in public, like in streets, in the mall etc. you don't have reasonable expectation of privacy. You can be recorded, with audio, and it's legal.
Just a note because I myself made the same argument very loudly 1-3 weeks ago...and was informed some states have different laws than I expected. Massachusetts, in particular.
(Note that MA limits clandestine recording, not the obvious recording in TFA blog about airsoft -- and it has been neither upheld nor overturned by SCOTUS)
>>> Massachusetts makes it a crime to secretly record a conversation, whether the conversation is in-person or taking place by telephone or another medium. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99. Accordingly, if you are operating in Massachusetts, you should always inform all parties to a telephone call or conversation that you are recording, unless it is absolutely clear to everyone involved that you are recording (i.e., the recording is not "secret"). Under Massachusetts's wiretapping law, if a party to a conversation is aware that you are recording and does not want to be recorded, it is up to that person to leave the conversation.
>>> This law applies to secret video recording when sound is captured. In a 2007 case, a political activist was convicted of violating the wiretapping statute by secretly recording video of a Boston University police sergeant during a political protest in 2006. The activist was shooting footage of the protest when police ordered him to stop and then arrested him for continuing to operate the camera while hiding it in his coat. As part of the sentencing, the court ordered the defendant to remove the footage from the Internet. From this case, it appears that you can violate the statute by secretly recording, even when you are in a public place.
Wiretapping laws are set by states, and different states have different criteria. For example, the two-party consent in MA involves 'intercepting' the conversation so even listening on a microphone and not recording it is considered wiretapping, but not all states use that criteria. Some people, like public officials performing their duty in public-- e.g. cops and politicians-- can't have any expectation of privacy.
Presumably, a person holding up a phone live-streaming would be party to the conversation.
If two people are talking at a party, and a third person obviously comes by within earshot, then the two people can either stop talking, or they can continue, but the third person is now party to the conversation.
My own anecdotal experience is that the generational gap is actually the inverse of what was described above. Younger people seem to be very much moree acutely aware of the dangers of publicity and much more guarded about what they do in public if it could potentially end up online.
"The age of posting on Facebook under your real name with privacy settings public is long gone"
According to my 18 year old niece, FB is just for old people anyway. (Thank god I never really used it). They still use Instagram, though.
Privacy concerns .. are little in general. Hard to be popular, when you avoid the mainstream plattforms. And yes, private groups are on the rise everywhere.
Yeah, kinda happened like a decade-plus ago, when facebook opened up to everyone. I know I stopped using it when my parents (baby boomers) got on there.
> just being seen in a small segment of a YouTube video with no name is a pretty minor risk
It might become a slightly larger risk when image processing and face recognition get cheap enough that anyone can search to find every video/livestream/photo containing your face.
Yeah, it just happened to a woman I know recently. She took part in some naked protests like 20 years ago and photographs of them went up on various sites like Flickr from a host of different photographers and no one ever thought about it. Recently she was targeted in a revenge porn incident by someone who had used facial recognition search engines to gather dozens of nude photographs of her before distributing them by name on porn sites.
You don’t need to find nude photos of anyone anymore if you want to do revenge porn. If you have any picture of someone there are “nudity sites” for years and years ago wasn’t there an open source one that was on GitHub? (please no one reply with the name - seriously - no need to give it any publicity on HN).
Actual nudes are even worse than AI nudes. With AI nudes
- the victim knows they are fake, which provides some emotional distance (similar to when actors choose to use prostetics or doubles for a nude scene: the viewer doesn't know but the actor still feels more comfortable)
- most of them are bad enough that the discerning eye can spot it as an AI image (many chronically online people are scarily good at that)
- they can be proven to be fake because they are just an imagined version of your body ('look, I have a tatoo/mole/scar/blemish here that isn't in the nude, it's obviously fake')
AI nudes are still pretty bad, but services that turn up nude images of you by indexing the internet with face-detection are way worse
But most people don’t have a discerning eye. I’ve never used a nudify site. But uploading a picture of me and my wife to Grok and letting it make a 6 second video is already pretty good. On one, the only thing I noticed was that the reflection in a window wasn’t following the movement.
Also, if you down sample the quality of the video, it would be even harder to tell it was a fake.
That’s neither here nor there. Would you want even a fake nude of you online?
That's neither here nor there, the claim was that deepfakes were a replacement for actual nudes, but you're maybe overlooking that the actual invasiveness is an important part of what the abuser finds appealing about the real thing.
Both are of course terrible, they're both abusive and both are becoming illegal in more and more places, but one is more invasive than the other.
I'm not sure your comment is completely necessary. I'm well aware there are such apps--I volunteered for years with a women's charity so I've seen it all--but they are two completely different attack vectors. I "wish" that one could stand in for the other but the reality is abusers just have two new ways to harass women in top of ash the other age old techniques.
I'm also aware there are probably a number of guys on this site who work in that space so just as a message to you if you're reading: You suck.
The private spaces are still at risk. Just one kid needs to claim he was offended and bring a screenshot to a teacher and it's game over for the kids' privacy.
The entire reason tiktok got so popular is the younger generation (born in the mid 90s to early 2000s) normalizing sharing so much of their lives publicly.
It's given rise to a much richer form of social media and "personal brand" building when done well, IMO. Although I have noticed the tide starting to turn, with the amount of us-vs-them sentiment all over the internet lately.
Honestly, if I was a kid just discovering social media today, I'd be extremely guarded too.
I’m currently wedding planning and regularly visit a wedding planning forum. I was left flabbergasted the other day when someone posted if it would be ok to ask guests to not post pictures of the couple on social media. They’re ok with guests posting pictures of themselves or of the venue and decor, they just don’t really want pictures of the bride and groom.
The response ranged from “you can ask but you can’t prevent people from posting” to “it’d be rude and inconsiderate to even ask”. One person even argued that it would be rude and other people would judge them if they went to a wedding and didn’t have a picture of the bride and groom.
I don’t think I ever felt the generational divide as acutely as in reading those responses, and I’m not even that old, I had social media when I was in high school.
This gets asked at basically every wedding I've been to in the UK i.e. there is a professional photographer, please don't take photos of the bride and groom in the church and it still gets ignored. At my own wedding, one of the guests (not even someone invited to the whole day, just a neighbour of my wife's parents who knew her growing up) is leaning out of the aisle with their phone taking photos ruining a load of photos.
It's incredibly frustrating. I also think it's really strange that when something happens in public, the default isn't to look to see if the person isn't OK anymore, it's to pull out a camera phone and start filming.
The thing I've seen at a few weddings recently is that right after the processional, they have a period of like 30 seconds where they allow everyone to take a picture of the couple, then phones away for the rest of the ceremony. I'm sure it's not 100% effective, but it does seem to scratch the itch for most people. I think also by calling such explicit attention to the rule at the beginning of the ceremony, it makes it seem ever more rude to violate it later.
I noticed you said “the whole day” I went a wedding once where the bride was from the UK. They said it was a “British style” wedding. It was almost exactly like an American wedding except that everything lasted twice as long (cocktail hour was 2 hours etc…).
I could never find out if this was a common thing in the UK or not.
I believe that it's uncommon in the USA to invite people to part of a wedding, but it's common in the UK. "Not someone invited to the whole day" implies a second-tier guest, who's been invited to the ceremony and the after-party, but not to the meal.
The ceremony is technically open to the public in any case, usually.
Usually it would be either the full day (ceremony, meal and ‘evening party’ which we commonly call the reception) or just the reception. No one is being asked to skip the middle part of the event.
Less than 20% of weddings are religious (and a smaller subset of this will be in churches), and I don’t really hear of anyone just turning up at the ceremony of someone they don’t know.
> Less than 20% of weddings are religious (and a smaller subset of this will be in churches)
That's a likely a fair underestimate because many religious marriages aren't legally valid because of various requirements that the Church of England doesn't have to follow as the state church. In Catholic churches for e.g. they need to register the building, then either appoint the priest as an authorised person or get a registrar to come to every ceremony as in a civil wedding. They do usually do this but most non-Christian religions don't bother with this at all and so the couple end up just having a civil ceremony first and the religious one after.
I've seen posts from wedding photographers who would pass around cheap/older cameras to guests. This lets people scratch the shutterbug itch while avoiding all the problems that come with a room full of people trying to get a shot.
I've been to weddings that had an "open" ceremony and a closed reception. This has generally been at a church, where the wedding itself is announced to the whole church community, but then the reception is a more limited number of family and friends.
More commonly though, I've been to weddings where they had a small private ceremony (just the couple, officiant, and a handful of family), and then a large reception for everyone in the evening.
In weddings in the U.K. (or at least in England) anyone can attend a wedding - legally they have to be open.
It’s therefore not uncommon if it’s local for more distant friends of family, neighbours, etc. to pop along to the ceremony at invitation of the couple or their parents as a result, but not to be invited to the party part. Sometimes older guests will just come to ceremony too.
That's an insane legal requirement. I'll do the legal wedding in the most unceremonious, quickest manner possible, and then have my real ceremony in privacy and not tell anyone about it.
It's largely historic these days, there's been various proposals to reform it and other mad rules (e.g. can't get married outside, can't get married after 6pm) but it's not really viewed as high priority.
They're not invited to the ceremony & wedding breakfast (which often isn't actually breakfast), just the evening reception. Unlike US weddings, the evening event is generally not the most expensive part of the affair.
It could be more that those hanging around on wedding planning forums aren't really representative of the younger generation. If it's a wish of the couple, they should clearly communicate this on the invitation.
A wedding is one of the most fundamentally public events that have ever existed. The purpose is so that as many people as possible should know that these people are taken.
Asking guests to not take photos is such a faux pass that the couple has destroyed their reputation completely.
They can have a quiet and private ceremony instead if they have stage fright.
Historically at least, it's not that weddings are in public places, but that they're inherently a performance for the community. Like the reason for having a wedding is to make a commitment publicly in front of your friends and family. That doesn't mean it needs to be open to all who want to wander in, but it's strange to think of it as a secret event.
I feel like it's pretty strange (and mildly rude) to insist no one take/post photos of a wedding, and also very rude to take/post photos when asked not to.
> but it's strange to think of it as a secret event.
Not sure why you're using the word "secret" there? Something being not-public (ie invitation only) doesn't mean it's secret or hidden. It just means it's not public.
I think he was talking about weddings from historical perspective. Like, everyone needs to know the couple are married (taken) and through this public knowledge the marriage is confirmed.
Weddings held in churches have been public with nobody turned away at the door. Perhaps you are thinking of receptions, where invitations are checked, and accountants are eyeing the attendees accordingly.
An impending wedding is usually one of the most publicized events in any city. The banns must be published, typically in a special section of the newspaper. In order to give notice for anyone who may object or know about a prior bond. Also any hint of duress or urgency that may impede free consent. The banns are the actual execution of the ceremonial “callout” you see in films.
The witnesses of a wedding are not optional. The witnesses serve as representatives of the general public. Typically a clandestine wedding would be invalid without witnesses to verify and vouch for the identity, presence, and consent of bride and groom.
Taking photos for verification is sort of after-the-fact, and it would be most unfortunate for the banns to miss the mark until after the ceremony, or the consummation.
But only crazy people would consider a wedding ceremony “private” or “closed to the public” other than “renting an officiant” and flying off to a Caribbean elopement that only your billionaire girlboss bridesmaids can afford.
In the US this is generally true as well. It’s not that there will be security at the door checking invitations, but it’s be very rude to show up to a wedding ceremony you weren’t invited to.
By “Blighty” are you referring to Great Britain, or a town in NSW, population 326? That seems to be a vast difference!
And I am at a loss to imagine security guards checking invitations at a church door and giving heave-ho to the unworthy. What particular denominations have you polled on this? How many different types of ceremonies have you crashed?
I've touristed in several countries where the church was closed because of a wedding.
You are at a loss to imagine something that is extremely common worldwide. Though not "security guards". You don't need security guards, because when a little lady tells you to please come back in an hour and a half, people don't push her aside and scream "freedom!".
> And I am at a loss to imagine security guards checking invitations at a church door and giving heave-ho to the unworthy.
Especially with churches in most cases nobody will be shown the door especially as in (Christian) church tradition the wedding is before God and the community, which traditionally is the village. Nonetheless many cultures will see it as somewhat private. Especially the reception or a non-church ceremony.
Do Englishmen frequently refer to “Blighty” in ordinary conversation?
I refer to my homeland as “The States” out of courtesy to those from Canada, UK, Australia, but I had to rack my brains, and Wikipedia, about “Blighty” because it seems archaic, stilted, and arcane in a tech forum.
I’ve heard England called a lot of things by its citizens, but I was under the impression that “Ol’ Blighty” died out with Queen Victoria.
I suppose if they are comfortable with confusing foreigners with this lingo.
In all my years on the Internet and written forums, as well as watching British TV for 50 years, there has been no notable usage of “Blighty” that caught my attention.
If I had been aware of the usage, (other than archaic slang) I would’ve learned it sooner. But it’s notable that this Anglophile hadn’t been bothered until the Year of Our Lord and Reign of His Majesty Charles III, 2025.
It's still a public event even if everyone is not invited. English lacks the word to differentiate between "public" as "no secret, out in the open" and "public" as in "free for all and gratis".
In this case we're talking about a public wedding as opposed to a secret wedding.
Thus: A normal wedding with a normal amount of invited guests is one of the most non-secret events to exist.
Asking for no photos is like participating in a big sports event as an athlete and demanding nobody takes photos.
> Thus: A normal wedding with a normal amount of invited guests is one of the most non-secret events to exist
private !== secret
You seem to have this concept crossed in your thinking. Just because people know about it doesn't make it not private. Try getting into an event at Davos. Try getting into any well known event without an invitation. You'll see just how not public they are.
The fact that people think it is acceptable to post pictures of other people on their social sites says it all. This couple's request is not egregious. Just because you can't imagine not posting something doesn't mean everyone else thinks the same way. This is just another example to me of how few people think of others first, and only ever think about "me me me"
> Just because people know about it doesn't make it not private.
That's exactly what I adressed in my comment above. You're explaining to me exactly what I've explained to you.
Public can mean something which has been publicized = made known to the general public. In this case it doesn't mean that everybody is invited.
You have a very hostile tone, for no apparent reason. Feel free to blow off steam if you need to, but try at least to understand the argument I'm making.
If you only had made the argument you thought you made, but didn’t. And then not even made the effort to understand that the point your discussion partner made was actually in stark contrast to your point in the result they were arguing for.
You ended with:
> Asking for no photos is like participating in a big sports event as an athlete and demanding nobody takes photos.
A private, invite only, wedding isn’t comparable to a sports event that you described. Because this is by definition public. Why? Because anyone can buy a ticket to that event. That makes it open to the public. Yes, you need a ticket to enter. But it’s not invite only.
Imagine a big baseball/football/soccer event. The stadium is packed. Anybody can film to their liking. This is the public part. Now imagine the owners box way at the top. Not one of these humans down in the regular seats will be able to get up there. It’s invite only. That makes it private. Even if there are many people in that box.
But the owner (or in case of the wedding the couple getting married) chose who
Would be allowed to partake in that event. And so, they also get to make the rules.
If you, with your attitude would be at a private event I was hosting, you wouldn’t be there long. Because you still need to learn the difference between public (in theory anybody can attend and the host doesn’t get to choose) and private (only the host chooses who can attend).
Again, you seem to think that public/private need to be used at the same time. You can have a private event that is publicized so everyone knows it happens yet only those invited can attend. A royal wedding would be an example to keep it in the same realm as the topic. The entire planet knew when William at Kate were getting married, when it was, and where it was. If you tried to get into that event without an invite, you were turned away. If you continued to argue like you are in this thread, you'd probably be detained.
Why you think that a wedding needs a public announcement because of regulations is relevant or not is something I cannot see the point of making. It does not mean the event is open to the public. You seem to think that more words are needed in English to get the concept across, yet you seem to be the only one with the inability to grasp the concept.
I'm deliberately ignoring your diatribe on hosting events as it is totally unnecessary and brings nothing to the conversation.
The fact that the event is known about doesn't mean everybody is invited or it being appropriate to share pictures in a different public from the event.
Let's take some specific events: Weddings of British royalty. A simple peasant can't simply walk in and take a seat at a front row of Westminster Abbey, despite being the probably most public wedding.
Or other related example: When they televised the coronation of Elizabeth II the coronation was extremely public event, probably the most public event of that decade, however the actual moment where the crown was put on her head was purposly hidden from cameras behind the bishops robe for spiritual reasons.
And then consider: Weddings are often extensive celebrations, which take long, with lots of food, lots of alcohol. Many chances for unpleasant photos. Those who were there saw it, but a different public doesn't need pictures of drunk uncle Bill and the bride doesn't want the most public picture of here wedding to be the one where the dress isn't in order.
You continue to argue that I'm saying the exact opposite of what I've said. Are you arguing only for the sake of it?
> It does not mean the event is open to the public.
I have never said any such thing. It is public in the sense that it is publicized, as I've now mentioned countless times. The word "public" also means something that is "official" and out in the open. It doesn't always mean that it is something which the general public is invited to attend. A good example is the one you gave on the royal wedding. All weddings are public weddings in that very same sense.
> You seem to think that more words are needed in English to get the concept across, yet you seem to be the only one with the inability to grasp the concept.
Clearly there are more words needed, since you continue to understand the exact opposite of what I'm saying.
> Why you think that a wedding needs a public announcement because of regulations is relevant or not is something I cannot see the point of making.
"It's still a public event even if everyone is not invited."
You are not stating the same thing. You are saying that an invite only is not a private event. You've apparently misread the bit you quoted as it is a double negative; "> Just because people know about it doesn't make it not private". Just because people know about a private event does not mean the event is public. Knowledge of the event is not what makes it private. What makes it private is the host's restriction of who can attend.
Also, I'm not hostile. You're being defensive on an indefensible position and not liking the fact you are being called out for that position. There's a difference.
> Those include not trying to impress strange rules on guests you invite to an event.
I think you will find it is both good etiquette and very common to make polite requests ("rules") of guests you invite..... whether these be to 'bring a bottle', 'smoke outside', 'wear black tie', 'wear your birthday suit' or 'don't film us'.
How are they different? It appears you agree that if one does not like the rule they should not go. At the same time my impression is that you still want to go but dislike the rule.
I think its that the rules they agree with are okay, and everyone should agree with that. The one rule they disagree with isn't okay. We're left to guess which rule isn't like the others. I personally would find it very strange to be asked to show up in my birthday suit.
Wedding photographers often ask people to refrain from taking photos during the ceremony. It sucks to have every photo that you hired a professional to take have a sea of people holding up cell phones so they can each take their own photo. In this case it's not rude to request that people not take images, it's a practical matter so people can have photos of their wedding instead of photos of people taking photos of their wedding. Much of this wouldn't be necessary if people could just be present at events instead of rigorously chronicling their every experience.
I'm not familiar with this old and cherished tradition of each guest taking photos and videos of a wedding they attend, in order to show them off to anybody who will look in exchange for reputation points.
Your idea of a polite society sounds rather rude to me.
Okay? Most of my friends don't take videos and post them on the internet when I invite them around for games, or a nice dinner, or a birthday. If they started to I would ask them not to come, or invite them on the condition they don't do that. If they don't come because they have to do that constantly, and I don't want to participate I'm not sure what I'm losing.
Lets replace take videos with something maybe more obviously offensive to most people:
Most of my friends don't insult my mother / wife / husband / partner when I invite them around for games, or a nice dinner, or a birthday. If they started to I would ask them not to come, or invite them on the condition they don't do that. If they don't come because they have to do that constantly, and I don't want to participate I'm not sure what I'm losing.
I personally find not respecting my privacy preference in my home pretty darn insulting.
Also people have been having friends over for dinner 100x longer (probably much longer, but I'm just going with how long things have been written down) than video recording has existed, so I'm unsure what traditions you're trying to uphold.
Also I have guests over for dinner because I enjoy their company, not tradition.
> It seems to be that there's a very strange crowd hanging out on Hacker News, who are not aware of very basic social rules. Those include not trying to impress strange rules on guests you invite to an event. Because people will simply make excuses and not come to your wedding or whatnot.
Are you genuinely suggesting that there is a basic social rule that says no other rules can be impressed on guests at an event? I don’t think that stands up to scrutiny.
Every event has rules — it’s inherent in being “an event” as opposed to pure chaos. Whether or not the rules are strange is open to individual interpretation. If you can’t abide by the rules of an event you are not welcome at the event. People’s polite tolerance of others’ anti-social behavior does not mean the behavior is welcome.
Your comment is confused as to you believing that people would want to come to events with strange rules and not follow those rules. What happens in real life is that people decline to go to those events. Everybody knows how to behave at a wedding and what is proper conduct.
> Are you genuinely suggesting that there is a basic social rule that says no other rules can be impressed on guests at an event?
Absolutely, in the case of strange, unusual rules. If you're invited for dinner to somebody and they ask that you oblige to things which are outside of the norm, would you be very keen to go? Or would you make up an excuse and do something else?
It seems you are trying to say "You're not welcome here!" to people who already declined an invite?
> It seems you are trying to say "You're not welcome here!" to people who already declined an invite?
These things are not mutually exclusive.
If you don’t want to abide by the rules, you are not welcome and you should decline. Perhaps the organizer isn’t aware of your preference and your declining helps inform them. If they prefer your presence more than they like their silly rules, they might change them.
Deciding to attend a social gathering where you intentionally ignore the rules that you don’t like is narcissistic and rude behavior.
It's really not about this. Many (most?) people don't want to go to events where the hosts are acting weird against their guests. When it comes to weddings, it's not unusual that you haven't seen the people for several years. And in that time people change.
> Deciding to attend a social gathering where you intentionally ignore the rules that you don’t like is narcissistic and rude behavior.
That's why I've said now about fourteen times here now, that people are going to decline an invite to events with strange "rules". For an adult the normal thing is that events you are invited to do not have any rules at all, because everybody already knows exactly what is appropriate. So real people have a low tolerance for those kind of things. If you're looking for "narcissistic", then maybe look at those people inventing strange rules for what is supposed to be their friends and family?
Maybe it is because HN is a forum for people who work in very corporate settings and are accustomed to having to follow a lot of silly rules without the option to decline?
I think everyone agrees that some rules for guests are fine, and some are silly. "No flash photography or leaning into aisles during the wedding procession" is a reasonable rule, "No taking photos when we're dancing and having fun" seems silly to me.
Just like a dress code for a wedding is fine, but if they said "also you need to wear blue cotton underwear" I'd think that was a bit inappropriate to require.
It's a result of the law and the state taking the place of morality and ethics. If it is against the law it is bad and wrong. If it is legal it is OK and good.
A large component of society has no particular code of ethics, religion, or internal moral framework. End result is if it's legal I can do it, and I shouldn't feel bad for doing so.
The traditional purpose of the wedding was meeting and joining of families. The "as many people as possible" knowing about it was not a consideration all that much.
> They can have a quiet and private ceremony instead if they have stage fright.
There's definitely very huge cultural differences that might be getting in the way here. Many wedding traditions explicitly invite all and sundry to attend and witness. Most historical traditions around weddings that I'm aware of treat them as a community event at the very least, not a private affair involving only two families.
Clandestine weddings have presented a huge problem for Church and State authorities at various points in space and time.
A clandestine wedding would often leave significant doubt about the facts of the ritual, the participants, and their actual state of mind. In most places it really is not legal to conduct a clandestine wedding without strict regulation and some sort of documentation, before and after the fact.
No officiant: invalid. No witnesses: invalid. Prior bond: invalid. Duress or coercion: invalid. These are all really, really important reasons for public ceremonies attended by, essentially, randos off the street.
>> Asking guests to not take photos is such a faux pass that the couple has destroyed their reputation completely.
The day is not about you. Just like people are free to exclude children from weddings, if they ask you not to take photos and you take umbrage at that, you need to take a hard look at yourself. It's. Not. About. You.
I think this is a strange and very modern conception of weddings. Weddings are not just about the bride and groom; they're about the bride and groom and the community of their friends and family. That third part is a key component! It's why we invite people to weddings, so they can witness and help the couple in making and keeping the commitment of marriage.
True, of course, but they're the ones spending a fortune on it. Not only so they can have a memorable day but so their guests enjoy it too. Seems fair that if they ask you to do something really really easy like not take photos, you do that.
Almost every couple manage to arrange their wedding without any unusual rules and demands. So most people seem to have taken your advice at heart. My advice to you is trying to make your argument without tired and boring insults such as "take a hard look at yourself". People have different opinions and perspectives, you can only accept that.
I've never made any strange rules for guests when I host, and I've politely declined the very rare cases when I've received such an invite. Because I know it's not about me.
You're free to dislike the request of the couple. I have no argument with that. People can be over the top. But I can't imagine skipping the wedding of someone I care about because I don't want to adhere to a simple request like not taking photos.
I went to a middle eastern wedding recently and they gave everyone these phone pouches to keep their phones in that were locked for the event's duration.
I attended my first GenZ wedding a couple of months ago and they (someone on behalf of the couple) announced this request. It applied specifically to the wedding itself, not the post-wedding party (at the same venue).
Certainly the first time it had ever come up, but it made sense to me. If you're invited to someone's wedding, it's only natural to respect their wishes.
Anyone finding it rude would find themselves not only on the "formerly invited and definitely not welcome" list. But also on the "good riddance, it was nice having known you once" list.
People with such little respect for boundaries are just not welcome in my life.
Especially if they are close family I would be even more harsh about it. If my family f*ks this much with my borders, I am so getting rid of toxic assholes. I ab-so-f*ing-lute-ly not care about blood relations, when it comes to people ignoring boundaries.
I - for example - ditched every contact to my aunt after she accused my SO of being just a gold digger. At my dad's (her brother's) funeral. So no - I don't care for blood. I care for being a decent human being and treating everybody with the respect they deserve, as long as the reciprocate. If not, I treat them with the interpersonal equivalent of a killfile.
I'm from Gen Z and the idea of being filmed and published online without my consent sounds like a nightmare.
It is my belief that it's an invasion of privacy (even in a public space) and questionable from a (cyber)security perspective.
In France we got the Droit à l'image (Right to the image) which makes it illegal to post images or videos of people online without their consent, so that may be why that feels very strange to me.
The Eiffel Tower situation is a somewhat complicated matter. You can (of course) publish a photo of the tower on your social media account. But the nighttime illumination is apparently copyrighted and it's not clear to me if the prohibition about publishing extends beyond commercial purposes anyway.
I agree with your broader point. Recognizable people get their photos published on social media every second of every day and, while someone can probably find an outlier example where someone got prosecuted for doing so, it's incredibly rare at the least--even in countries where it's technically a violation of some law.
In German, we also have a "Right to the image". It is based on our constitutional rights.
But, if you are a public figure, as in you are a media person, a celebrity or politician. As in you are actually searching for publicity, the situation changes. Here the beauty of shades of grey and work for lawyers begins.
Because while you have lost the clear cut black or white, there are still things that will get the person publishing into trouble.
When I started my career in online journalism this was a very long discussed topic while we had our course at the Academy for Journalism in Hamburg.
But for ordinary people, the right to your image is a quite strong protection.
And yet it happens thousands (or more) times a day. Even in the US there is the idea of publicity rights--I can't use an easily identifiable photo of you in an ad or other marketing materials. But posting on Flickr or wherever where someone hasn't shoved a camera in your face but you're easily identifiable?
France - where the 'Society of the Spectacle' was written by Guy Debord in the 1960s, where he predicted late stage capitalism as being mediated by images, so rather than reality, human existence and relationships between people are 'mediated by images'.
This is at the heart of what is going on. Society of the Spectacle is not an easy read, but it most definitely is pertinent to what is going on. Instagram is the final boss!
> I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.
I’d argue photos can be more invasive. If someone makes a 10 minute video and you’re somewhere in the background for 5 seconds, no one may ever notice. Furthermore, with compression artefacts for motion you may become difficult to recognise.
But if you’re in a photo, people will be looking at it for longer and are thus most likely to notice you and possibly zoom in on you with all the quality the static sensor provides.
Furthermore, photographs have greater potential to create false narratives. A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can easily make you look like a creep or weirdo when a video would’ve made it clear you were just turning your head or starting a yawn.
> A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can easily make you look like a creep or weirdo when a video would’ve made it clear you were just turning your head or starting a yawn.
Taking a screenshot from a video for exactly this reason is incredibly common. Look at any photograph accompanying a political story about a figure from "the other party".
See for example this Reddit post about the "triggered" meme origin:
> Ironically, if you ever get a chance to see the video of this incident, this woman and the man she's speaking with are actually having a polite discussion. But... She has very animated facial expressions and the photographer just happened to catch this frame at an inopportune moment.
So it seems to me that since a video is simply thousands of photographs with a soundtrack, video is strictly more invasive than photography.
It is precisely because the video exists that you have the opportunity to correct the misconception, which is exactly what happened with the discussion in your example. Had it been a photograph, that context would have been lost and no one could refute it.
The compression artefacts help there, because they make it very clear this was taken from a video, meaning one should look up the source because it probably exists.
That is a perfect example of how a photograph could be worse than a video.
you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship
Your perception of this as a risk probably suggests cultural and/or generational differences.
But for the actual circumstances of the fine article’s author, video is a norm of the community the author seeks to join. Within the community, video is an established practice and making a video rig signifies a higher degree of commitment to the community.
Not accepting the use of video, is at least a partial rejection of the community values. Accepting video is a tradeoff for participating in community practices. The practical alternative is usually to find or build an alternative community. [0]
To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
[0] sure logically it is possible to change a community, but marginal members (e.g. new, casual, low status) are rarely in position to overturn established practice and run the risk of being set up for the agendas of established members.
> To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
How do you define community? Seems like a bit rigid of a implied requirement.
The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me, and it's definitely not rare, but an individual is perfectly within their right to go about engagement in their hobby with other people who have similar interests on whichever terms they like, which seems like community to me, as long as some form of commonly understood communication is present.
Likewise the people who do want to establish certain requirements, gates if you will, have the right to do so, but not as a whole. Country clubs don't and shouldn't have exclusive domain over golf, and I don't give the slightest fuck about recording myself at the bouldering gym or skateboarding, but that shouldn't prevent me from being part of either culture or community unless a specific club within those forms around publication.
I'd concede that it's possible that a community could exist in such a way that the act of documenting is the exclusive basis for which people are able to communicate at all, in which case perhaps that defines the boundary, but again it seems like it would be rare for that to be so pervasive as to encapsulate the entirety of a hobby.
The birdwatching community is similar to a collecting community insofar as seeing a bird is like having it in your collection and going out to birdwatch is like hunting items to add to your collection.
Lists and records fill the role a physical collection plays in collecting hobbies.
The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me
Usually that simply means a community is not for you and the birdwatching hobby is not for me either…though I have driven a few hundred miles out of my way to see the California Condors at Vermillion Cliffs (I didn’t write it down).
On the other hand, not-for-me just means not for me to me. I can see why people do it and it is pleasant to ask them what they are looking at and congratulate them if they tell me it’s a lifer…
Anyway, birds fascinate me and I am blessed to live along the Pacific Flyway in a location with abundant wildlife and natural areas outside my door (it’s why I sometimes chat with birders). But it only took me one look at what the birdwatching community values to know it was not for me (same as most religions, political movements, ideologies, etc.).
That all sounds fantastic, I'm sure I'd find that pretty engaging and I enjoy making small collections of hobbyist interests and going on adventures in-pursuit of niche experiences as well.
I wasn't so much curious about the mechanics of the hobby, although it is interesting, rather what defines it as a "community". Like what qualifies or doesn't qualify as being in or out of the "community"? If I make a list of birds I've seen, and don't share it with anyone, am in a community? If I share a photo on Instagram and mention it in passing to my close friend, am I in a community then? Do I need to be on some common platform, communicating at all about other bird lists? My grandfather kind of has a similar hobby with planes, but I'm sure he doesn't think of himself as part of a global community of plane enthusiasts, yet his local wood carving community is a place he goes and talks to people he knows by name and has spent years around, evidently a community with the requirement that you're into wood carving
But my point is that air soft has norms and if video is among them, then that’s just how it is.
And for what it is worth your theoretical exercise of keeping private lists of birds is fine by me. But if it is just you, it is not a community because that’s not how we use the word community.
Likewise, the community of birdwatchers typically uses the word birdwatching to include the kind of activities I mentioned.
There were plenty of TV shows centred around candid camera / security camera / home video footage back in the 1980s/1990s well before digital cameras or the internet was ubiquitous.
Or look at newsreels, or news reports from ... any time up to the 2010s. Obviously people's faces weren't blurred before we had the tech to do it. It's some entirely new, modern prissiness. It screws up the documenting of social history when you can't see any faces. There's been an internet fad for restored film of street scenes from 1915 or so: imagine if all the faces were blurred to protect the privacy of people who no longer care, that would suck.
The difference is that social media now exists. The fear of an embarrassing or compromising moment causing social embarrassment at an unlimited scale or affecting future employment prospects indefinitely is not based on nothing - we have all seen examples of this. Even an unlikely scenario is worth considering if the stakes are that high.
This situation compounded very gradually. In the late 90s, it was extremely common for young people to make each other laugh by doing dumb things in public (sometimes knowingly on camera) that they’d never expect to be seen by a wide audience. Then in the early 00s, the experience of going a little viral (just within your college Facebook community, before the word ‘viral’ was a thing) was actually pretty common and this started to make people just a little more guarded about being photographed. So those who got filmed doing something drunk/dumb would be more likely to go more viral, as it was now a rarer sight. And so on. It’s a recursive effect that made us all duller and more image-conscious and anxious in public. This process took a couple of decades to end up where we are now. It’s not just some new modern prissiness.
> The difference is that social media now exists. The fear of an embarrassing or compromising moment causing social embarrassment at an unlimited scale or affecting future employment prospects indefinitely is not based on nothing - we have all seen examples of this. Even an unlikely scenario is worth considering if the stakes are that high.
Realistically unless you are doing something absolutely unforgivable it will be forgotten about in a few days/weeks. At worst you will become a reaction emote.
Also going viral is a huge opportunity. Some viral people have ended up in commercials, podcasts etc.
Lets not pretend it is all negative.
> Then in the early 00s, the experience of going a little viral (just within your college Facebook community, before the word ‘viral’ was a thing) was actually pretty common and this started to make people just a little more guarded about being photographed. So those who got filmed doing something drunk/dumb would be more likely to go more viral, as it was now a rarer sight. And so on.
No this is a rewriting of history. What happened is that employers started looking through potential hires and/or current employees and quizzing them about getting drunk at a party a few years ago. This seemed to happen in the US more than other places, or maybe it was reported there more.
Then everyone with any sense made their profile semi-private (friends only) on Facebook.
Also a lot of the stuff that went viral was often clever marketing. There are advertising agencies where they have case studies detailing how they have done it.
Also there is a whole genre of streaming where people literally act outrageously in public, called IRL streaming. People have gone/are going to prison in hopes of going viral.
> It’s a recursive effect that made us all duller and more image-conscious and anxious in public. This process took a couple of decades to end up where we are now.
This is absolute nonsense. I am old enough to remember how people acted before social media in is largely the same while out in public. In fact I would say it was actually the opposite of what you claim.
> Watch any home VHS video from the 80s. Half the people the person holding the camera points it at say "stop filming me"
I suspect a lot of that is more to do with them being worried about their how they look on the film than actually being on the film itself.
> There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.
Of course there are going to be people uncomfortable with it. I am. The issue is that it isn't ever going to go backwards and being video recorded in public by amateurs has been around for almost 40 years. The ship has sailed a long time ago.
I mean, I feel like the mindset of privacy and no one can have photos of me is a fairly recent phenomenon. Parents or grandparents definitely had books photos of everyone important to them and probably would have found it weird for someone to ask not to be photographed.
Those photos would have been taken with the understanding that they woupd have ended up in Grandma's album, maybe flipped through a few times, but never spread far and wide. The stakes change quite a lot if those photos can be published.
I’m Gen Z and I get how someone could be annoyed by this, but it’s also just part of life. I get annoyed when people smoke in public or pointlessly honk horns at night. But you have to accept that being around other people means some people do things you aren’t a fan of.
Smoking in restaurants and bars used to be a part of life, until it wasn’t. It took about 5 years for that shift to roll out pretty much everywhere. And it’s so much nicer without it.
There’s nothing stopping us from saying this sucks, it’s socially toxic, and we’re not going to put up with it anymore.
I think that topic worked because a lot of people directly noticed a difference.
With the filming it's honestly part of internet culture now. Considering its been illegal in Germany for as long as I remember, it still happens extensively.
Especially when you dont know your being filmed.
That's a completely ridiculous comparison. Pointlessly honking or smoking does not create a public record of your activities shared globally without your consent.
No, it just smells like shit, subjects you to a small risk of cancer, and the other disturbs your sleep resulting in a number of mental and physical health issues.
I’d much rather be shown on YouTube playing a sport.
Yeah? Who said that? Any selfish person can say the same about anything. "Yeah my dog shat your lawn but that's just part of life. Deal with it". What's part of life is different for everyone.
>I get annoyed when people smoke in public or pointlessly honk horns at night.
Yeah that's annoying, but neither the smoke or the honk are records of your private life published without consent on the internet, forever. So apples and oranges.
I personally don’t believe that filming airsoft is unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable for OP to not like it, but the majority are either fine with it or filming themselves. So it’s a situation of either dealing with it, or finding a new group to hang out with.
The problem is not being filmed, when the recording is used in small circles.
The problem is when it's published for the world to see.
As a rule of thumb, for my children at school, I refuse any use of their image if it's not for something that was already possible in the eighties.
Publishing school party pictures and videos for the whole world to see was impossible in the 80s, I thus don't allow it and if it happens, it's an invasion of their private life (as per Belgian law at least).
Hanging on the school walls some pictures of the classes, or children, doing some activities: that's OK, it could already be done in the 80s and might be useful for the school community.
Publishing these in a printed yearbook: I accept. Publishing it on the Internet in electronic format: this was not possible in the 80s, thus I refuse.
I think this time strikes a nice balance for everyone involved.
By the way, in Belgium, you are allowed to film in public places, but not to misuse the image of others if it's disrespecting their private life, unless for legal requirements.
your way of thinking shows clearly your lack of comprehension on the subject... you didn't experience the world before the internet, so you think that the internet is "part of life". Let me tell you as someone that helped build it, that it isn't part of life. It's something that we made up, like our ancestors build the railways. Those were neither part of life. Unike the addiction to social media that was carefully engineered by top class psychologists, without anyone realizing. That shouldn't be part of life, but here we are :(
That's the solution. You don't want to be recorded? Attend "no-recording" event. If there are no such events, tough luck. Market is not obligated to serve your particular needs. If you thing enough people care, organize it yourself.
This comment doesn't engage with the topic at all - you've just used "the free market" as a pass to avoid any meaningful discussion of privacy, consent, and social contracts in the digital age. If your "solution" is literally "tough luck" (we both know "no-recording" airsoft events are extremely unlikely to exist) - what has this added to the conversation?
> we both know "no-recording" airsoft events are extremely unlikely to exist
Let's assume it's true. What does it mean? That pretending to ruthlessly murder people while not being recorded is a niche kink and society doesn't owe this guy any special accomodations.
Thanks to the internet, which publishing prowess he abhors, I'm sure, this guy will still be able to find group of fellow degenerates so he can have fun with his exact perversion down to a T.
Or he can relax his requirements and perhaps attend swingers club instead of airsoft, because they don't usually record their hobby. Or keep doing pretend murders but relax his stance about recording it towards more mainstream sensibilities.
Is this sufficient engagement with the topic for you?
Or do I have to spell out that privacy is not special. You aren't organically owed anything when you are with other people, except for what current societal sensibilities dictate.
One more thing. You don't affect current social sensibilities with a blog post. Society is a function of technology. Want privacy? Nothing short of inventing some privacy tech will get you that.
I think for airsoft a facemask and pseudonym will do so you don't even need to invent anything, just apply it.
> You don't affect current social sensibilities with a blog post
Do you think they hoped their blog post would have the force of law? I think the many conversations started on the front page of HN were probably more than sufficient impact. You _really_ don't need to be so defensive of the status quo.
These kids have been on camera since they were in the womb. The delivery had a pro videographer. Parents had baby monitors with a video feed, later a nanny cam. Schools had cameras in the classrooms and busses from before first grade. Higher grades onwards all their peers had smartphones and social media accounts.
Some middle aged dude who doesn't want to be on video makes no sense to them, like that weird uncle of yours who in 2010 had no phone or email address.
It is very much cultural. In the 2000's I moved from Japan where they're very strict about public filming/taking pictures (it's something you don't do, period) to the US where people were uploading photos to Flickr and tagging people there. Completely different worlds, and we're not even talking about Gen Z because none of them were old enough to be even teenagers.
That seems weird to me. I remember in the pre-smartphone days when Japanese were the nationality whose tourists were snapping pictures everywhere and group photos in business settings was the norm when Americans at least were sort of thinking weird but whatever.
It is primarily a cultural one. You won't find many countries with the "well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces" opinion outside the anglo-saxon world.
The UK is a special place because culturally it belongs to the anglo-saxon sphere but legally it inherited the strict EU personality rights.
And I said nothing to the contrary? I just thought it was funny to describe the UK as 'part of the Anglo-Saxon sphere', like Rome is 'among the cities with Roman influence'.
No. I just thought it was amusing/redundant to describe the UK as among the Anglo-Saxon sphere; your mock example is irrelevant - the point of mine was that 'US culture dominates the USA' is obvious, I wasn't just... I don't even understand what you think I was doing, just stating some random other fact?
I'm a youtuber to support my programming project, and I see many people in my situation being a lot more shy about doing that. It's a lot of work to do it properly and takes dedicated attention to not have your parasocial community turn sour or vicious on you: it's no joke.
I wonder how much of this is people expecting that ANY media presence will throw them into the troubles people experience when they have all the media presence. I know if I blow up big enough (not much of a threat right now) that someone will come to hurt me, no matter how I am. That's not about me, it's about statistics. If I blew up that big I could probably afford security…
I think some people assume you'll be confronted with that sort of problem right away just by appearing on youtube etc. Sure you will… eventually. Or if you're staggeringly unlucky.
From a professional perspective, I never worried much and I'm pretty sure it helped me. But I totally understand if there were/are people who are very concerned about putting themselves "out there" when there is at least a remote possibility of some offhand remark or paragraph costing them their job.
I don't even understand how photos are less invasive of privacy. I try not to be too weird about it, but overall I dislike getting photos taken of me. Why should I put up with that if I want to participate in a hobby?
I think the generational fracture may cut the other way. My impression, consistent with the polls, is that the younger generations are much more willing to embrace authoritarianism when it advances their personal values and interests. They think that the threat of violence from the state to prevent others from forming an opinion of them based on information they don't control is perfectly acceptable. Laissez-faire is passé.
Sadly the problem is only going to become bigger with upcoming smart glasses once masses adopt it, everyone will be recording each other without consent.
In the event of litigation (in court or in the public sphere), one would be at a disadvantage if they don’t have video of their side.
Like how you should have a dash cam for your side in a vehicle collision. Although, maybe sufficiently convincing fake videos will make it a moot point in the future.
I think it'll just desensitize people. Long time ago a kiss on a movie theatre screen was enough to make people protest and leave in indignation. Now everybody is few taps away from hardcore porn all the time and not many people care.
Yeah, I feel like the new generation are recorded and published to the world literally on their first breath, right up until their funeral.
We had this idea that privacy violation is like pollution. But now it's like how our generation is used to plastic in the ocean and never seeing all the stars. It's just life.
I think there is an age range where all this "posting" has been normalized, but outside of that generation it's not appreciated. I'm old enough that this kind of shit is still taboo to me, and I know my young kid and her friends are all deeply aware of who's being photographed, and what to share online and what not to. All the kids seem to deliberately distinguish between photo/video of objects and of people around them, when they go to post things. They're definitely aware and careful. It's this middle age range of maybe 25-45 year olds (?) where a sizable number of people are just careless or even accept casual posting of other people's photos and video.
> There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube every single week".
And there's such a focus on the law and expectation of privacy in public places in these comments. There's a huge difference between someone complaining about being recorded in a small hobby community and complaining about being filmed on a public street.
My theory is that those "you just have to accept it" people are unwilling or unable to confront their own wrongdoing. Out of principle, and also triggered by the recent "AI uses all data available" situation I've tried to voice my disagreement when someone was talking a foto of me. The reactions were all around the same: Nobody was willing to just say "Sorry, of course thats your choice". everyone had some lame excuse or was trying to pressure me socially. "But my brother is deaf and just wanted to show it to his friends". As if I care if someone has a disability or not, especially since I am blind myself.
To sum it up, in my experience, people are just not willing to respect your boundaries if you make them aware they overstepped yours. They will always go for some excuse, instead of just accepting they erred.
I don't think its so much an age thing. Plenty in the younger generations are more careful what they put online than older people, because they have grown up/are growing up in an environment where it's a thing actually happening and they see the problems, and "I (believe I) can legally do this, so I will do it and don't care what you think" is a common attitude in older generations too, combined with lack of belief in the harms.
I'm not sure about generational. We take our baby to swimming classes where it is forbidden to take photos or record video — except on the family day. It's always the millennial or boomer parents/grandparents recording stuff and breaking that simple rule.
I think it's a matter of rudeness or carelessness about other people's rights and wellbeing. I want to record this so screw the rules and other babies' privacy.
The classes are pretty mixed, it's Belgium after all. If anything perhaps the next generation is so exposed to TikTok that they might find things less compelling to record? I can't say.
I wish respect and treasuring things without video evidence were on the rise.
I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on? Who's to say how much of you I have in the shot? Do you feature? Did you flash by? Are you blurred? Recognisable?
I was shooting video of a car park exit last year. (I was trying to prove to the shopping centre owners that it was dangerous.) Mundane footage. Some lady drives out in her car and sees me. Winds the window down and starts on the you don't have the right to film me carry-on.
I politely informed her that, I'm sorry, but I do. She's in public. That's the law (in Australia).
Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
"This sounded much more interesting on the radio", the cop says. They left us alone to finish the shoot.
Just as the author says: “Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.”
It doesn’t fall to the legal level, but a social rules level.
People who obnoxiously recording people in public, even if 100% legal, and disregard the wishes and conform of others around them deserve social consequences.
Some things should only exist at the social norms level. IMO it would be hunky dory if societies considered what “privacy in public” looks like in the modern age, and came to the conclusions like “no dragnets pls”.
You've got a very large, diverse population without a strong social identity and ever-fraying trust. So you won't consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group with which you have real social ties and obligations. Most people don't have this any longer.
I agree. I understand that there's no expectation of privacy in a public area and this is amplified by people having cameras/video recording capabilities in their hands than ever before. I think it's different though when it's at a private event though, like a birthday party, funeral, etc and folks shouldn't default to livestreaming
> So you won't consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group with which you have real social ties and obligations.
This is nonsense. People started taking photos of crowds almost as soon as the camera was invented.
While I think we all agree that this is crucially important, for many of us the affront to decency is not the capture of photons that have previously bounced off someone's skin, but the very idea that that person has a claim to those photons in perpetuity.
I think it's indecent to suggest that someone needs to avert their gaze (or in this case, their CMOS sensor) because I happen to be in the area.
Right. If you had a swimsuit malfunction on the beach in 1995, a few people got an eyeful of your unmentionables before you could grab a towel, someone might whistle or laugh, you'd blush, and then the world would move on and you'd forget about it.
If the same thing happens in 2025, there's a decent chance your unmentionables will end up posted online for anyone to ogle in perpetuity. If you find out about it, it could really eat at you.
I don't have a solution to it, or even know if there should be one. But I think it's undeniable that it's causing a fundamental shift in what "private" and "public" mean, in people's minds if not legally. We used to be more private in public than we are now.
Who cares, your body will degrade and ultimately decompose in few short decades.
If people aren't decent enough to wait till you are dead and bother you over the footage of you they've seen, you should go after them, not the person who recorded the footage. They are the ones who cause you inconvenience.
Do other apes want to kill themselves when their photos with no clothes on are taken? If not then it's some kind of sick culture that makes humans think in this manner. Fix that. It will need to get fixed eventually because technology won't go back. It will go forward faster and faster.
Even the richest man on earth's (one of them) solution to related problems is a tall hedge around his property that he gets fined for. There ain't no going back.
> Fix... The patriachy? You want me to fix the patriarchy?
Sure. Also sexism, puritanism, security through obscurity and abrahamic religions while you are at it. It's long overdue.
> There's a very simple solution we can do right now: don't take naked pictures of people.
That's a very temporary solution since in a very near future everybody will have their pictures taken all the time and not necessarily in the wavelengths that stop at clothing for one simple reason, technology exists.
Don't worry, you don't really have to fix anything. Just peacefully die and let the next generation grow up without your cultural burden. It's also a temporary solution but feasible for now since death is still a thing people do.
> That's a very temporary solution since in a very near future everybody will have their pictures taken all the time and not necessarily in the wavelengths that stop at clothing for one simple reason, technology exists.
What? No.
You can't hand wave away absolutionism. You can't just say "well thing X will definitely happen!"
That's not an argument, that's a belief. You've just told me your religion. Not an argument.
There's absolutely zero fucking reason why we need cameras everywhere taking naked pictures of people. That isn't just inevitable - you literally just made that up.
This "slow March towards tech gods" thing I see pisses me off beyond belief.
Because people act like it's an argument or a style of logic. No. Its a religion. You're a scientologist. You don't need me, or hackernews, you need a fucking therapist.
I mean, do you even hear yourself? You're saying we should be allowed to take as many pictures of nude women and girls as we want because you believe, some day, some Angelic tech will appear that will be omnipotent.
Dude, you sound insane. Like legitimately insane.
Also, the whole "well technology exists!!1" mindset is just so obviously fucking wrong and stupid.
You know what other technology exists right now? Today? Guns.
Does that mean I can shoot you in the face? Well the technology exists! Making murder illegal is a temporary solution! The real solution is teleporting to an alternate reality where evil does not exist!
> Fix... The patriachy? You want me to fix the patriarchy?
Uhhh, yeah. Instead of crippling society by suggesting we remove our eyeballs or brains (or their electronic equivalents), let's fix the actual problems.
Your use of the "playing stupid" cudgel is not helpful. Instead of accusing others of playing dumb, let's hear: how do _you_ see an internet age free of patriarchal and sexist structures emerging?
> Your use of the "playing stupid" cudgel is not helpful.
Its not meant to be helpful, it's meant to be true. Sorry about it.
> Uhhh, yeah. Instead of crippling society by suggesting we remove our eyeballs or brains (or their electronic equivalents), let's fix the actual problems.
Ahh see here's the underlying problem: you have a religious belief that you're quickly trying to pass off as an argument!
You cannot, under any circumstances, just compare humans to computers for free.
Humans have special rights, and have always had special rights, forever. You cannot just undo millions of years of understanding and expect me to go along with it.
A camera DOES NOT HAVE RIGHTS. A camera is not an eyeball. And LLM is not a brain. And so on and so on.
Some LLM singularly type folk, call them tech Christians, hold the belief that technology will soon supercede humanity and therefore LLMs are equivalent to Brains.
But that is a belief. Let me repeat that. That is a belief. That is not argument.
Right now, computer programs do not have rights. Its not an if, not a but, not a maybe - they don't have rights.
We're allowed to do this because we are human. We give ourselves special privileges.
That's why if I eat a good steak then that's just a nice dinner. But if I chop you up and eat you, I'm going to prison.
We haven't even given fucking cows rights yet. And they're literally alive and conscious. We can't just give cameras or programs rights. Come on man.
> Instead of accusing others of playing dumb, let's hear: how do _you_ see an internet age free of patriarchal and sexist structures emerging?
Slowly, over time, and predominantly not by objectifying women by proposing we should be allowed to take naked pictures of them whenever we want. Duh.
> Do other apes want to kill themselves when their photos with no clothes on are taken? If not then it's some kind of sick culture that makes humans think in this manner. Fix that.
> Young girls are killing themselves every day over something you're saying "who cares" about
...I think this advances the point GP makes. We have allowed obsession over body image to take on religious proportions (falling off both ends of the spectrum, toward tiktok swimsuit edition on one end, and the burka on the other).
Part of this obsession is the claim of ownership of every photon that bounces off one's skin until it is eventually captured by someone else's eye (biological or electronic).
A healthy internet age is one in which we find comfort in our bodies, fitness in our habits, and security without needing to control every depiction of us.
I have no problem with that, but there are a lot of commenters here arguing that it should be enforced at a legal level, rather than a social rules level.
For a forum that tends to trend libertarian, I'm genuinely surprised by the level of enthusiasm for using the government to police the photos people take and share of people in public spaces.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I can understand some people preferring not to be filmed in public or shared commercial spaces, but ultimately if you are truly in public then being photographed or recorded is just part of the deal.
I don’t think some people have thought about the second-order effects of things like requiring model release forms for everyone who enters the frame. Imagine getting a ticket or being sued by your busybody neighbor because you took a video of your kids in the backyard and they walked past. Laws like this are frequently abused by people who want to wield power over others, not simply people who simply want to protect themselves.
When you extend the thinking to topics like news reporting and journalism it becomes obvious why you don't want laws requiring everyone to give consent to have video shared of themselves in public: No politician would ever allow footage of themselves to be shared unless it's picture perfect and in line with what they want you to see.
I don't think the author was arguing at all that these things should be illegal, more just that there should be more consideration of other people's preferences where possible.
It's also legal to play an annoying song on repeat all day on a quiet hiking trail, but people (rightfully) recognize that as improper socially.
>I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I don't know about that. Aroudn this time was the peak of "Glassholes" for those who remember that phenomenon. People really didn't want someone to be potentially, passively recording their conversation. Would that not be a thing should Google re-launch Google Glass today? That might be a real factor given how Meta is trying to push AR glasses.
> I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic.
My very very strong gut feeling is that this is an influx of bots muddying the waters of discussion in concert with the unleashing of the secret police force that is ICE.
It seems to me that every real person sees the crucial importance of public photography in peacefully maintaining accountability.
And of course nobody in this discussion has said anything against photographing officials and news-worthy events.
"You should not publish photos/videos of private individuals without consent or a very good reason" and "you should be able to freely document police activity" do not contradict each other.
Is that true? There are many level of exercise of political, social, and economic power that happen in the commons. The camera is a primary tool of defense against injustice in this area.
Restrictions (especially with the force of law, but also social pressures) of the basic and deeply human capacity to capture photons and vibrations, and to make depictions of the results of that capture, are invariably used by the more powerful against the less powerful. eg: cops playing "copyrighted" material to prevent posting to youtube.
Much safer and fairer is to just give ourselves the same rights we might imagine are afforded to an alien, 4 light years away, looking through an extremely powerful telescope. Do you suggest that earth laws extend to this alien? Is she prohibited from posting the activities she can see of ours through her telescope?
Maybe our society has failed if publishing such photos is needed to maintain accountability... I really do not see that step for actually functioning society.
...we have evolved eyes, brains capable of retaining visual memory of what they capture, and communications media capable of describing and depicting those captured photons.
If you believe in the basic right of general purpose computing - not just a political right, but the idea that general purpose computing is the lifeblood of the internet age - then it seems to follow logically that the capture of photons and depiction thereof are part of the functioning the commons.
Part of the issue is, big portion of the footage being recorded, is not worth recording, let alone publishing. (Except for personal value of the person recording, but that doesn't require public sharing)
With the OP example, people getting recorded are not bystanders catching stray camera focus, they are the subject of the video. Without other participants, there would be little 'content'. Imagine going to an indoor climbing venue, recording someone else, and publishing just that.
Not to mention "auditors", whose goal is to use the ambiguous nature of feels-like-a-privacy-invasion-but-legally-isnt when you stick a camera in someone's face in a public place to try and get a rise out of people and prance around as victim.
I think this is a case where the reasonable person test is excellent. Is this use of a camera reasonable for personal/professional purposes
You should be expected to take reasonable steps not to victimise someone by use of a video camera, subject to public interest. That means filming strangers with intent to provoke them should be a crime but raging car park lady cannot reasonably claim to have been victimised. Consent affects what is reasonable without creating a duty-bound obligation not to film without consent.
We already have "reasonable expectations of privacy", why not flip that?
The idea of public and private needs a similar distinction like libel and defamation.
Ephemeral public has no expectation of ephemeral privacy, but me walking down a street with a handful of people on it should not lead me to expect that being recorded and having it broadcast to the entire human race, permanently, for eternity.
>...but me walking down a street with a handful of people on it should not lead me to expect...
You shouldn't have an expectation either way. If anything, the expectation that you will not be recorded is more of a violation of the social contract that the reverse. It's a public space that can be used for many purposes. If the effect on bystanders is minimal then attempting to exclude an activity is wrong. Can we say "I don't want you to see me, so look away whenever I am out." "I don't want to wait in traffic so everyone else has to pull over and clear the road when I am driving." "I didn't consent to this smell, so this restaurant has to turn off their stoves and ovens hours before I will be coming by."
Reality is that you can't exclude others if they aren't doing something that excludes you.
The way they do it in Germany is it's legal to have a recording that incidentally includes a person but it's not legal to have a recording of the person.
To be clear, I am talking about a hypothetical ought-to-be and not specifically discussing the current law anywhere.
I hear you and I agree public spaces involve us working and coexisting together, not tailoring the public space to what one person wants.
On the other hand, there is something in me that doesn't like for-profit rage bait creators monetizing how I react to a guy shoving a camera in my face and doing something irregular. I feel like it is a type of assault we don't have a name for yet but that should conceivably be criminal.
I just realize that I'm acting like the those that first saw the printed word or a camera and felt uneasy about it, I am just an old man angry that video cameras and globalization of content exists. I'm probably just a luddite trying to stop the world from progressing.
I think the context of the original article is important: at an airsoft range, you’re on private property. You’ve signed a waiver to be there, there’s already rules to follow. Having formal rules for filming would be a totally reasonable and practical thing to do.
Just like some gyms are accommodating to people filming TikTok’s and some aren’t, an airsoft range could have camera or no camera days, if that was something their players wanted.
It's always a possibility that the owners of the range have already considered this and found there is virtually no market for no-camera days. Excluding your most enthusiastic members to include a miniscule number of camera-shy weirdos is unlikely to pay off.
The venues for these things are private and so they can set their own rules. The author proposes a rule: A simple purple lanyard indicating that you don't wish to be included in the published film.
This doesn't necessarily need to be an article, because the author could have just handled it with each venue individually, but this just gets the conversation going about general sentiment and wider applicability.
My guess is that early on this kind of youtuber was relatively rare and so being captured occasionally wasn't a big deal, but that now the trend is catching on, a it's happening regularly and becoming a concern for some people.
The author is a tech lawyer. I think the article is there to start discussion. I agree with him that if private venues allow people to record like this they should offer, at the very least, an opt out. "Purple lanyard" seems like a good way. It's also a pretty easy spot in post production where you can either blur or cut as appropriate.
I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby).
In many hobbies, recording footage and reviewing it later is very valuable for improving. Think about football players reviewing game footage as a team to discuss what they did well and what went wrong.
Many hobbies are like this. The majority of footage people record on their GoPros is for themself. It's rare for someone to edit it into a YouTube video. Even more rare for someone to go see it.
The AirSoft example is interesting because players where so much protective gear and face masks that it would be very difficult to recognize anyone's likeness anyway.
The author suggests this was not a public space. Legal or not, it's more about not being a jerk. I think this is especially important in the context of a hobby, and the local community around that hobby. There are easy ways for everyone to get what they want in these situations.
So, why not get a release? Why not perform some light video editing to cut/blur out people who don't want to be there? These are not high bars to clear. I've done similar things, you have every opportunity to talk to the group and sort this out, and explain why you're filming and where you're publishing. Then people can come to an informed decision...
If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info? If it's for personal use, sure thing, but when you are making money on it then you should absolutely get releases and default to bluring non-released individuals.
I think the bigger issue is that our laws (in the US at least) haven't really caught up with this gig/creator economy. It would be no different than a blockbuster film group filming a war/battle sequence and having to get permission ahead of time from the location and individuals.
My work will have signs up or ask explicitly if they are filming and intend to publish. If you go to a private org with the intention of filming, you should follow the same rules for a full-budget production group.
> If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info?
The model release laws are usually tied to commercial use where some endorsement is implied.
That’s why your company must secure a model release when filming in your office: The material is being used in a manner related to the company and as an employee in the video you are implicitly part of that.
If the AirSoft facility was filming customers and using that footage in an ad, they would probably require model release forms.
There are freedom of speech protections covering the capture of likeness for artistic display, editorial use, and so on.
If the YouTuber made some video in this case as an ad for some AirSoft product and included other people in it without model release forms in a way that implied they were part of the endorsement, they could be in trouble. If they’re just making videos reporting on their games then I doubt there’s an argument that you could make requiring a model release, even if the channel was monetized.
This is also why news channels don't need to secure model release forms when reporting on public events. If we required everyone to do the model release form thing to show any video of them, you would never see any negative videos of politicians or criminals agin.
The alternative is for the venue to have "recording time" and "non recording time." If you go during non recording time, you're not allowed to bring cameras into the space. And if you don't want to be recorded, you go then. And if you want to record, go during recording time.
Think of it like a public pool. It is unreasonable to say that there should be public pools that children aren't allowed into, but it's also unreasonable to expect all adults to want to swim with children. This is why we have the concept of adult swim time.
Blur the people who didn’t give consent. The problem is cultural, not technical. Even YouTube has the native ability to blur out faces at the click of a button.
Stop taking video in public, or at least of the public. You just assume you should be able to do that and the whole world should adjust to your preference. Maybe it should be the other way around.
Do you also support a blanket ban of CCTV in public spaces? I am pretty sure that the bank had a camera in the ATM recording a public pavement 24/7 and nobody bats an eye.
> Do you also support a blanket ban of CCTV in public spaces?
I'm not sure I support anything. I'm just pointing out that there is a path available if you don't just assume that you should be allowed to take video.
But it wouldn't bother me at all to have, say, a rule that you couldn't have a surveillance camera covering any space you didn't own, and furthermore that if you had a camera covering a space that you did own that was open to the public, and recordings would be deleted after say 24 hours unless there was special justification to keep a specific one.
Here in Spain if you don't get explicit consent you can get sued for publishing the video (it's fine if you only showed it to the shop owner and didn't publish it), but if someone tells you explicitly they don't want to be recorded you have to stop and delete the video (I assume if you refuse they can just call the police, but I've never seen it happen).
Well, the first step is not being sued and taken to court, but receiving a cease-and-desist letter. But for that to happen, the person that has been videoed needs to be aware of that his face is on YouTube, which in most cases you won't even notice unless it's a video with a very high click count.
OP offers a reasonable idea of wearing a lanyard or badge to indicate you'd like to be censored out of the final video. that's practical and provides community enforcement -- for example if someone publishes a video with a subject like that, the community can shame them for it.
You can use AI to blur anyone that doesn't give permission. You can't use the excuse of "it's too much work!" It should be the law that you can't indiscriminately video everyone for your own financial gain.
Yes, this is what the author is concerned about. There’s a big difference between being filmed incidentally, and being filmed on purpose for the activity you’re engaged in. Being accidentally in the background is one thing, while being the subject of a video and having the camera aimed at you is another. Even though public photography is also legal where I live, and I believe we should keep that right, if I filmed close-ups of people in the car park getting in and out of their cars, I’d expect most people would object and find it uncomfortable.
Shooting video for yourself is one thing, sharing it to a third party like Google, MS, or Apple is another. Unfortunately many people have been brainwashed to not consider or even understand the difference.
I'm fine with being recorded as long as you keep it private. Not with that video ending up on your Drive backups or OneDrive etc, let alone YT.
This is drawing a very different line from the majority of conversations in this thread, I imagine.
"Sharing with a third party" because you have phone backups enabled is very different from streaming live or uploading to social media, like most are actually discussing here.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
i think i would prefer this. i'd rather live in the world where no one can record or photograph you in public than the world where you're streamed or entombed in a vod for life.
Don't publish the videos unless you have a good reason to. There is no upside to just throwing everything you record on the internet. People don't watch the videos, your channel is degraded by having tons of garbage on it, and people in the videos don't want to be online like that.
If you stop pretending that a random video is somehow going to 'go viral' or make you famous, the entire problem just evaporates.
If you want to publish videos put the effort into making good ones that people will actually watch, which means raising the bar by (in part) finding people who want to be in them. Videos of random people doing pretty mundane things like their hobbies won't turn you into the next YouTube star.
Like most things with "Europe" - it depends, because it isn't one state with universal laws or even cultural expectations. Go to somewhere like Poland and everyone will have a dashcam and it's almost expected at this point(imho). But in neighbouring Germany you are technically allowed to have a dashcam, but any recording is legally inadmissable in any court case. So even if you have a recording of someone crashing into you, it can't be used because the other person never agreed to be recorded. Meanwhile Austria and Portugal have banned them completely, even for personal use.
Germany specifically doesn't like dashcams that record continuously. Legal ones just keep a short buffer and when they detect a crash or a button is pressed (or a voice command in fancy ones) they'll write it to storage. Because if something happens you have a valid reason to have and use footage, you just can't record people without a reason.
>I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
Only if you publish the video, if there is indentifiable information or when the person is the center piece of your video.
If you are professional company, you have profesional that do this for you.
If you are not professional, you can make the time, because you are not doing it often.
In Germany it's generally illegal to film people apart from certain exceptions (mostly public events and public spaces). Even when filming something in public, you must be filming the event/space and not a person or group who happens to be occupying it, which is a fine distinction. Even surveillance cameras have strict requirements to be legal. You don't want to be the guy who goes to jail for having a surveillance camera, right?
Tangentially, nightclubs put stickers over your phone cameras and that is a great idea.
I think there is at least something of a middle ground for almost-but-not-quite-public spaces and events. In this case the author is talking about airsoft games; it seems totally reasonable for the venue or organizer to enact policies, whether "no cameras allowed" or "purple helmet means don't show / blur this person".
In fully public spaces I think we're pretty much out of luck, though I do think that laser/lidar-based countermeasures should be legal.
Airsoft sites ban/allow videos in certain matches.
Not rocket science. We manage in public spaces like toilets ok.
They also point to purple lanyards in conferences and suggest an equivalent in Airsoft.
Why is this comment going back to zero? Does Hacker News not have the ability to move forward? Is this a central tenant to the nihilism worship that is Hacker News?
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
This seems reasonable to me. If its airsoft, how many people are involved? 10? 20? Just go around and ask people if they will allow you to post video of the game with them in it.
If AI photo/video generation continues to improve then it shouldn't be a problem as the photo/video taking culture will most likely die off once people assume any photos/videos they see are generated.
If I see someone filming me while driving I usually give them the finger. I suppose that's my consent for them to do whatever with it. I don't foolishly believe they can't do it, but I do suggest maybe they shouldn't.
The alternative is not uploading video of people doing a hobby.
I don't think your situations are the same as someone appearing on some youtube channel without their consent every single week unless they opt out of participating at all.
Well the majority of the facilities are private land, right, not public, right? Organize formal sessions during which photography is prohibited. If you don't get any takers, the sport might have left you behind.
> Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
> We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
Heh. As a photog I've have plenty of similar run ins with people...but only when wielding an SLR (or similar). Was once standing on a sidewalk, saw a building that looked cool, took a picture. I'm more into architecture than people. Security comes out from the lobby to accost me. I very politely told them "Dude, I'm on the sidewalk, you can't do shit"
I also had the local transit agency threaten to call the cops on me for taking photos. Literally of just the platform and rails (without people) when I was trying to document the system for Wikipedia. Even though on their website it EXPLICITLY states that what I was doing was within their rules. Ignoring the fact that it was totally legal regardless.
That time I just (metaphorically) ran away rather than dealing with a belligerent station agent. Was what I was doing wrong? No. Was it legal? Yes. But did I want to deal with the transit police? Nope.
The thing that drives me batshit nuts is no one seems to care if you're taking a picture with a phone. The latest iPhone have megapixel counts in excess of many DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I can be way more sneaky with my phone. By using a DSLR type camera I'm being very public that "Hey, I'm taking a picture here" that should assure people, rather than scare them.
The the author of the article wasn't in a public area, but in a private area at a private event, perhaps model release forms are a really good idea for participants.
What if there was some sort of middle layer escrow holdings platform for users to sign up to that has your identity, facial biometrics, and crypto wallet. The user can also specify how they want their likeness used, or if they do not want to appear, etc.
Any user uploading to a video platform has to run their video through this integration user-facial detection layer at some point in their editing pipeline. Payments are made accordingly.
>I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
Not every thing has to be recorded.
It is like all those runners and cyclists who log and share all their runs/rides on Strava without even taking the time to figure out if it really serves a purpose other than a vain attention seeking.
Good to know you reside on the other side of the planet. I wouldnt want to meet you in public under any circumstances. So much entitlement and disregard for other people is sickening.
There are a lot of '1A' auditors on youtube. They can be nasally and annoying but it's hilarious how often people go into a rage that they're being filmed despite the fact the people getting angry are doing the same to everyone else.
Back in my day shakes first there were places where someone could do things that would normally be mildly embarrassing because they were in a supportive community. In this example, it could be playing pretend and possibly saying goofy things or falling over and tripping or getting your butt handed to you by someone half your age or something.
When I was young, it would have been playing open mics as a teenager. I wasn't amazing but it's really important to play publicly in order to grow as a musician, and that means kinda sucking in public. I would not have become a musician if I didn't have that supportive community.
In this day and age, if I were to do that, someone would probably live stream it or film it on their phone and put it on YouTube, then It would get found by the kind of awful kids that like to make other people feel awful for no reason, then they would have found my like Facebook or social media or something, I'd catch shit at school, and I never would have touched an instrument again.
So yeah, save your highlight reels for someone else, thanks.
It may be an exaggeration but it feels like half the problem with the internet has been this sort of “dunk culture” that’s proliferated in the past 10-15 years. How heinous is it that anybody can gain significant notoriety by just providing a steady supply of innocent people to lambast?
I don't know if that's the best example when the presidential candidate running has literal criminal records against him. We are clearly not in times where "binders full of women" is an election ending quote.
It is funny how insular and US centric many of the comments here are. In fact many countries do have legislation requiring consent in many scenarios for photographing or publishing photos. And it turns out that it is not actually very problematic.
2. Recording people without their consent still happens in lot of other countries other than the US. I bet I'm in tons of YouTube videos showing skiing in the Alps.
Because the US has other laws that make the kind of laws you're talking about very difficult. You have to look at the laws together as a part of a system and not a one off set of actions.
In addition laws in the US tend to protect the rich very well and get wholesale ignored for the poor. That is Jeffrey Bezos will punish you with the full extent of the law for taking a video of him beating a baby fur seal to death with a bat, while star-wars kid will be begging for venmo donations in order to get thousands of copies of video taken down while law enforcement ignores the situation.
I don't think the law is the issue here. Stuff like #metoo shows how devasating effects can be even if you eventually sue and win. And the audience sentiment never really changes because they never come back to the story.
Mix that with the lack of general shame for this stuff and you have this weird state of affairs where you don't want to do anything slightly risky. Nothing silly, nothing that can cause you to be looked over on job apps, nothing that you enjoy by yourself but others find "weird".
I mean there is a "photo release" or "Model Release" contract used often when taking pictures in any private place that grants the right for the photographer to use those photos.
Not really, other European countries also have the "don't participate if you don't want to be filmed" mentality.
E.g. author says:
> But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conference
I've been to many such conferences, and they all make it very clear that all the photos can be taken and used in advertising by anyone, both in agreements as well as entrance banners. Same as in US.
Some conferences I've attended provide stickers to put on your badge and if you don't want to be photographed/published the conference organizers may pay attention with respect to their publicity photos. Of course, others snapping pics with their cell phones may not. (And, in Germany as well as other countries, I've never seen explicit warnings about not publishing photos of people at a conference without permission.).
Most people are pretty reasonable and aren't aggressive with their picture taking. But there are almost certainly photos of you online whatever the local country laws may say.
I would also push back against the whole "this is just being perceived in public" thing, because you're not consenting to being perceived by the entire planet, you were consenting to being perceived by the people present and in the community. Like if there's a bully in the community, the community can do something about it or you can at least avoid them. Like you are consenting to interacting with a culture of like-minded people, and you know they're like-minded because they all showed up to the same event to do the same thing. That is not true of the open internet.
I feel this has some parallels to concerns over house/porch cameras which are proliferating these days.
I have no problem with the idea that everyone on the street is recording from their porch... as long as it's for their own siloed use, and it takes a conscious act for them to share it. If someone wants to stalk you, they'd need conscious assistance from your neighbors. If the police are tracking a hit-and-run, they need to ask people for footage during a time period, etc.
But the moment someone says "hey let's network all those with object/face recognition so that you can easily trace every person walking down the street", then we've got a problem.
I agree that we need a renewed social agreement on "no perception of privacy in public" concept now that cameras are everywhere, are smaller than a pinhead, and cost pennies .
Laws aren't sacred, they are just the rule over the living by the dead. All of our privacy laws were made when the technology , culture and demographics were completely different.
The thing that I find more frustrating than anything is photos of children. I'm not so bothered about myself.
I have a young child - he's two and a half. Most people are considerate and ask if it's OK to take a photo - and I generally say yes if it's friends - but we were at a wedding recently and a staff member, total stranger, at the venue was laughing at him running around and asked if they could take a picture, and then got stroppy when I said no. I just think it's quite strange behaviour to want to take photos of a child you don't know. It's quite different to the professional photographer taking photos for the hosts in my mind, which you basically accept by bringing your kids to an event like that.
A mum at a playgroup just took out phone and started filming my son playing with her child. My wife asked her to stop and she again got quite stroppy, even though the group explicitly said that photos should only be taken with consent in that space!
It does yes but more like in a bad mood. A teenager who is rolling their eyes and making a comment because they’ve been asked not to do something could be described as having a strop.
I agree a lot with the sentiments here and I think people who want to avoid being filmed should have that right. But, as someone who doesn't mind (and is younger) I suppose I could share my rationalizion for it (as flawed as it may be)
One often mentioned reason is the fear that in some way your likeness will end up in something significant, or viral. That makes sense, it's the most invasive and significant violation. We "risk becoming the side character in someone else's parasocial relationship" as another commentator mentioned. I myself wouldn't want that either, but I derive some comfort from one main observation: virality doesn't scale. A lot of the worries come from the fact that "everyone is filming now", "everything is shared now". That's true, but the likelihood of any of this ever becoming popular or even seen goes down as the volume goes up. That alone is enough for me to not be that worried, at least not by the increased prevalence of public filming/photography.
On the other hand, this does nothing to limit the effect of data harvesting and government espionage, a real worry I might have.
It's interesting that you mentioned being younger. One thing I've noticed is that as people accumulate different experiences and social groups (not necessarily just because of age), they often develop different "personas" depending on the environment. In one setting, you might be an enthusiast sharing a video about a hobby, while in another you might be a CEO interacting with your team, shareholders, partners, or customers where you naturally behave differently. The challenge is managing these "many worlds" without them colliding. One solution that's becoming more feasible now is the ability to modify your appearance and voice depending on the context.
If my kid is on some fun Disney ride, and I take a short video of them, and also there are some other people in the background or also on the ride, I would still fee comfortable sharing the video. Well, I wouldn't, because I don't put videos of my kids online, but if I was comfortable doing that, I wouldn't feel deterred by the presence of others.
But also, if someone else takes a photo of my kids in public (or at Disney), I would feel somewhat uncomfortable about it, and I'd feel even more uncomfortable about finding that photo online.
I don't know how to square that, ethically. Sometimes I see posts on Reddit that go "hey, I was out at the beach, and I saw this couple proposing, and I got this amazing photo of it, does anyone know them so I can send them a copy," and I think "you just took one of the most important, intimate, private moments of this couple's life and posted it online without their permission," but it doesn't seem to upset anyone because the couple will look really great in the photo. Does that make a difference? I've got no answers for this, just questions.
I think conversation gets more telling if you include some more protected groups like children. And then more slightly more intimate places, like say pools or beaches and expand it to proper zoom and telephoto lenses.
Is there still in those case no expectation of privacy? Where exactly is the line? Maybe changing rooms and toilets are not public places anymore... But is the line really that clear?
I encounter people taking pictures, making video calls, and recording insta/tiktok/whatever videos in the gym changing room all the god damned time. I keep telling people to stop, but not once has anyone responded with "oh sorry". A belligerent "why?" is the most polite response I've received.
Genuinely curious: what concrete negative consequences are there from appearing in the background of other people’s photos/videos, in a full face mask no less?
Is he afraid that someone will be able to identify him as engaging in a hobby that some people might be judgmental about, e.g. a potential employer finding the footage and concluding “this guy spends lots of time and money playing a children’s game; he’s clearly not a serious person.” That I can understand.
But it seems like his position is stronger than this:
>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
So essentially, it’s wrong to publish any photo that happens to include people in the background? If I take an artistic photo at an art museum [0] or a restaurant [1] or a streetscape [2] and there happen to be people in the background, what possible harm could come to the people incidentally captured?
You're looking for a generic reason, I think, and there isn't and doesn't need to be one other than "people can desire their privacy for various reasons"
Maybe publicizing where someone is every week lets criminals plan their crimes. Maybe it gives away someone's location to an abusive ex or family member or stalker. Maybe people just don't want Google and the like to have even more data about our whereabouts and actions and identity.
These are all nice concrete consequences, but I’m not sure having public images meaningfully exacerbates them.
>robbers
Why would a criminal take time to comb through random, anonymous, uncategorized images of people to ambiguously identify someone who might not be home (and might not even have a house worth breaking into), when it’s much easier to just stake out wealthy neighborhoods and definitively see who’s not home and who has unsecured valuables, as has been done for centuries?
>stalkers
So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet to find the handful that might incidentally contain their victim? Someone that determined would just hire or use the methods of a PI, which have long been effective at finding people who don’t want to be found.
>Google et al.
The solution here is to regulate what Google et al. can do with your data, not regulate what people can post online.
>So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet
This argument is so poorly formed I almost believe it's in bad faith.
Both you and I know that a stalker wouldn't do that. People tend to congregate their online behaviors in a very small circle of sites based upon their physical locations, I'm not going to index files in Japan to find someone in Iowa. Digital footprints are both large and small at the same time.
> when it’s much easier to just stake out wealthy neighborhoods and definitively see who’s not home and who has unsecured valuables
Because it's risky and time consuming to be there in person. In fact it's even easier to setup a camera in said neighborhoods and have software track users behavior then to sit around there yourself.
> So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet to find the handful that might incidentally contain their victim?
Stalkers often have knowledge of the victim’s friends and associates and have no problem combing through their social media looking for photos.
> Someone that determined would just hire or use the methods of a PI, which have long been effective at finding people who don’t want to be found.
PIs will not do work for people without a legitimate purpose, as they could lose their license. Stalkers with ill intent will also be leaving a paper trail if they hire a PI. And non-PIs may be able to use some PI methods, but they won’t be able to access the full range of PI tools or PI relationships.
> So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet to find the handful that might incidentally contain their victim
Or use an image search engine that does facial recognition. Already exist, and likely to become more common.
> Why would a criminal take time to comb through random, anonymous, uncategorized images of people to ambiguously identify someone who might not be home (and might not even have a house worth breaking into), when it’s much easier to just stake out wealthy neighborhoods and definitively see who’s not home and who has unsecured valuables, as has been done for centuries?
Knowing your target's movements and schedule has also been an integral part of crime since forever. Also, you are again focusing on the generic - the goal being hitting any wealthy target, not this particular target.
> So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet to find the handful that might incidentally contain their victim? Someone that determined would just hire or use the methods of a PI, which have long been effective at finding people who don’t want to be found.
Maybe they know their target likes airsoft but, probably due to the stalking, has changed locations to try and get away. Looking at the few local airsoft places is probably way cheaper than hiring a PI. Can one easily hire a PI for stalking purposes, anyway? Seems like an industry that has some strong regulations but I don't really know.
Besides, you don't need to worry about things like a PI or finding random images if, for example, a friend or acquaintance in your group posts a lot. The stalker need only find that one person to keep an eye on their target - a very common tactic by abusers, by the by: being aware of your target's social circle and using it to keep tabs on them.
This also seems to focus on the physical aspect of it, as if getting attacked/kidnapped is the only possible result, but constantly getting messages like "Looks like you had fun at X" from an abuser can cause harm too.
> The solution here is to regulate what Google et al. can do with your data, not regulate what people can post online.
There are 2 separate issues. Should we regulate what people can post online? And should we expect people to respect our privacy, even if they're not legally required to? One is a legal question, the other is social/cultural.
It isn't necessarily about consequences. I don't want photos of me on the internet. I don't like the idea that other people get to do that without my consent.
I don't have any power to stop it. I am not even sure I should, or what limits it should have. But I don't think I should need to justify that as a preference.
what possible harm could come to the people incidentally captured?
That is not the point. If someone doesn't want to be in someone else's photos or videos without consent, it is their choice. It is their face afterall. It doesn't matter why. They do not owe an explanation.
The polite thing to do would be to blur other people's faces (or remove people altogether) before adding our photos to the gajillion others already floating around on the internet.
>>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
If you don't want someone to make a record of the photons that arrive at a particular place because those photons bounced off you, then don't let them go out into the world far beyond your private space.
Why are you trying to dehumanize the idea of taking a picture of someone and possibly posting it publicly by referring to it as photons? Yes we are all just atoms moving around in 3D space but it doesn't take away the fact that people should be allowed to exist outside their house without some random person recording them and possibly posting it to the internet. You don't care and that is totally fine but some people do.
I'm not dehumanizing it, I'm making it clear that photography is generally a passive activity. Where's the line between "don't record me" and "don't look at me"? If it's ok you look at you, but not record you, where's the line? Can someone use a telescope to look at you? Can a store have a camera and a live TV view of all the people who walk in? Can there be a live camera that captures the people on a sidewalk and display it on a giant billboard on the side of a building? If you're at a sporting event can they aim a camera at you in the crowd and put you on the jumbotron? These are all amplifications of visibility, which ones are allowed and which are not. And why should you be able to insist on the absolute bare minimum of noticeability when you are out in public?
How is it passive? You are literally choosing to use a camera by pointing it in a specific direction and press a button to make it record. The problem is how people who record videos of others are perfectly fine with it while other people might not be. It's not other people seeing me or noticing me that is the problem. It's random people I don't know recording me because I don't get to choose how the video/recording stored on their device will be seen or distributed in the future.
Businesses recording security footage is different because there is some type of social contract that they won't publicly release it. If I knew for example that the grocery store I shop at was posting security videos to youtube I would go spend money at another grocery store. I can choose not to go to a sporting event concert because I don't want to be on a jumbo tron. I have way to choose whether or not some random person will record me while I'm working out or taking my dog out.
> Genuinely curious: what concrete negative consequences are there from appearing in the background of other people’s photos/videos, in a full face mask no less?
How about if you're overweight, doing airsoft to try to get into shape, and bellyflop into some mud on video?
That's social media crack right there, boys and girls.
Can you understand why someone might not want that kind of thing posted?
I had this when I rode with a motorbike group. It was a loose collection of people that rode a specific route on the weekend.
I only went a few times, but it was obvious the people with the cameras were looking for interesting content and drama. I cut an open corner and ended up in the highlight reel as some example of what not to do. Even though everyone there was 50% over the speed limit and riding “dangerously” in the eyes of others, what got put on the video was the interesting stuff. And of course, you never got to see the speedo of the camera man as he went 2-3 times the limit.
Another biker I knew said he didn’t ride with those guys because they’re just out there to bait for content.
We, a group of people living on a street where we get a lot of dangerous motorbikers passing our homes, started collecting these video's recently.
Our goal is to get the roads closed for motorbikes, place bike-repelling infrastructure and to have police involved in the many cases of one-sided accidents. For that we need to convince local governments that motorbikes are misbehaving.
So we now sift through instagram, youtube, etc to find such video's you mention where they ride "our" roads. Or where individuals that we've seen riding our roads misbehave in other places. This is obviously nothing "legal proof", but it's a growing dossier. And also a clear reason why someone may not want to be filmed.
In one case, a motorbike lost control, narrowly missed a thick metal bar and plowed through two front yards of neighbors. Police was involved. We managed to find this individual on several other such videos clearly racing way over the speed limit. He lost his drivers licence. Not because of the video's, but they did help make the case this person was structurally misbehaving, not a one-time mistake or technical error.
---
Sidenote, to illustrate this is not a few "get off my lawn" people, but that this is an actual problem: These motorbikers are but a few dozen individuals over the year, yet their noise and the danger and agression towards others road users is out of any proportion. This is a quiet nature reserve where people come to run, stroll, watch birds, go swimming with family, drive grandma around, bicycle, skate, picknick. Where our kids play and where our teens cycle to school. On busy days there can be hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians in a sunny afternoon. The speed limit is mostly 30km/h (18mph), the road is 2.5 to 3m (8-9ft) wide, traffic from both sides. Motorbikers have been seen to hit 130km/h (80mph). Where children are cycling, couples are walking, fitgirls skating and so on.
I sympathise with this, people who are endangering others deserve consequences of the law. I live in a city near a straight road and often hear bikes step through 2-3 gears at night. I know how fast that is and it’s dangerous.
One of the reasons I stopped riding with this group was a few people there didn’t have a strong will to live and so adrenaline and confrontation was what they were looking for.
The specific route I mentioned though is 50km outside of the nearest city, through a wasteland and ridden at times to minimise traffic getting in the way. The best time was 6pm on a Tuesday night where you’d be lucky to pass anyone.
If you have a way to "punish the misbehaving motorcycle riders" while allowing or even welcoming the rest, please share.
We've researched this. It's a European wide issue that's discussed, researched, tested and so on, throughout many communities and places. So far, there's no way to prohibit only the bad actors.
Part of the "infrastructure" changes would be things like speed bumps. Where it pays off to ride below the speed limit, and hard to ride above it. But that then makes some misbehaving drivers use their "0-100 in 8 sec" that their motorbike builder once promised. Going through four gears on a 500m stretch. The disturbance and noise gets worse then.
It gets harder because many solutions will harm all the other legitimate usage too, or harm them worse. Speed bumps and farmers' harvesting with large tractors are terrible for our houses that then literally shake on their foundation.
If, like us, you look at "motorcycle riders" as a community, it makes sense to point at that community and say: solve the danger and disturbance that those few amongst your community clearly pose to others. Because the alternative is that we'll have to "punish" your entire community.
New people will always be popping up to misbehave. Addressing the problem at the infrastructure level is the only way to ensure it's permanently solved.
Kind of like "why would you want to build a pedestrian bridge instead of just jailing the driver who hit someone at that intersection." The odds that it'll be the last time are basically zero.
> There has been no “put on this purple lanyard if you don’t want to be included in the public version of the video” rule, which I’ve seen work pretty well at conferences I have attended (even if it is opt-out rather than consent).
This bothers me. The default should be not including people, and instead offer lanyards (or whatever) who want to be included.
I’m not sure if anyone has missed the delicious irony that airsoft is one of the rare sports where faces and thus identity is covered , pretty much the whole time. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a human face or anything identifiable in ANY airsoft video I’ve ever seen.
So while the author makes an interesting point about surveillance I can’t tell if he’s being ironic on purpose.
I wonder what would happen if someone wore a T-shirt with an ITAR restricted weapons blueprint on it or something. Hypothetically it would be legal to display that in public in the US, but illegal to post it publicly facing for foreigners to access on the internet.
Even if it were a gray area, the serious penalties would probably be enough to make someone want to blur it out.
> Hypothetically it would be legal to display that in public in the US
Would it? I'm certainly not a lawyer or ITAR expert, but I would think that if you walked through a public space where you couldn't positively confirm that everyone present (and everyone who might view it transitively via video recordings, live streams, etc.) was OK to access the materiel on the shirt, that would be considered an export and you'd be in big trouble.
I'm no ITAR expert either, but IDK how wearing a T-shirt could possibly be an export. My lay understanding of export is that the information would somehow have to leave the country; if someone looks at the T-shirt and transmits it out the country they'd be the exporter, not the person wearing the T-shirt. If someone records the t-shirt and transmits it, they'd be the exporter.
>My lay understanding of export is that the information would somehow have to leave the country;
It's not just physical items like munitions, but also things like transfers of information (blueprints, technical data, documentation, etc.) or services being performed, regardless of where (inside or outside the USA) or how (paper, electronic, verbal, etc.) it takes place.
Have a look at [1] § 120.50 (Export) and § 120.63 (definition of Foreign person).
>if someone looks at the T-shirt and transmits it out the country they'd be the exporter, not the person wearing the T-shirt.
I believe the person wearing the shirt would be considered the exporter, as that is the point where the information moves from (I'm assuming for the purposes of conversation) an USA citizen to a foreign person.
But again, I could be wrong. Safest bet is not to print the shirt to begin with :)
Hmm... I'd be interested to look at any 1A cases regarding that. I'm unable to find any 1A exceptions regarding mere information on weapons. The US is allowed to suspend constitutional rights at border controls, which is how they prevent exporting the information outside the US, but I'd bet dollars to donuts the blueprints/information part is unenforceable as non-commercial speech within the US.
Here's an example of T-shirt with a machinegun blueprint on it for instance, for sale in USA without any checks as to your immigration status [note US law considers a device that induces automatic fire as a 'machinegun' despite the fact the device itself isn't really a gun]:
I'll continue in the "not an expert" chain, but my understanding is that ITAR's prohibitions include communicating the information to a non-US person (a US person is a citizen or permanent resident), even if that is done on US soil.
My understanding following Cody Wilson's lawsuit to publish gun plans online, which is a more recent case, did not follow that. He ended up having to follow ITAR export compliance, although he was allowed unlimited distribution to US nationals and granted an ITAR license that might let him export under the conditions of that license.
On remand to the district court, and on the eve of changes to the federal export regulations, the U.S. State Department offered to settle the case, and on July 27, 2018, Defense Distributed accepted a license to publish its files along with a sum of almost $40,000.[6][7]
Nowadays you'll find most gun plans end up on odyssee or surreptitiously on github or something like that. If you go to high-profile 3d gun websites they will almost always point you to a decentralized server that the government can't go after.
It seems maybe they might allow you to export it, but you'd have to get a license first, even if they were required to issue it to you could take years of lawsuits that a youtuber probably will not pursue?
I would like to share an even more extrem version of this.
I come from a country that could be potentially affected by the Russian-Ukranian war.
A couple of years ago, the government presented a program for volunteers, consisting of a military crash-course over a weekend to get to know the basics. Military service is voluntary in my country, so I thought it might actually be a good idea to have had a rifle in my hand at least once. You never know.
So I decided to sign up and got a few documents to sign. One of them was explicit consent for the organizing party to use any pictures taken during the training in order to use it as promotional material. No opt-out possible.
You understand? They could take pictures of me during a voluntary training, and post them on Facebook or anywhere on the Internet!
I even sent them an email asking to clarify and if I could opt out. They refused and would not allow me to participate if I didn't accept.
I agree with the author, and it Reminds me of people who video at the gym. I think it goes to a deeper issue in our society: people love taking video of other people, and then put them on the internet, which always runs the risk of being turned into a meme, etc.
I lament that this guy may have to wear a mask, And I wish more venues had no photography or video. The last thing I wanted to go to the gym and working out, and I accidentally glance over at someone, who videotaped it, and then put me on the internet with some caption..
Sometimes I just want to enjoy a thing with other people enjoying a thing without any expectation that it might end up as "content" to be monetized by the algorithm.
I don't look forward to mass adoption of things like Meta glasses, where even the mundane examples of _going outside_ are all content opportunities waiting to happen.
>I don't look forward to mass adoption of things like Meta glasses, where even the mundane examples of _going outside_ are all content opportunities waiting to happen.
My first experience akin to this happened when I was at the grocery store during Covid. This guy stood near the checkout lines and just did a big arc with his phone filming all of us and mocking masks. Like the author of the blog sometimes I’m just like “it’s not worth it” but I had one of my kids with me and when I asked the guy to stop, he started ranting at me about how he uses an app that blurs faces, it’s a free country, etc. I just moved on but it’s like… dude, we’re all just trying to get through the day out here and I’m with my kid at the grocery store. Do I really need to be putting up with this crap?
I imagine if people actually start wearing any of these smart glasses in any appreciable number these experiences will be sadly pretty typical.
It might be legal, but it's not polite. It's a bit like blasting crappy music from your phone on the bus without headphones. Grown ups should know better.
People like the guy I encountered are basically allergic to discomfort of any kind. Even the slightest inconvenience in their lives is seen as an incredibly personal and intolerable affront to their liberty, and they want to make damn sure we all know about it at every possible opportunity! Hence the behavior.
If I were to compare it to a client relationship, it’s the kind of person who throws the contract in a partner’s/client’s/vendor’s face anytime there is a minor disagreement or discussion about details. Reasonable people know you only start pointing to the contract when things escalate to a certain point as it locks everybody into a defensive posture and now everybody is going to be rigid moving forward.
> Reasonable people know you only start pointing to the contract when things escalate to a certain point as it locks everybody into a defensive posture and now everybody is going to be rigid moving forward.
First, and arguably most important, thing in learned in tech & business. Once the contracts come out, it's game over.
I know when I freelanced if somebody started frivolously pointing to the contract I immediately determined I wasn’t working with them anymore afterwards. Luckily I can only recall like two times that happened
Ask your teammates not to take videos, or find a different group or a different hobby. But since they genuinely enjoy posting the videos, and there's nothing wrong with that, you're probably the one who's going to have move on.
You're entitled to not want videos of you taken in public places showing up online. But you're not entitled to getting that outcome.
I expect an airsoft venue is actually a private space, not a public one. Airsoft but-actually-in-public would have people concerned about a terrorist attack, not being recorded for insta.
To that extent, the hobbyists who like to create content for the internet should be asking for consent since their footage, and arguably their clout, depends on the participation of everybody else in the group. Otherwise they're just traipsing around a private plot of land all kitted up but with nobody to shoot. If they're monetising that content then they are profiting from the OP's likeness.
This is not far removed from the (fully understandable) blowback on influencers recording themselves (and often other people for rage-induced clout) inside gyms. These are also not public places.
> Airsoft but-actually-in-public would have people concerned about a terrorist attack, not being recorded for insta.
I live in Taiwan. My friend and I were drinking beers by the river one night and decided to go on a late night bike ride, maybe 1am. We grabbed citybikes and tooled along the river, which in Taipei in many places is a nice bit of pavement next to massive mangroves and then the river itself. We were coming up on a brushy bit when a squad of completely kitted out soldiers came out of the bush with massive rifles, night vision goggles, full camo, geared to the nines. My buddy and I both nearly fell off our bikes and were immediately thinking the same thing: Oh fuck the PLA is here. Common knowledge is they'd come up that exact river and make straight for the presidential palace if they were gonna do their thing.
Turns out it was just very enthusiastic airsoft players. Apparently you can just play it wherever in Taipei, there's not really rules about it? So people play in the riversides at night.
Their kit was ridiculous. One guy had tracer pellets. They let us wear their night vision goggles and shoot trees. Great time.
And they may very well have decided that more customers want to take and share videos, than there are customers who are bothered by it.
And nobody is talking about monetizing content here. There's no profit. If there were, that would be a different conversation obviously. But the post did not bring that up.
Also, the bar of “you have no privacy if you can’t figure out how the entity stealing your data is profiting off it” isn’t great.
At the very least, these videos are being used to train models. That’s a good way to bypass the union contracts that prevent Hollywood from digitally cloning film extras.
And also, some people could suffer real damages. Imagine if someone is lying to their wife about what they do on the weekend or about who they've gone to a conference with. Or imagine if someone has found themselves with dangerous enemies who discover where they go, what they do and with whom.
At the moment, these things are not the problem of the person taking the video
Since you're allergic to peanuts that means everybody should be banned from eating peanuts and we should stop growing them, right?
While directly providing said stalker with information seems like a harmful, and likely prosecutable behavior, the indirect providing of information is not a burden the general public should bear for another parties already illegal actions.
> Since you're allergic to peanuts that means everybody should be banned from eating peanuts and we should stop growing them, right?
My kid's school strictly bans peanut products due to at least one kid having a severe and potentially deadly allergy. It seems like a reasonable and necessary precautions to avoid harm or injury.
Peanuts aren't served on a plane just in case someone with a peanut allergy has a bad time as result. Peanuts (and other things people are deathly allergic to) are also not served or used as ingredients in restaurants where there is a risk of cross contamination.
What you've done is bring back the equivalence to a public place so that an absurd argument can be made about banning peanuts wholesale.
As far as any non-public situation goes, it's a simple discussion of consent and it's easy: just ask for it instead of feeling entitled to it.
No. It means you get a restraining order if there's a threat and contact the police the moment they violate it. We already have laws for that type of thing.
Preventing anyone ever possibly taking pictures where you could be in the background is not the answer.
They could also blur the requester's face for the second or two it's likely in frame in the process they're very likely already editing the video before posting
If the problem starts to become big enough, I'd expect airsoft venues to offer special streaming or non-streaming times, depending on which group is bigger. Similar to how Saunas offer special clothed or women-only days.
Heh, you could be right on this one. But on the other hand, if I was the one filming and I knew a person in the frame wanted more privacy if possible I would be glad to omit them or cut them out.
I was really thinking of imposing a framework where people know someones preference even when looking at the videos later. I would be fine even if there is no fine, if someone found me on one of your photos and say - look a lanyard, what a jerk for putting that online, without any additional consequence. EU came into my mind because of the existing GDPR and as a platform where this could be propagated.
No I would generally not want anyone to go to jail even it the footage wracks my life somehow, but I would want a mechanism to broadcast my preference to the recording world.
I think this is a key difference between US and Europe.
It seems like you believe that if the government passed a law then it will have meaning in society? It's still as meaningless as if you just wore one today.
I disagree. It wouldn't be nice to solve it, because it would mean nobody could ever take a picture of anything where there might be anyone recognizable in the background, without getting them to sign some kind of model release first.
Is that what you want? For innocent photography in public to be essentially outlawed?
The article is discussing a private rather than public space. We've got loads of private places where photography is restricted - usually when that space involves physical exercise (gyms, pools, etc).
I don't think it's unreasonable to have a level-headed discussion about how society and technology have evolved since those norms came into practice, and if they should be expanded now that photography is ubiquitous.
Absolutely at least publishing it. If you want to publish it on say social media. Censor in some way everyone you do not have explicit written consent from for that specific image.
Yes. I would like to go back to a time before everyone had 3 different cameras with them and the ability to share those photos to a global network so third parties can use that data to track what I am doing literally everywhere.
I no longer leave my house except for strictly necessary obligations.
You sound like you may need some sort of mental health assistance if you no longer leave your house, especially because of fear of some sort of global dragnet using Facebook videos that you may be present in. I hope you can get some peace.
And your want to make that the law, so you get fined or go to jail if you don't blur everyone's face on every photo you post if you haven't gotten a signed consent from them?
That's not a world I would want to live in, and I guess I'm thankful most other people don't either.
The ability to photograph is important for accountability and truth in a democracy, it's important to families wanting to document and share their trips easily, and it's important for art, among many other things. Fundamentally, it feels like a kind of freedom to me.
But it's interesting to see there are people who disagree.
I think you should be fined for posting pictures of people publicly without their consent.
None of those things require you to invade their privacy and enjoyment of public space — you’re just negatively impacting them because you’re lazy and antisocial.
Fines are how we handle such nuisances in other cases.
Nothing requires you to get upset about showing up in the background of someone's photo either. As far as I can tell, you're the one being antisocial because you're trying to make demands on what people do with their photos just because you happened to be in the frame. And it's not like they're trying to sell the photos or anything.
And fines aren't some kind of innocent thing. If you don't pay the fines, the police come to seize your property. If you resist, you go to jail. That's what you want?
Again, that's just not the world I want to live in.
You’re the one trying to include people in your photos without their consent.
Everyone should be allowed to enjoy public spaces without you imposing on them for your activities — and that includes you taking photos.
Nothing about their desire not to be photographed requires that you not take photographs — just that if you do, without their permission and with identifiable features showing, you’ll have to take a few seconds to blur that before you upload it publicly.
Yes — that’s absolutely an antisocial imposition on their enjoyment.
> You’re the one trying to include people in your photos without their consent.
You don't think people just happen to be in the background?
> Everyone should be allowed to enjoy public spaces without you imposing on them for your activities — and that includes you taking photos.
No, they shouldn't. It's a balance. When people play frisbee, that's "imposing" on me too, because it's not easy for me to put a blanket down in the middle of their game. Should they be fined too? I don't think so. I think I can just live with the inconvenience of walking 30 more seconds.
And I don't even know what you're talking about with blurring people's faces being so easy. My camera app doesn't do that. And even if it did, manually clicking on every single face in all 40 photos from the park that don't belong to my friends and family? No thanks. People can live with their faces in the background online, just like I can live with people playing frisbee where I'd rather be sitting.
I mean, what's next -- I'm not allowed to quote things people say in public and attribute it to them? I'm not allowed to say so-and-so was in this public park in a blog post? You don't have privacy in public places, because they're public.
Sorry. I just don't think parents at the park who take photos of their kids and share them on a public site with friends should be legally required to blur any passerby's face or go to jail.
If they want to do it voluntarily then great. But making it criminal if you don't -- I don't understand that.
Why shouldn’t they be fined for invading someone else’s privacy because they’re too lazy to touch up the photos on their phone? — why should their laziness negatively impact others use of public space?
You’re just making an argument for inconveniencing others out of laziness — but trying to dress it up in principles.
Because it's a right to be lazy. And thank goodness it is.
You can inconvenience other people in a thousand different ways every day. And should be allowed to.
The idea that laziness or inconvenience ought to be outlawed... do you realize what you're saying? The kind of police state you're envisioning?
This is a principled thing. What's next, I get fined for walking slowly on the sidewalk? For holding up the line at the supermarket for a price check? For paying in dimes instead of dollar bills? Think about the legal principle you seem to be suggesting.
We have numerous laws that ban those things in shared public spaces:
- littering
- jaywalking
- excessive noise
Etc.
And we impose fines for all of those — under the consistent logic that you can’t infringe on others use of public space with your own.
I’m glad that you can admit this is not about your usage of public spaces though — it’s just about you wanting to be a nuisance to others without consequence.
No, it's not about wanting to be a nuisance. Please don't claim I said things I didn't.
It's about not wanting to outlaw every possible nuisance. And you're right -- we do outlaw plenty of things. But we also have to draw the line somewhere.
Jaywalking is a great example. It was finally repealed in NYC. Since it's fundamentally a pedestrian-first city.
And public photography is one of those things where it's such a tiny nuisance, and the cost of regulating it would be so onerous, that we wisely choose not to.
In Netherland schools have to ask for permission to use photos of your children on social media or elsewhere. I have no idea if the same holds true for non-schools.
I think this is something you need to address with the owner or organizer of the event. If they say you can film, you can. If they say you can't, you can't. I imagine there might be sufficient demand for airsoft fights where video is not allowed.
I don’t know about the UK, but in the USA the idea of “if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces” is pretty regularly upheld in courts. You don’t have an expectation of privacy in a public space.
You might have some recourse if another person’s video singles you out, but just being one of the several people in an airsoft video, where your face is partially obscured anyway, isn’t much of a legal standing.
Yea, and in this case unless the property owner says no filming said person would have no legs to stand on.
In most 'fun' events like this with random members of the public said venue has a monetary interest in ensuring people can film in the vast majority of the cases. People go there to have fun, and sharing videos of said fun is but one more way to ensure they get future customers.
I do a lot of photography, including "street" photography, but I don't shoot photos of people. I believe that you should be asked for your consent to be photographed, and I tend to avoid social interaction whenever possible. I empathize with the author here. I would probably say "yes" in that situation, but I would also expect to be asked.
I also do occasional street photography. I'm opposite of your view. I don't ask for consent and take photos (even candids). People rarely have problems. If they have, they'll come and ask me not to include them in the frame.
It's really interesting that the big objection is really about sharing the resultant video (widely).
I actually feel the same, I don't really mind if I'm at the gym and in the back of a video someone's taking of themselves to review later to take notes on their form. I actually do kind of care if it gets posted to YouTube and now 100,000 people have seen me covered in sweat or struggling with something or whatever. It's something that's technically 'illegal' in a private space here in the UK, so why do we all just accept/allow it anyway? YouTube or Instagram could easily work out if the video was taken indoors and show a 'are you sure' message.
Just a thought. It's not that big a deal, of course, though to some people it might be (for good reasons).
As an avid beach volleyball player, every tournament and most league games have one or more people recording them with cell phones or go pros on tripods at the end line. Just part of the game.
Nobody bats an eye, I assume because we're already out in public, basically in bathing suits.
The one time I was accidentally captured on video, I was filtered out, but I actually wish I was there.
Many years ago, I went to a Green Day concert where they played 21st Century breakdown for the first time. There was a large video camera on a crane above the floor. About a year later, I visited a friend and we played Green Day's (then) new Rockband game.
I noticed that Tre's dance around his drums looked awfully familiar, and then at the end of one song, the camera focused on a statue next to the stage, that I was staring at before the show. My friend didn't believe me when I told him I was in the concert they recorded to make the game.
Unfortunately, all the people in the crowd were removed and replaced with faceless stick-figure-like people. I really wish my face was in there, because it would have proved that I was there, and give me something to look for when someone else is playing the game.
A counterbalance is that there's such a colossal volume of new YouTube 'content' published every day that approximately no one will end up watching an obscure video with your cameo anyway.
I guess the concern then shifts to dragnet automated surveillance of it.
We Brits don't speak up enough in general. An e.g. German would have no qualms about going up to the person filming and making their concerns known. That's exactly why it's become normalised
Also many people just flip out even about the most reasonable of requests.
So point blank refusal to listen to someone's concerns? Very on brand for the society we live in today. As long as something is legal, it's fine right.
Also not sure why you assumed there was any situation to be "defused". Weird. I guess you may be the type I referred to in my last paragraph
> So point blank refusal to listen to someone's concerns?
If you know you're just going to remain in disagreement, then hell yes. It's not worth the conflict. Now, if they could point to a law I was breaking, then maybe I'd entertain them for a minute, but this is not that.
> I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I’d be hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not done this.
I've done this several times in various contexts. If you ask in a nice way, it usually works
If you don't ask, it's very unlikely people will have the telepathy needed to understand what you quietly want
For air-soft specifically it is also very feasible to wear a full face mask and become very hard for regular people to recognise.
Great points. With Meta glasses and other similar gadgets I think manual consent is not enough. There should be a 'protocol' to announce that you don't allow your images to be included in social media. I propose a QR code that would signify that you don't want to filmed. We need to push for legislation allowing (returning) such liberty. After such automated consent is legal it will be up to social media platforms to blur and anonymize individuals with such preferences. Finally we will have a job where AI could be put to good use!
I feel it spans way wider than just hobbies. For example, when people film in gyms, which is a private place. Or everywhere you go, there is a good chance you will be in someone's vlog/photo/youtube video.
Last year I was at a concert hanging outside enjoying a J and my beer. Suddenly there were four young women shoving a phone in my face asking me questions. I was a deer in the headlights. Turns out they were live streaming and just talking to random people. It made me quite uncomfortable - who's on the other end looking at me? They were later live streaming from the pit...
Of course Ive had video cameras in my face before at concerts but they weren't streaming and the results were probably seen by very few people. Now its instant broadcast to whoever is on the other end.
In Germany, they have to ask him for his permission. If he insists, the video has to get deleted. If they publish the video without his consent, he can sue them and – aside of deleting the video – they may face penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment, though both are improbable in that context.
Why is it considered acceptable to shed millions of tons of tire dust in to cities where people live and breath.
In the order of environmental issues, these plastic pellets are insignificant.
If you want to get up in arms about something, look at how many container loads of plastic feedstock falls off of ships per year and you'll see a problem a million times bigger.
I have the same issue with board gamers. Now, admittedly it isn't as intrusive as audio/video uploads. But so many want to record the game along with the names of the players. When I request they don't use my actual name and just put Player A (or whatever) they look at me like I'm a weirdo. When did it become weird to want as little information about yourself to be online?
Every picture of you posted publicly will eventually be linked to you. Probably by Palantir.
There's face recognition. There's gait recognition. There's inference of the likely participants from cell phone data and known movement patterns. Some of this is probabilistic but still useful. Even if the matching wasn't done at the time, it can be done later.
On one hand: You are not nearly as important or meaningful as you think, and no ones brain will store and index your face for more than the length of the video. With online content the way it is now, you are a blade of grass in a continental sized grassland. It should be liberating to understand how little anyone actually cares.
On the other hand: The threat of being fed into a future AI-god is real, the the downstream effects unknown.
>I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly
I must be living in a parallel universe of airsoft players. I can't possibly imagine anyone in that space changing their ways because somebody kindly asked them to
I always wondered: who is picking up all that plastic waste afterwards? Never been myself, but I was told 1000s of shots being fired during one session is not an exceptional case.
The author talks about "Running around in the woods" so I'm a bit concerned that this may cause undesirable amounts of environmental pollution.
I would bet that dumping a 747's worth of plastic BBs in remote UK woodland is probably not as bad as everyone driving their petrol-powered cars there.
Yeah unfortunately those BBs are going to stay there basically forever. Biodegradable means it'll degrade in like, hella hot temperatures that you'll never get unless there's a forest fire.
Plus side I don't think they degrade into microplastics? And aerate your soil! :D
Though water bottles is probably orders of magnitude more harmful to the planet.
This is an issue a lot of gyms are facing; idiot "influencers" coming in and not caring who or what they film. It is really up to the private establishment to set rules for taking images and video within their facilities, but most will allow it because they want that almighty dollar to continue flowing in.
This is one of the reasons I use the free county gym — there are no influencers here (it's bare bones dudes slamming weights, only). I used to pay for a membership at a higher-end local establishment (and could still afford to), but got tired of all the glimglam of social gyms. The only thing I miss is the yoga class.
So sue. Don't expect legislators or online legions to protect you. Sue to protect others in the same situation.
The common-law tort of invasion of privacy grows to encompass new situations only through court cases.
Courts (i.e., judges) are not looking to create rules out of thin air, but look to reflect when expectations have changed in a way that tracks the principles behind the tort.
In this case, an initial historical period of permitting publication by default can be followed by a restrictive period of prohibiting invasions, based on the recognizing dangers from publication, e.g., permanent and lasting damage to one's business relationships through disclosing of embarrassing but irrelevant images.
To make law you have to get out of the realm of personal feelings and start expressing principles for the way people should live together.
They make PLA ones, advertised as biodegradable, but AFAIK the settings for them to biodegrade never happen in nature, it's ever so slightly better than the alternatives but far from perfect, or even good.
> PLA is only biodegradable under industrial composting conditions and anaerobic digestion – there is no evidence of PLA being biodegradable in soil, home compost or landfill environment.
I read up on PLA when I got my 3D printer because it's popular material for that. From what I understand, it's biodegradable above 50° C. Not something you'll find outside Death Valley. Still better than most other options, but it would be nice if we had something that was stable for weeks and then degrades nicely.
Not all PLA are created equal though. Raw PLA pellets won't behave the same way a 3d printer filament choke full of dyes, additives to make them more UV resistance, &c.
There are plenty of posts of people putting 3d prints in compost piles, for months or years, and visually not much happens. Even stuff advertiser as bio don't fare that well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tavrkWrazWI
If you dig up a sufficiently old landfill you’ll find pristine newspapers.
The idea that you can coat much more resilient stuff in PFAS and label it “biodegradable” is at least as big a scam as California’s $0.10 “reusable” bags, or mixed stream recycling.
I’m for taking each use of plastic, by global volume, and then banning them, in order.
We should probably start with fishing nets.
Alternatively, the industry should need to produce 200% as much post-consumer recycled plastic made from the same grade as they’re manufacturing. This would act as a tax, strongly encouraging investment in more sustainable materials. Maybe drop that to 150% if the plastic in the product is 100% recycled.
Not patronising, this was exactly my first (and off-topic) thought as well.
We have lived in our house for +15 years and we still regularly find small fluorescent yellow ball bearings in the garden soil from the previous owners family. These things are here to stay
I haven’t played with airsoft since I was a kid, but I remember the biodegradable ones back then had issues. They would fall apart when you shot em, sometimes deteriorate inside the gun and muck it up.
As someone who plays a lot of online games, there is a similar problem with streamers. While I don’t say anything I wouldn’t want to be recorded because that’s probably a good idea anyway, it is certainly possible I could end up in some kind a fail compilation or otherwise.
But I don’t really care, for one because the stakes are lower when it’s fully online behind a mostly anonymous account, but also because I am confident if anyone was actually watching a streamer in my game I would find out about it.
If the YouTuber at your local field was raking in views, you would probably know about it, and could you try to resolve it with them. Otherwise these videos are probably not being seen by anyone but their recorder.
Posting videos on YouTube is commercial use. Even if you earn no money, the intent is almost always to “grow the channel” to the point where you can monetize it, sponsorships, brand deals, etc.
Commercial use in most jurisdictions is handled differently from the “free speech” exception. There are generous carve outs for art though. Which is interesting. If I sell a photograph it’s art but if I sell it to an ad agency for use on a billboard it’s commerce?
But the world we live in is so changed, it is a very recent change where taking a photograph was almost always a 1:1 photo to print ratio. It’s very new the idea that everyone is carrying around an internet connected video camera that can publish live to billions of people. This absolutely changes the calculus and laws should be updated accordingly.
I don’t know what that should look like but it seems we should acknowledge that this activity is primarily commercial (clout is marketing and/or brand value a/k/a goodwill in accounting parlance) and that laws intended to protect art making maybe don’t / shouldn’t protect this form of commerce as much as they seem to presently.
To be clear: if you are in public and someone takes a recognizable photo of you eg your face and uses it to sell perfume congratulations on being beautiful and also call a lawyer because that use is not protected just because you were in a public space.
But you can make a print hang it in a gallery and sell it for whatever price you want. (AFAIK). Maybe there’s more nuance— could you put it in a book of your work and sell it? On the cover? Make postcards? NFT’s (remember those?) etc.
Anyway there are already limits and we should maybe enforce the ones that we have in some of these circumstances. I wonder if it’s already happening- I can’t be the first person to view this activity as commercial right? There must already be precedent somewhere.
Just like how every YouTube gear review says “company X sent me this but they have no say and no money changed hands” is pretending it’s not a sponsored video. It’s absolutely a sponsored video.
1. You are paid for views
2. People watch reviews on “release day” aka embargo day
3. If you get the product later you will have less views and less money, and you will miss the window of product hype cycle.
So just like every not sponsored review video is absolutely sponsored live-streaming a kids birthday or whatever is commercial and you need model releases. I guess these people will have to post notice of filming warnings at the door along with the balloons.
One time I rented and apartment (in California), and the agreement said they can make promotional media with me. I tried to fight it, but they didn't really care -- big real estate company is not going to redline legal agreement for me.
I was having a similar discussion regarding the Renn faire this weekend. It's silly fun, but it used to be you could dress up as your persona and escape for a while (see also: larping, SCA, or really any number of similar outlets) . However now everything is being recorded, and those recordings act both as unwanted publicity and as a method of cultural mining and extraction
What once was a funny little niche character at the faire is now a TikTok tourist spot.
Where once you could dress up as your pseudo anonymous alter ego with friends and have fun, now you get recorded without consent and get to enjoy all the perks that can come with
Ultimately it will be up to us as a society to determine what is acceptable or how to communicate boundaries for this new element in our culture, with the understanding (to the authors point) that some of us will be against it and others will be enthusiastically for it.
Social dance (swing, Latin, etc) has some of this too. I think generally where most scenes have fallen is “only film yourself and your friends, unless it’s something intentionally performative like a jam circle or competition, in which case go nuts.”
Not to mention EDM festivals. Remote bush doofs where everyone is off their chops, escaping reality, dancing during the day, exposed in the light.
Being recorded in 4k from different angles including action cams on people's heads on the dance floor, is a far cry from the relative anonymity of festivals of old. I remember when the only people who'd see you all bright eyed and bushy tailed were other participants in the party mayhem, which is how it should be.
Is the airsoft range on public property? If not, you could probably complain to the owners. If its on public property then you probably can't do much about it except complain to YouTube and ask them to take it down.
Google Glass has been a thing for 12 years, Snapchat's glasses have been around for 9. And you rarely see someone using them. (I'm aware of reports of ICE officers wearing the Meta glasses, but this is probably an extension of norms around police bodycams)
I think the issue is "available to the whole world". "Back in the day" people would take photos or even videos (remember camcorders?) and it wasn't a big deal because well, only that person would have it and maybe show it to some friends or family (or give you a copy).
But now it means archived for the whole world to see, potentially forever. 30 years from now, someone might dig it up.
So it's not so much about the photography (which as someone pointed out, might be allowed in public places), it's about posting the photos/videos into a potentially eternal public archive.
Maybe those who don't want to be filmed should be walking around with some portable LIDAR device, de facto breaking the cameras of people who don't respect their desire to not be filmed.
I have changed my mind on this topic recently. I believe that when you video in public everyone that gets videoed should require explicit permission or their face and voices should be removed. The only exceptions would be videoing public servants and if a crime is being committed. Videoing for private consumption would also be allowed in my opinion but not if it's posted in a way that more than a handful of people could see or if its uploaded to a site.
With AI this is entirely possible and if you are going to post videos on youtube or anything, you should be able to afford the removal of non-verified participants.
The author describes the sentiment nicely. I don’t like it, it feels icky but I also don’t ask people to stop. I just wish that culturally it wasn’t assumed to be ok by default
> Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
This is not clear at all to me.
When you go into public you’re accepting that you might be filmed. The reality is that you are being filmed constantly. It’s just that it bothers you sometimes.
It reminds me of The Light of Other Days (a book about a society where technology makes any privacy impossible). Nearly everybody gets over it really quick and the world moves on.
The good news about this is that hardly any normal person would ever watch these Airsoft videos for more than 5 or 10 seconds.
The evidence I present is that I have never seen someone complain about someone else filming in public. I’m not sure that the articles position on HN says anything about the majority opinion on a topic, only that it’s of interest.
I have practiced "street photography" for years, where I purposefully take pictures of people on the street. Sometimes people ask what I'm doing, I tell them, and they say "cool can I see the pictures"? Sometimes I send them a file or whatever. No one's gotten all out of sorts over it.
So you only have to worry about consequences from not-normal people, and that's the good news?
EDIT: to bring a specific real-world example: A friend of mine does classes at a local studio that also offers martial arts courses, and some of the local right-wing bubble has gotten it in their head that this has to be "antifa combat training" and keeps screaming that this needs to be monitored. The current local government has been ignoring them, but a lot of people are probably quite happy now that there isn't an easy-to-get public record of who was there and "needs a visit".
In Airsoft, there's a niche audience for people wanting to see other people get hit. Just like there's a niche audience for people who like watching car crashes. Just like there's a niche audience for people who like...
While you may not like being recorded, the player is well within their right to do so. Just label them a "mech" and award 5 points for the take down. If you have a squad of filmers, put them all together. Your problem is now isolated to the roaming mech beast in the woods. Flank right and live out your day.
>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.
Why?
I dont ask this dismissively. Im not suggesting he's unjustified. That's just the interesting question to me and the author doesnt explore it. I believe this feeling is a new trend.
I dont think people had these qualms, say, 20 years ago. The world was a very different place back then. At the end of the day I suppose it's because 20 years ago, even with a totally permissive policy, you'd never expect footage of you to reach any significant amount of people. It would rarely happen and when it did there wouldnt be a huge audience to share it with.
But does it go beyond that? Would people have cared even if it did reach a wide audience? Is it possible people seek more privacy and control over their image than before? And not just as a reaction to how global everything is because of the internet? Gen Z being afraid of answering phone calls, etc.
This strikes me as similar to the attitude towards phone number privacy. People used to publicly share their phone numbers by default. You were included in the phone book unless you specially requested not to be. Now it feels invasive for parties to ask you for it, even when they have some plausible reason.
1- ubiquity: now, virtually everyone's got a device capable of capturing high quality photo/video of you at any time
2- discoverability: social media gives anything the potential to go viral which might put you in the spotlight or limelight, and the frequency at which things can go viral "enough" is way higher (more platforms, larger follower counts, etc) (this is I assume what you meant by "reach")
3- "content creators" are everywhere: people want to turn anything into something, through all kinds of incentives that were unavailable 20 years ago, so it's a much more active "capture and use it" context
Things just aren't the same as they were 20 years ago.
You can always leave or ask the airsoft organizers to make new rules. The more interesting question is whether there's some legal avenue to avoid being someone's "content".
Reality TV has to get consent + releases so where is the line?
> I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I’d be hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not done this.
I feel like the reasonable place to start is here no? Why write this whole post when this would probably be easier?
Even simpler, have a discussion with the group once and have cameras either be prohibited on all days except X, or allowed on all days except X, depending on the majority preference.
I relate some to the premise but for an entirely different reason than privacy.
Simply one of my less common hobbies has an incredibly high hit rate of gimmick social media accounts stealing videos for their own profit, with zero credit, while highly misrepresenting things. A problem not nearly unique to the hobby nor any one type of media, but a problem plaguing it nonetheless.
Its basically pushed an already obscure hobby even more so.
this is exactly about what is legal or not.
If I remember correctly in Germany there's a distinction about people being the focus of a photograph or people in the background. You can e.g. publish a picture of a public place without asking everybody on that place for their consent.
Another corner case would be filming police brutality. What if the police officers in question wouldn't like to be photographed being brutal!?
Local laws do apply.
This law badly needs to be updated to account for the fact that photo/video resolutions have massively increased since it was written, and "not the focus of a picture" is no longer enough to prevent you from being identified/tracked in the picture, which was the original intent.
Have you seen the cameras on cell phones compared to the cameras of yesterday? Resolutions are up but faked through software. A 640 picture from 2004 can be enlarged with clearer detail compared to a 2000px of today always looking sharp but never truly capturing a clear picture.
Yeah, I am not looking forward to Meta glasses being widely used. But that is probably inevitable. Being anonym in public will be a dear memory from the past.
Private site. The event site could hold events where cameras are forbidden.
There are other examples like spas or swimming pools where cameras are forbidden.
Agree with author. Laws do not necessarily dictate right vs. wrong. Filming others to publicly share that video may be legally allowable, is unethical regardless of the laws. It's like those crazy people who start playing their social media feed without headphones in public places like airplanes, or bathroom stalls....it's so weird, and annoying.
In the USA, anyone is allowed to photograph, video, or otherwise record anything they can see from a public sidewalk, subject to some soft restrictions like it being illegal to impede the movement of others. Any attempt by law enforcement or others to restrict this would likely fail in the courts.
Folks can get pretty upset by this in the real world.
The story is about a person on private grounds. They could talk to the owner and ask them to make a rule about no filming, but the owners probably like filming because if a cut goes viral on their airsoft grounds, it's like free advertising.
Perhaps it is a generational gap, but the idea that I have to justify NOT attempting to squeeze a hustle out of absolutely everything I do reduces my trust in any content generated in [current year] as nothing more but a carefully crafted advertising space.
This is a concern I also have in youth sports. People are filming practice and games then posting that on social media and sometimes the goal is to show their child (sometimes as young as 5) "embarrassing" someone's else's child with a move. It's unfortunately very common.
Somehow you eventually have to square the fact that if you do things outside of your home, you are going to run into other people, who are very much going to do whatever they want, regardless of any existing laws, customs, or mores. And factor that into your decision making.
I feel like I can't really have fun and be myself when I see people shooting video all around me.
I like to be silly with my kids and close friends, I like to act out around the people who find me fun or funny. But the rest of the world would ridicule me, or make fun of me, or make me a meme possibly.
This makes me sad because as a young man I could just be out there and fun, and at the end of the day, I held a place in the memories of my closest friends, maybe a handful of bystanders. But today, I could be gif'd and immortalized for my silly actions without my permission.
I disagree with the sentiment, you're in public, it's fair game. That just means I have to bend to your world-view, and you don't have to be considerate of mine.
This behaviour is a thousandfold worse when you have kids, especially at social gatherings like birthday parties. Other parents (at least in my age cohort) assume it is OK to film them and post it to whatever social media they have without even asking.
Here in Germany we are about to start our daughter in pre-school ("kita") and every single parent had to fill out a few forms explicitly stating if they were ok or not ok with having photos or videos taken of their child (both by staff and by other parents).
Seems like the most reasonable answer would be to have days where no video was permitted, and days where it is. Then you can attend on the days where no video is permitted but the ones who like creating and uploading videos can have their chances as well.
> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
Not wrong, it’s rude.
Be nice to just live without needing to feel like crowd sourced surveillance all the time.
There's several caveats to this but generally it seems silly to me to worry about people posting pictures with you in it. It seems a bit selfish to me to be concerned about "your image" being out in public instead of living in the moment.
I think though, with the internet and social media came 2-3 generations that really wanted to share what was going on in their lives with other people and with that came harsh resistance to even being in the background of someone's picture.
I thought this post was going to be about not wanting to share their hobby in a blog, pictures, or video form. This is something I have struggled with, because I would like to get started with blogging and a podcast but I have held back because a lot of people are so mean and harsh with their replies and I tend to take things so personally that it really hurts and keeps me from doing it.
The best answer is becoming comfortable with the part of yourself that enjoys your hobbies. Embrace it, let go of the anxiety. Strangers have thoughts like oceans have waves.
No alternative's being made. Only considering his own feelings, everyone else should follow. Expects people to not film (read: shoot) him because he asked. Neil's a bit of a Karen in this one I'm afraid.
This is a very reasonable concern in the general case, but airsoft in particular is probably one of the few social activities where it’s not entirely out of place to wear a balaclava and tinted goggles.
> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
We are getting monitored all the time, we are in an age where cameras are omnipresent. Everyone carries one in their pocket in the form of a smartphone, and countless stationary cameras are installed throughout cities.
When you walk through streets, buildings, and especially public facilities, you can see cameras almost everywhere. While it is often said that these devices exist only for security purposes and that footage is routinely deleted, this is no longer the reality. In many cases, people can request this footage through FOIA and use it as they wish, including uploading it to platforms like YouTube.
When I worked for a us company, as a European, i filed a foia.
And then a gdpr request from their eu branch.
Both were successful- i corrected some information i knew to be incorrect, and there are now signs by each 'hidden' camera.
How does the new Denmark "copyright on your body, face and voice" work in this aspect? I read that the intention is to combat deepfakes but does it also work for uses like this?
As a street photographer this constant video/livestreaming culture shift in the last 10 years has made it really hard to not make folks uncomfortable when out in public.
I don’t understand the author, everyone in airsoft wears masks? You’re an anonymous person, just a brief obstacle the cameraman shoots quickly on his way to the real fire fight.
I'm with Neil on this, but I'd go a bit farther. This whole idea that you somehow give up the right to privacy because you're in a public space is fucking nonsense. Your personal right to privacy should be an inalienable right unless you specifically consent, regardless if it's public or not.
Just because you possess a device that records images doesn't automatically give you the right to record/post/upload images of me without my express consent.
I think the laws around this are fairly antiquated. People should clearly have the right to photograph in public, however, I strongly believe that should someone take someone else’s photograph they shouldn’t need their consent to post the photo publicly or monetize it in anyway. Obviously, there should be some limited car outs like public servants in the commission of their duties, legitimate news organizations, use in court etc.
Edit: I don’t think k posting a photo on a private social media profile / group chat would count as public, but rather anything the general public has access to.
Why did you say "in the whole EU, I think?" It seemed to imply you grasped the context of the conversation already, but now the thread has taken what feels like a bizarre turn in a recursive direction.
You claim that it is not the case, so I would like you to point out which of these aspects is different in one of these countries. Do you claim it's not allowed to photograph others in public without their explicit consent in Czech Republic, for example?
No, read back on the thread. The person imagined a kind of law that limited public photography except for cases of preventing crime etc. I said it works like that in Switzerland. You said also in the rest of the EU, and I'm pointing out it does not work that way in the rest of the EU, because countries like Czechia are far more lax about public photography than Switzerland or even The Netherlands.
> People should clearly have the right to photograph in public
> should someone take someone else’s photograph they should need their consent to post the photo publicly
> I don’t think posting a photo on a private social media profile / group chat would count as public
That all sounds pretty similar to what I know from EU countries. Of course, there are also exceptions like photographing groups of people etc., but I don't think that goes the spirit of the balderdash's concept.
Wow, such a nice idea with the purple lanyard it would be great to have something like this in general, walking down the streets someone films you and them or even YT or viewers to scan/flag the videos in question. I guess EU could put forth such regulation - no biggie. Maybe we could also create a framework on existing legislation - design a lanyard, put a QR on it leading to a "I do not consent" site. Advertise it a bit and I'm sure it would be newsworthy, at-least in EU, not sure about the rest of the world.
I think even better option is some type of public opt-in. Maybe purple or green screen lanyard. Publishing material of anyone without one would not be allowed.
Doesn't seem too big ask to edit out anyone who has not opted-in. Especially in age of AI that should make it trivial.
Sorry, but why even care about this? Is it an invasion of your privacy if strangers see you walking down the street? If no, how is strangers seeing you walking down the street in the background of some youtube video a privacy violation??
It's the same reason why people are okay being carded, but not okay with submitting their ID digitally to be recorded and retained forever.
Meeting people in public has an obvious, logical bound. Being recorded does not. When you pass by someone in public, you're one of a thousand - passers-by see you once and then never again, they don't permanently remember you or what you did, no one but the people who know you care in the slightest.
When you get recorded, the data now exists forever, backed up in several places and basically impossible to get rid of. Most importantly, you can't ever know what will happen to this data in the future once it's there. Unlike meeting people in public, the internet doesn't forget. If in 20 years, someone puts up a service that let people upload a picture of your face and have it return a dossier with every bit of video you've ever appeared in, you have no recourse or say in the matter. It's "public data" after all, right? Basically equivalent to just being in the public!
Well, actually this could be just a means of letting people know your preference without direct communication. Maybe it could fall under existing GDPR regulation, as an extended part about a public "non consent" marker.
How would you solve the problem in large scale, low effort way?
- I was at public park. There was an event. I remember there was a warning/poster/whatever - this place features XYZ and is being photographed. If you do not like, do not participate or stand here or something along the lines.
- When kids came to my workplace as part of educational program to show how people work - we gave them out papers, adults had to give approval that their child will be photographed and photo shared on social network. If any would opt out, we would just photograph without him. I think the sole purpose of that event was to photograph on some background with national flag or something and just publish it online.
Sometimes it is ridiculous, but still this thing works like this: the school or kindergarten wants class photo: please sign here that you consent. Basically this photo is not public but limited to families for all the children that attend that class. So seems kind of too much, but ok, can live with that.
Attention-seeking behaviors (such as an obsession with recording everything and putting it online) are unhealthy and a possible symptom of anti-social traits such as narcissism.
Unfortunately for all of us, if public-by-default becomes the norm, then this is gonna lead to even more social cooling, more conformism and less freedom.
i'm not going to address the central complaint, but what i think is weird about this version is the venue: everybody is essentially wearing a disguise, and you could consciously disguise yourself even more with no inconvenience except less of a chance of being hit in the face with a paint ball
I think you can make arguments for and against the fundamental right to record or to not be recorded.
If someone is doing something bad/illegal, do we have a right to record/document it?
If I am outside minding my own business and not doing anything bad, do I have a right to not be recorded?
What is the difference between seeing and recalling something that happened vs recording? What happens when technology blurs the difference (for example if we all start wearing and using camera AR glasses)?
A purely technology-minded compromise to this question (aka how to support both the "good" and "bad" kinds of recording), is probably something along the lines of expiry and enforcing a lack of permanence as the default (kind of like, the digital age recording-centric version of "innocent until proven guilty", which honestly is one of the greatest inventions in the history of human legal systems). Of course, one should never make societal decisions purely from a technological practicality standpoint.
Since you can't be sure what is "bad"/illegal, and people will just record many things anyways without thinking too much about it --> then the default should be auto-expiring/auto-deletion after X hours/days, unless some reason or some confirmation is provided to justify its persistence.
For example, imagine we lived in a near-future where AI assistants were commonplace. Imagine that recording was ubiquitous but legally mandated to default into being "disappearing videos" like Snapchat, but for all the major platforms (YouTube, TikTok, X, Twitch, Kick, etc.). Imagine that every day, you as a regular person doing regular things, get maybe 10000 notifications of, "you have been recorded in video X on platform Y, do you consent for this to be persisted?", and also law enforcement has to go through a judge (kind of like a search warrant) to file things like "persistence warrants", and then maybe there is another channel/method for concerned citizens who want to persist video of a "bad guy" doing "bad things" where they can request for persistence (maybe it's like an injunction against auto-deletion until a review body can look at the request)... Obviously this would be a ton of administrative overhead, a ton of micro-decisions to be made -- which is why I mentioned the AI-assistant angle, because then I can tell my personal AI helper, "here are my preferences, here is when I consent to recording and here is when I don't... knowing my personal rules, please go and deal with the 10000 notifications I get every day, thanks". Of course if there's disagreement or lack of consensus, some rules have to be developed about how to combine different parties wishes together (e.g. take a recording of a child's soccer game, where maybe 8 parents consent and 3 parents don't to persistence... perhaps it's majority rule so persistence side wins, but then majority has to pay the cost of API tokens to a blurring/anonymization service that protects the 3 who didn't want to be persisted -- that could be a framework for handling disputed outcomes?)
I'm also purposefully ignoring the edge-case problem of, what if a bad actor wants to persist the videos anyways, but in short I think the best we can do is impose some civil legal penalties if an unwilling participant later finds out you kept their videos without permission.
Anyways, I know that's all super fanciful and unrealistic in many ways, but I think that's a compromise sort of world-building I can imagine, that retains some familiar elements of how people think about consent and legal processes, while acknowledging the reality that recording is ubiquitous and that we need sane defaults + follow-up processes to review or adjudicate disputes later (and disputes might arise for trivial things, or serious criminal matters -- a criminal won't consent to their recording being persisted, but then society needs a sane way to override that, which is what judges and warrants are meant to do in protecting rights by requiring a bar of justification to be cleared).
I feel this about all of the AI notetaking bots that everyone is adding to web meetings these days:
“Welcome to the meeting. Your voice is now being recorded and sent to a server somewhere in the world to be processed by an AI and you have zero control over it. If we were to get hacked, it will be impossible to you know if your voice will be synthesized and used to scam, abuse, or any other nefarious purposes between now and the end of time. Happy meeting!”
I’ve seriously been in meetings with 3+ AI bots from different companies I’ve never heard of.
On the flipside, if I'm attending a meeting, I should have a right to my choice of disability assistance. I have glasses to deal with vision impairment, and notetaking assistance to deal with short term memory impairment. The AI is a part of cybernetic "me", rather than the platform.
Many people are claiming it is legal but it's not that simple in Europe and the UK.
It is legal (in most places) to film people in public but it is not necessarily legal to post the video to social media.
The Irish Data Protection Commission says:
> There is nothing in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that prohibits people from taking photos in a public place. Provided you are not harassing anyone, taking photographs of people in public is generally allowed and most likely will qualify for the household exemption under Article 2(2)(c) of the GDPR.
> However, what you do with that photo can potentially become a data protection issue, for example, if the photograph, which contained the personal data of individuals, was sold for commercial gain or was posted publicly on a social media account. Under those circumstances, you are likely to be considered a data controller which brings with it a host of obligations and duties under data protection law. In particular, it would be necessary for you to demonstrate, amongst other things, your lawful basis for the processing of such personal data under Article 6(1) of the GDPR.
Go to a restaurant with friends or family for dinner - someone has to request the waiter to take a photo of all our faces stuffed with food, can't even have a meal without modeling for stupid photos.
Go to any event - we have to take photos, we have to pose for photos. Back when meetup.com was a thing, every event people were more interested in taking photos than having meaningful conversations.
Go to any tourist place - flashes everywhere, photos everywhere. I used to live in Manhattan, you can't walk 10 feet without some tourist group posing for photos. You have grit your teeth and wait for their photo session to finish, or feel bad for interrupting it.
Couple of years ago (I forgot exactly when) I noticed the self checkout kiosks at WholeFoods had video cameras. I can't even buy half a pound of tomatoes without being on someone's camera/database. As if WholeFoods is some top secret nuclear facility...What crime am I gonna commit there? Steal onions?
And on and on and on...
Who even looks at these stupid photos anyway? Do we really need to document what we ate for breakfast along with our faces, as if we ate some exotic fruit that is only available once every 25 years? It is the same shitty toast and crappy coffee
Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.
This makes perfect sense. I don't want to take anyone's photo (even those people I know very well, like family and friends) without their consent. Same way, I don't want anyone taking my photo either, and most certainly don't want anyone posting them online where it is gonna stay there forever.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
I find these kinds of argument somewhat odd, as they imply that "this kind of thing" is some unacceptable violation of clearly pre-established rights.
Rather, one must realize that existing in society always had the implication of being visible to society, and that public spaces are just that: a place accessible to all, where if you chose to be you must also accept being observed by its other attendants.
Some physical public spaces might be crammed so full of people that it's hard to breathe, while others will have them few and far in between. Some virtual public spaces might be breaking records with their viewer counts, others will never be graced with the presence of an eyeball. Streamers just connect a physical public space with a virtual public space.
Being recorded and published in a final edit of an on-demand video is slightly different (and not implied in streaming), but that is a much older dilemma that we have had more time to adjust to and hammer out rights regarding, and few would really pay attention to someone recording on the street with anything other than slight curiosity.
So no. I believe this is the society you must accept being a member of. The only thing that has changed with time is the medium (memory and word-of-mouth, paintings, photos, video recording and finallys livestreaming), not the actions. But as important, being caught on rando streamer's camera will by default only contribute about as much to your internet fame (and loss of privacy) as going to the local grocery store.
(For those curious if age contributes to the standpoint, I'd fall in the 30-40 bucket.)
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
> Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
Well, here is the heart of the disagreement. I suspect everyone agrees that the social norms are "clear," they just vehemently disagree about what those norms are.
I don't know anything specific about the implicit cultural norms of airsoft, but it sounds like the author is playing at a privately owned facility which I would expect to have very explicit rules and liability waivers. I'd be surprised if those rules don't cover photography.
This made me chuckle remembering the time a friend photographed a dog in a bicycle in Berlin and was yelled at by the owner until the photo was deleted. Photographing a pet crossed a big red privacy line. Seems absurd, but I think sensitivity to the phenomenon the author is noting will vary by country.
worth looking into Camera Lucida by roland barthes, sontag's on photography and for something more recent, bernard stiegler's writings on cameras as technics if interested in some of the headier aspects of what cameras and photography do to culture and human relationships (as opposed to, say, legal implications). i tend to agree with the author: the presence of cameras in community spaces have completely ruined my relationship to those spaces. ive seen people here call the author a karen which, maybe, but the last time i went to a small DIY rock show in my community there were more people taking pictures than there were watching the show. what value is it if everyone films and uploads a set from a local band on youtube? what is the point?
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
I feel the same way, but that's just not reality anymore. If you go outside your home, you're on camera. If your home faces your neighbor's door, you're probably on camera even in your own home unless you have constant obstruction of your windows and doors. I regularly see camera on apartment doors surveilling the interior of secure high-rise residential buildings. Guess you just gotta know when unit 18A takes out the trash...
This is mostly a joke, but objects in fantasy land are sometimes closer than they appear.
Major cloud compute and OS infra providers should provide a global opt-out of public bystander-recording. OK, record me, but it will be known by my face, location stamps from my device, etc, that it's me, and post-processing will anonymize me.
Legitimate public interest? EG, I stole your car and it's on tape? Sure, provide the cloud provider with a warrant for 'originals'.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
I think this is the rule that is currently under renegotiation in society. At one point you could imagine saying "I should be able to go out in public without having had a certain medical procedure (like a vaccine)." Now, I don't agree with that.
The overton window of behaviours is always shifting and not always in ways that we like.
It's a legally grey area. In most countries, you can't really stop people from shooting video and photos in public spaces. But you can do something about publishing the material. Most stock photography websites and similar websites will insist on permission from identifiable individuals in photos or videos for this reason. And a lot of conferences or fairs will give notice of the fact that there will be photos and videos taken at such events (thus clearly marking them as public events). I've seen that here in Germany at least.
And this is a sensitive topic here. Some people here get upset if you point a camera at them and will aggressively demand that you delete their photo. I've seen that happen a few times (not to me). Some people really get pissed off over this here and they tend to known their rights. So good luck arguing otherwise.
If you look at the rules here, they are quite sensible. You can't just publish photos or videos with recognizable people in them unless it's clearly a public event (like a demonstration, concert, etc.). Taking the photos is mostly OK (up to a point). And there's an exemption for private photos. But you can't just publish photos with people recognizably in them unless falls under the narrow set of exceptions to that rule.
Photos of people actually count as personally identifiable information under GDPR. So, people can object to that being stored by companies, ask for it to be removed, and companies need valid reasons for storing such photos.
In this case, the person is in the UK where people simply have less protections against this. Which is something the tabloid press there tends to abuse by trying to get photos of famous people in private / embarrassing situations by all means possible. That would be a lot less legal in Germany and expose you to lawsuits if you were to do that. The German tabloid press has a rich history of that happening.
In the US in most states it's illegal to monetize the image of children [without consent] unless it's just incidental to the film.
I'd imagine if 17 year olds were allowed you could make it legally dicy enough for someone that they'd not want to do it, if they were profiting off of it.
I feel like at least part of the issue is that the internet is a different kind of public than everywhere else. it's not transient, and it's not limited to the people who happened to be in the same part of public as you at the same time. instead it's a fully-automatable, permanent record that is 100% available to all present and future humans. that deserves consideration to my mind.
I found this frustrating to read. First the other airsoft participates he seems to seem to be okay with people filming. There is clearly no expectation of privacy.
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
>
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
I don't like it that things are recorded around the clock or by anyone and be broadcast anywhere, but the ship on this has sailed long ago.
> In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby).
>
> But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conferences, with people saying “Of course I’m free to take photos of identifiable individuals without their consent and publish them online”.
Again is there an expectation of privacy? Are people told that they are not allowed to use their cameras?
It is whether the is a expectation of privacy. A McDonald's or a Burger King is "private property", but there is no expectation of privacy. I would not expect privacy at an airsoft, paint-balling or any other outdoor activity even if it is on private property.
A public toilet cubical is a public place with an expectation of privacy.
> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
It depends whether there was an expectation of privacy as whether it should feel wrong. If there isn't an expectation of privacy. Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".
> This isn’t about what is legal (although, in some cases, claims of legality may be poorly conceived), but around my own perceptions of a private life, and a dislike for the fact that, just because one can publish such things, that one should.
How else is this supposed to be tacked if not by what is legally permissible?
> There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany, where you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.
> Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".
The author knows what the laws are, but presumably disagrees with the reasoning behind the laws and is criticising them. If someone came to Switzerland and started complaining that they can't install a doorbell camera, then it would also be a case of them 'not liking it' - but they have a right to voice their opinion.
> Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany, where you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.
Obviously the law is different in different places.
However. The person is talking about Newbury which I used to live near, which is in the UK. So they are talking about their experience in the UK.
So the only law the is applicable here is UK law.
> The author knows what the laws are, but presumably disagrees with the reasoning behind the laws and is criticising them.
He specifically says at the end "This isn’t about what is legal". I also don't believe he understands the law, since he often conflates/misuses the use of term private throughout the entire article.
What he understands as private isn't what is understood by almost anyone (both legal and colloquially).
>There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
I had a guy at Walmart yesterday call the cops on me because I took a picture of the strip mall it was in on a small point and shoot and he assumed I was for some reason taking a picture of him, his wife, and kid. He was literally just a random car in the middle of a public parking lot. The officer talked to him and asked that I stepped away and then she came to me. The conversation went exactly like this.
Before she could even start to talk I told her I assumed that she knew that there was no expectation of privacy in public and that I could take a thousand pictures and there would be nothing that she could do about it. She agreed. She then asked if I'd like to give her my name (because she had no right to demand I do), and I said no I wouldn't like that. Then came the kicker. Would you like to just show me you don't have a picture of him. I said no I won't because I did nothing wrong and there's no reason for you to see my pictures. All of these were phrased as requests to bypass illegal search because she knew she was in the wrong even questioning me about it. People seem to really be the main character in the most boring story ever, at least in their minds. I have a healthy disregard for feigned authority anyway and was so indignant that I almost took some pictures of them while they talked. Trampling rights because Jim Bob is upset that someone dared take a picture in his direction rubs me the wrong way.
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
In the US the legal doctrine is no privacy at all in public spaces (a lot more expansive than that actually), that's probably where those comments come from.
It’s frustrating when there’s a problem and you know any solution to it is worse than the problem itself.
For instance, in my area we’ve recently had a couple Nazi demonstrations. People with swastika flags and “Hitler was right” signs. I’d like that to go away.
But to attempt to use law to do anything about it would mean allowing someone to choose what others can and cannot say in public. That’s worse, or at least at some point it will be.
This is very much like that (though of course far less nefarious) and you just have to let people take paintball videos. Imagine if we didn’t let people video anything they want in public. How many instances of police brutality would go unpunished. That’s worse.
My advice: start a paintball league and make that the rule. And yeah, it does suck to have to suddenly become an event planner just to not end up on YouTube but welcome to the future I guess.
He acknowledges the issue in the article, but doesn’t seem to grasp it fully.
Public means not private. What you do in public is not private. In presumptive free societies, when in public, one is allowed to notice what others are doing in public. Secret is the opposite of public.
The paranoia around being seen feels a lot like the other reptile-brain based phobias like fear of poisoning with vaccines.
I think this argument is logically flawed. When you say public means not private you are glossing over the fact that public never before meant "available via digital media to the world." Instead it mean a public which had a localized context. Doesn't mean you are wrong, but you're paving over this obvious fact.
But what practical difference does it have that it's "available via digital media to the world."? Are you just opposed to people not in your physical location seeing you? Why?
The difference is being seen in public is ephemeral and being recorded in public is eternal. In the former, your actions exist in fallible human memories for a short while at most; in the latter there is a permanent digital record of you, geotagged and time stamped and available for perfect recall forever.
I'm not a fan of my out-of-the-home activities all being stored in an online database accessible to billions of people and automatically scanned by several different governments (including a list of foreign countries extensive enough to include at least one you wish it didn't, regardless of who you are) to build a profile of every person, from hobbies to schedule to gait recognition to psychographic profile.
But of course, that ship has sailed in much of the world, with the ubiquity of surveillance and the dearth of opposition.
I think you imagine governments as being a lot more capable and interested in you than they really are. You haven't even told me what you think they'll actually do with that dreaded database, except keep it.
There's a clear difference in scale between "people who also go to a private airsoft meetup with me will see me" and "the entire global population can see me", right?
Depends who the second person is. And of course we are in an age where companies pride themselves into hovering up as much "public" data as they can find, analyze it and sell it to whoever wants it, so "find every photo or video this face is in" could lead to quite a detailed profile depending on how often this happens. Scale matters.
(Similarly to how "we have license plates on cars to identify them if needed" is a thing and basically nobody complains that I can see your license plate when I walk past your car or write it down if needed, but thousands or millions of cameras recording all traffic and logging plates are something people are concerned about, even if its completely legal in some places)
What was that Larry Ellison quote that came up again over the weekend?
EDIT: or to bring a specific real-world example: A friend of mine does classes at a local studio that also offers martial arts courses, and some of the local right-wing bubble has gotten it in their head that this has to be "antifa combat training" and keeps screaming that this needs to be monitored. The current local government has been ignoring them, but a lot of people are probably quite happy now that there isn't an easy-to-get public record of who was there and "needs a visit" just because some influencer needed to film her dance lessons.
So your specific real world example is that nothing happened, but IF somebody had filmed them then you IMAGINE they would have "gotten a visit". Very specific and real world.
I think it's similar to the difference between "the cop watching me when I'm near them and are aware of it" and "the cop watching me all the time, wherever I go and I can't know anything about this" (which would be impossible before cameras).
There's a world of difference. I know the people in my local community and they know me. We speak the same dialects and use the same slang. Nobody is going to take some off-color idiom the wrong way or judge me for poor grammar or enunciation.
I know who the whackjobs are and don't need to interact with them or watch my speech to avoid triggering them and dealing with ensuing harassment, threats, violence.
I feel that there is a difference between being in the public sphere of the community one exists in, and being in a public sphere that is global and free of any context. Lots of questions pop up when I try to follow that line of thought.
"noticing" is not the same as "permanently documenting and broadcasting to the internet". Used to be one needed to get signed photo releases from passerbys who appeared in your shots...
yep, it's the permanent nature of the recording put in to the public sphere that is the game changer for me.
I accept I am visible in public to all who share a space but I do not accept that the ephemeral nature of my existence in that space should be violated.
I've noticed that folks born after some point in the early 2000's tend to feel this way, and they don't even realize that the survellience in 1984 was meant to be problematic, or why it might feel that way to others
It seems that the panopticon has been normalized successfully.
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
Sorry, that's not clear to me at all. If you're going to accuse other people of "nonsense", you should probably avoid circular reasoning yourself.
What's even funnier is that this dude demands privacy while he cosplays murdering people with guns in a context where he could easily anonymize himself by wearing a face mask and using a pseudonym which are normal things those people do anyways.
It's clear that "privacy " in public spaces requires a fair bit of entitlement, why can't we all just love one another and let it go? What harm comes from being in someone's cool AirSoft video? Is it just a matter of principle that bothers you or something deeper?
For one thing, the video might have objectionable content edited into it.
For instance, one video could be filmed by a genocidal maga nutjob, and a second could be a documentary about how PLA doesn’t biodegrade, made by a woke LGBTQ+ immigrant with a working understanding of chemistry, physics and biology.
Almost 100% of the US would be upset to know they supported the production of at least one of those videos.
That they're upset does not mean that the world should bend to their feelings. I think you would agree that getting upset does not necessarily mean something is wrong externally, oftentimes things are wrong internally. Thank you for taking the time to reply
This. Im a dick and straight up demand people exclude me or stop filming. Consumers are ravenous for money making content and have no clue what a media business privacy, consent, and compensation legal framework even remotely look like. As someone who produced a few short documentaries in the early 2000s related to "hobbies", I would have never done so without full consent and compensation...
I disagree. Filming Airsoft is no more intrusive than filming football matches or paintball. It’s a public-facing hobby where documenting the experience is part of the culture, and that’s a big reason the sport grows and attracts new players.
UK law already strikes the right balance: you’re free to record in public or semi-public spaces unless there’s a specific ban, while also having protections against harassment or misuse. That’s a sensible framework we should never dilute with “consent-by-default” rules, which would only stifle creativity and community sharing. If you join a hobby where cameras are standard, it’s fair to expect that presence, not to restrict others’ enjoyment because of hypothetical discomfort.
If you don’t like that, nothing stops you from setting up your own private games with different rules
> well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces
That's the correct answer. End of the story.
It is our consensus of what "public space" means and one can do with it (which varies depending on where you are) that forms a lot of our social norms and society. It is why hang drying clothes is acceptable/normal in many parts of the world but not in the US. It is why people are expected to wear at least some clothes. It is why you can take photos of random people, including kids, without their/their parents' consent in the US in public space.
If you think you are so special to never show up in a photo, don't be in the public in the first, or wear a mask, a hat plus sunglasses or something else. Celebrities have been doing this for forever.
Not the end of the story. Photographing where people do not expect strong assurances of privacy is complex to enforce. Try photographing inside a stadium, at the Olympics, etc. Others around you might be photographing, but security might ask you to stop or leave.
The right to take photos of random people without consent in public spaces, is NOT the same as the right to publish those photos online for the world to see and as a theoretically permanent discoverable archive.
I wonder if it's a generational or cultural difference present in the comments here.
I am sympathetic to the author, and I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.
I therefore find the (obviously common) attitude that videos are just "something you need to accept" quite alien, but I wonder how much of that attitude is just comments coming from a younger generation that have grown up with the idea that they're recorded all the time.
I'm old enough thankfully to have grown up without video being present, that's probably not true for someone 10 years younger than me.
There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube every single week".
With the former you can still reasonably anonymous, with the latter you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship.
I find photos and videos to both be invasive and unwanted.
I’ve been a member and gyms where the owner will start taking videos and pictures of the class that ultimately end up on social media or in marketing material. I’m not ok with it and I get incredible uncomfortable when I’m in some weird position to do an exercise and a camera starts heading my way.
Any time an unwanted camera is around there is some level of anxiety that starts creeping up. Maybe this is, in part, why so many of today’s youth have anxiety disorders. How can anyone just relax if they have to worry about anything they might say or do being on camera, and then posted for the world to see.
I was at a party not too long ago where most people were 45+, and some kids that were too young to have phones. No one was on their phones, and people seemed free to dance and whatever. The second one person took out their phone to take a picture/video the vibe shifted drastically, and the owner of the house told them to put it away, so people could go back to enjoying themselves instead of being worried about an embarrassing picture of video that might surface later.
I’ve seen so many good times destroyed by cameras.
I am assuming you have no good alternatives regarding your gym? Because if you feel uncomfortable with the behaviour of the owners, you should really vote with your wallet.
I don’t go there anymore. The owner has been texting me on and off to try and get me to go back. I’ve been looking for other options, but am having trouble finding one that looks decent for me.
It’s a bit of a paradox. When I’m looking for a gym, I find pictures incredibly helpful, but I don’t want them taken of me as a member there.
Most gyms it shouldn't be that hard to take useful pictures without people in them though? Do pictures of classes add anything?
> Most gyms it shouldn't be that hard to take useful pictures without people in them though?
Or much simpler: when the photos of a class are taken, simply ask beforehand who disagrees with being photographed and/or photos containing him/her made public, so that for those few minutes where the photos are taken, these people can get out of the picture.
Better yet, offer a free class to people who don't mind being photographed (of whom there are many). 'Being part of a company's marketing' isn't something that should be included in the price of a product or service.
I feel like if you announced your "picture day", you'd also get a subset of the gym members who wanted to show up that day looking their best. (And a subset of jokers who want to see if they can sneak their way into the marketing material so that there's a picture of someone exercising in a tuxedo or whatever if you look closely enough.)
Better still, pay people for the use of their image in advertising
Always
Right? Somehow we've let corporations (which arent even a real life thing! They are just groups of people!) be entitled to huge swaths of our lives. You want to use my image for your marketing because you don't want to pay models? Gtfo of here! What an insane thing to do to customers.
It's almost like eroding privacy is a shared goal of corporations and government, and that both are fine with endlessly tormenting and selling out their customers/those they represent. It's as if they are the common person's adversaries rather and aren't helping or providing a service as they claim.
I wonder how much of the government sponsored erosion of privacy is driven by the over empowered private sector still.
The general understanding is that we do not live in fascism. However, I disagree. Government and corporations are clearly working together.
> Better still, pay people for the use of their image in advertising
There exist sufficiently many people who love to have pictures of them being available publicly. Just look at basically some arbitrary Instagram page. Thus, there exists no need to pay (at least until, say, 95 % of society is really reluctant to have pictures of them publicly accessible).
Maybe text back with the reason you aren't coming back and they might learn to be accommodating.
The gym I go to explicitly forbids both taking unsolicited photos/videos or staging any permission videos.
Good idea
Classes are a different story, but at least for the legion of would-be gymfluencers that show up in gyms frequented by us zoomers, there's an easy solution: tell them to please not film you. If they don't comply, mess up their video. Deliberately walk across the camera. Deliberately get in the way. Take the machine against which they're resting a cell phone and start using it. Make funny faces. Whatever.
More people should understand you are no more morally obligated to behave sociably toward those exhibiting antisocial behavior than you are to stay your hand from a man who hits you.
Then there are those who film in the locker rooms which arguably should be reason to ban them from said gyms.
Imo these types should stick to "influencer gyms". They exist. Alphaland in Texas is a great example; a friend of mine frequented it as she started her bodybuilding page. Worked great for her. Just stay the hell out of the "normal people" gyms.
The problem with acting antisocial during someone else's filming is that they are then free to blow you up with whatever lies they feel like, just because they're angry. People get their lives ruined by doing that.
That's where my anxiety comes in when I see people filming. I am MASSIVELY aware of my face, body, and genuinely everything about myself when I run into that, because I do not want to be tried in the court of public opinion.
It is downright dangerous to deliberately mess up their videos.
Their fans are rabid. They will find you, and they will ruin your life. The Internet isn't just a funny little place anymore. People get doxed.
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My kids are in elementary and middle school and there was an occasion where they were at a birthday party where an older sibling was live streaming the event.
Both my kids (and me) found it very off-putting, so there's some anecdata that at least some young kids still feel it's an invasion of privacy.
Maybe not all is lost.
There are lots of young people who have some conception and respect of privacy and there are people who haven't. That's not a generational thing.. It's just that those without awareness of boundaries have now all the tech that screams in their face to stream everything to the world without consent. I can assure you that still lots of young folks are annoyed by those people.
Agree. I went to a family gathering recently, and my wife's cousin was walking around live streaming. People were pissed once they figured out that private conversations were uploading live to the internet.
The same guy did similar when his mom was on her death bed. Jesus Christ.
A friend that was going to deliver a child told us about a dad-to-be that was going around the maternity ward making videos ...
That's a good recipe for getting a black eye. The mother-to-be tends to be pretty much confined to her immediate affairs, but the partner…
(I'm sure everyone is different, but I've been there as the father-to-be, and I would have made a good effort of turning that live-stream into a live-colonoscopy.)
Considering the level of undress and temporary IDGAF of the moms in labor, filming anywhere near them is a good way to get injured.
>The same guy did similar when his mom was on her death bed. Jesus Christ.
I am so sorry for your loss and I am out of words. Just, I just want to be with ya in silence for a while. I am sorry that you had to go through this. I am really speechless
Are you expressing overdramatic sympathy for the loss of a stranger's wife's cousin's mother? No wonder that cousin films and streams everything.
I was definitely feeling something as I didn't think of the stranger's wife's cousin's mother? as dying but rather the stranger's wife dying and that cousin recording it.
But even now, yes you may have proved your point but death is so fucking weird and not talked about and sometimes I just get speechless, like someone just left the earth, let that sink in...
Honestly, I can somewhat both understand why he was live streaming now wanting more comments/everyone's final messages to go to her mother but at the same time, its definitely privacy invasive and might show their last moments and something of a behaviour I don't condone but I just don't know, now my opinion is mixed.
Yep - was my wife's cousin's mother who died.
I didn't know the lady at all. I didn't even end up meeting the cousin, I heard about all this after the fact. My wife isn't broken up either - kind of distant family.
> People were pissed once they figured out that private conversations were uploading love to the internet.
Audio is different from video. This is technically illegal, as consent is explicitly required in the law for audio recording.
Which jurisdiction are you taking? Japan? Christmas Island? Cuba?
11 states in the US have two-party-consent laws. IIRC GP is correct about recordings of private conversations in these states.
Laws almost always vary by jurisdiction.
Eve if legal, the guy was in the wrong.
What in gods name does the law have to do with it?
Really?
What jurisdiction has that rule? Are you sure you're not conflating simple audio recording with a recording of audio telecommunications?
Most states in the United States allow one one-party consent for audio recordings.
I get that for whistleblowers, journalists, investigators, ... I don't think it's relevant for a birthday party with children.
If it's me, I'm leaving the party. If it's my children attending, I'm strongly recommending them to leave the party (or just leave with them, depending on their age). Live-streaming a birthday party of children is obnoxious behavior that should not be tolerated.
This is the case where I find law in Europe better than USA. In germany you need consent to film or record other people.
The downside is the misuse of the law, what happens constantly, to basically prohibit (at least in practice) ANY recording activity. Is not unheard of, I have seen and experienced myself quite a few times, for example, a tourist being stopped and asked to delete a video of a simple recording in a park (police called immediately), because a random stupid person was around and wants to show how good he knows his rights… (see sister comment)
If it’s me, in Germany, I would instantly tell this person to stop filming and to delete any recordings. And if they streamed live to expect a letter from the (German equivalent of the) DA soon, as I would - as soon as back home - I would press charges and search damages.
Because in German publishing images/recordings of an individual without consent violates basic constitutional rights. And that’s nothing to f** with.
If minors were involved you’d be in a whole different can of soup even.
So while I don’t advocate for violence - as others have hinted in this thread - a black eye could actually be the lesser negative outcome for such a person.
And most states also allow you to leave a bar thirty seconds after your friend you arranged to meet there arrives, it would still be considered rude to do so and probably you wouldn’t be welcome in the future if you kept doing it.
You are free to quit the party, but host won't be arrested for recording and sharing video.
Under US federal law one-party consent requires that you actually be a party to the conversation. This is why most security cameras do not record audio.
If you're wandering around livestreaming and picking up conversations you're not a participant in, it's a violation of federal wiretapping laws.
You're so obviously wrong.
I watched multiple videos from Portland ICE protest, multiple videos of ICE arresting people, all with audio. Half the people at protests are recording.
If you were right all that would be illegal.
The magic word is: "reasonable expectation of privacy".
If you're in public, like in streets, in the mall etc. you don't have reasonable expectation of privacy. You can be recorded, with audio, and it's legal.
The two party consent rules only apply to private conduct e.g. you have a phone conversation. In states with two party consent the other person can't record the conversation without notifying you.
What you describe as "US federal law" sound more like anti-wiretapping law i.e. I can't plant a bug in your house and record your conversations. Which is duh, but not relevant to being recorded while in public.
I figured that "reasonable expectation of privacy" was a given in the scenario. It's a family gathering, the livestreamer is not being obvious about their recording, there's a "reasonable expectation of privacy".
Your ICE protest example is performed in public, its a protest, its not meant to be private, thus fails the test of "reasonable expectation of privacy". Action taken by agents of the state are also public actions, this has been tried many times in court.
Two-party consent is not federal law and varies state-by-state. But again it requires that you actually be a party to consent.
And yes by "US Federal Law" I am referencing the anti-wiretapping laws which prohibit, among other things, interception of oral communication via electronic means unless at least one party consents.
I'm not so sure that the family gathering scenario is well-defined, though. If I'm at a gathering in someone's house, and I'm in a room with only the person/people that I'm actively talking to, then I feel reasonably private in the sense that my words are falling only on the ears of intended recipients. But if I'm in a room with the people I'm talking to and also people I'm not talking to, then I acknowledge that ears beyond those involved in the conversation can catch wind of what I'm saying, which roughly equates to the absense of expectations of privacy.
It's important to remember that you're making this up. You're just sort of spontaneously interpreting "reasonable expectation of privacy" off the top of your head.
It's usually simpler than that: if you see them recording you, and if they aren't trespassing (i.e. breaking the law otherwise); or you are on their property or on public property that they are legally permitted to use, which carries a posted sign telling you that you may be recorded, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Otherwise you do.*
Somebody could possibly hear something has nothing to do with it. Consenting to being heard is not consenting to being recorded. But maintaining your presence in a place where people are allowed to record is. If it's your party, tell them to put it away or leave. If it's their party, you leave. If you are recording surreptitiously and you are not working with law enforcement, it's probably not going to be admissible in court and if you publish it, you're going to get sued. Depending on your state and local laws, you are likely to lose badly.
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[*] All of this depending specifically on how the term is defined in your state and local laws. For example, video has often been separated from audio for pragmatic reasons; security cameras are meant to record physical acts, not conversations. For a second example, many states have decided that sending your voice over a wire to a designated recipient as an electronic signal is already consenting for the person receiving that signal to be able to record it and use it as they please; others have not. For a rationale in the second case, imagine that you didn't have the right to reveal a letter that was sent to you.
If everyone is inside a private home, the host has not given permission to stream, and the streamer is deliberately keeping the camera/phone hidden, then no-one has waived their expectation of privacy, and the streamer is intercepting a conversation they are not a party to
> If you're in public, like in streets, in the mall etc. you don't have reasonable expectation of privacy. You can be recorded, with audio, and it's legal.
Just a note because I myself made the same argument very loudly 1-3 weeks ago...and was informed some states have different laws than I expected. Massachusetts, in particular.
(Note that MA limits clandestine recording, not the obvious recording in TFA blog about airsoft -- and it has been neither upheld nor overturned by SCOTUS)
https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/massachusetts-recording-law
>>> Massachusetts makes it a crime to secretly record a conversation, whether the conversation is in-person or taking place by telephone or another medium. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99. Accordingly, if you are operating in Massachusetts, you should always inform all parties to a telephone call or conversation that you are recording, unless it is absolutely clear to everyone involved that you are recording (i.e., the recording is not "secret"). Under Massachusetts's wiretapping law, if a party to a conversation is aware that you are recording and does not want to be recorded, it is up to that person to leave the conversation.
>>> This law applies to secret video recording when sound is captured. In a 2007 case, a political activist was convicted of violating the wiretapping statute by secretly recording video of a Boston University police sergeant during a political protest in 2006. The activist was shooting footage of the protest when police ordered him to stop and then arrested him for continuing to operate the camera while hiding it in his coat. As part of the sentencing, the court ordered the defendant to remove the footage from the Internet. From this case, it appears that you can violate the statute by secretly recording, even when you are in a public place.
Wiretapping laws are set by states, and different states have different criteria. For example, the two-party consent in MA involves 'intercepting' the conversation so even listening on a microphone and not recording it is considered wiretapping, but not all states use that criteria. Some people, like public officials performing their duty in public-- e.g. cops and politicians-- can't have any expectation of privacy.
Expectation of privacy is
Presumably, a person holding up a phone live-streaming would be party to the conversation.
If two people are talking at a party, and a third person obviously comes by within earshot, then the two people can either stop talking, or they can continue, but the third person is now party to the conversation.
They're not party to others' conversations.
As long as someone is not hidden, or trying to be deceptive, then they would be considered party to the conversation.
Someone walking around live streaming would become party to all the conversations.
Most parents will punch you in the face if you try to record audio of thier children without two party consent.
Do that in a public place and you will catch an assault and/or battery charge
Such a trial is an acceptable result, in exchange for committing well justified violence.
Any jury with parents on it will acquit.
We need content for ML! If you don't upload every moment of your life, you're not doing your part for humanity.
My own anecdotal experience is that the generational gap is actually the inverse of what was described above. Younger people seem to be very much moree acutely aware of the dangers of publicity and much more guarded about what they do in public if it could potentially end up online.
Everything has moved to private spaces now. Friend discord groups, private social media accounts, etc.
The age of posting on Facebook under your real name with privacy settings public is long gone because of the numerous obvious risks.
But just being seen in a small segment of a YouTube video with no name is a pretty minor risk.
"The age of posting on Facebook under your real name with privacy settings public is long gone"
According to my 18 year old niece, FB is just for old people anyway. (Thank god I never really used it). They still use Instagram, though.
Privacy concerns .. are little in general. Hard to be popular, when you avoid the mainstream plattforms. And yes, private groups are on the rise everywhere.
Yeah, kinda happened like a decade-plus ago, when facebook opened up to everyone. I know I stopped using it when my parents (baby boomers) got on there.
> just being seen in a small segment of a YouTube video with no name is a pretty minor risk
It might become a slightly larger risk when image processing and face recognition get cheap enough that anyone can search to find every video/livestream/photo containing your face.
Yeah, it just happened to a woman I know recently. She took part in some naked protests like 20 years ago and photographs of them went up on various sites like Flickr from a host of different photographers and no one ever thought about it. Recently she was targeted in a revenge porn incident by someone who had used facial recognition search engines to gather dozens of nude photographs of her before distributing them by name on porn sites.
You don’t need to find nude photos of anyone anymore if you want to do revenge porn. If you have any picture of someone there are “nudity sites” for years and years ago wasn’t there an open source one that was on GitHub? (please no one reply with the name - seriously - no need to give it any publicity on HN).
Actual nudes are even worse than AI nudes. With AI nudes
- the victim knows they are fake, which provides some emotional distance (similar to when actors choose to use prostetics or doubles for a nude scene: the viewer doesn't know but the actor still feels more comfortable)
- most of them are bad enough that the discerning eye can spot it as an AI image (many chronically online people are scarily good at that)
- they can be proven to be fake because they are just an imagined version of your body ('look, I have a tatoo/mole/scar/blemish here that isn't in the nude, it's obviously fake')
AI nudes are still pretty bad, but services that turn up nude images of you by indexing the internet with face-detection are way worse
But most people don’t have a discerning eye. I’ve never used a nudify site. But uploading a picture of me and my wife to Grok and letting it make a 6 second video is already pretty good. On one, the only thing I noticed was that the reflection in a window wasn’t following the movement.
Also, if you down sample the quality of the video, it would be even harder to tell it was a fake.
That’s neither here nor there. Would you want even a fake nude of you online?
> Would you want even a fake nude of you online?
That's neither here nor there, the claim was that deepfakes were a replacement for actual nudes, but you're maybe overlooking that the actual invasiveness is an important part of what the abuser finds appealing about the real thing.
Both are of course terrible, they're both abusive and both are becoming illegal in more and more places, but one is more invasive than the other.
I'm not sure your comment is completely necessary. I'm well aware there are such apps--I volunteered for years with a women's charity so I've seen it all--but they are two completely different attack vectors. I "wish" that one could stand in for the other but the reality is abusers just have two new ways to harass women in top of ash the other age old techniques.
I'm also aware there are probably a number of guys on this site who work in that space so just as a message to you if you're reading: You suck.
The private spaces are still at risk. Just one kid needs to claim he was offended and bring a screenshot to a teacher and it's game over for the kids' privacy.
The entire reason tiktok got so popular is the younger generation (born in the mid 90s to early 2000s) normalizing sharing so much of their lives publicly.
It's given rise to a much richer form of social media and "personal brand" building when done well, IMO. Although I have noticed the tide starting to turn, with the amount of us-vs-them sentiment all over the internet lately.
Honestly, if I was a kid just discovering social media today, I'd be extremely guarded too.
I’m currently wedding planning and regularly visit a wedding planning forum. I was left flabbergasted the other day when someone posted if it would be ok to ask guests to not post pictures of the couple on social media. They’re ok with guests posting pictures of themselves or of the venue and decor, they just don’t really want pictures of the bride and groom.
The response ranged from “you can ask but you can’t prevent people from posting” to “it’d be rude and inconsiderate to even ask”. One person even argued that it would be rude and other people would judge them if they went to a wedding and didn’t have a picture of the bride and groom.
I don’t think I ever felt the generational divide as acutely as in reading those responses, and I’m not even that old, I had social media when I was in high school.
This gets asked at basically every wedding I've been to in the UK i.e. there is a professional photographer, please don't take photos of the bride and groom in the church and it still gets ignored. At my own wedding, one of the guests (not even someone invited to the whole day, just a neighbour of my wife's parents who knew her growing up) is leaning out of the aisle with their phone taking photos ruining a load of photos.
It's incredibly frustrating. I also think it's really strange that when something happens in public, the default isn't to look to see if the person isn't OK anymore, it's to pull out a camera phone and start filming.
The thing I've seen at a few weddings recently is that right after the processional, they have a period of like 30 seconds where they allow everyone to take a picture of the couple, then phones away for the rest of the ceremony. I'm sure it's not 100% effective, but it does seem to scratch the itch for most people. I think also by calling such explicit attention to the rule at the beginning of the ceremony, it makes it seem ever more rude to violate it later.
I noticed you said “the whole day” I went a wedding once where the bride was from the UK. They said it was a “British style” wedding. It was almost exactly like an American wedding except that everything lasted twice as long (cocktail hour was 2 hours etc…).
I could never find out if this was a common thing in the UK or not.
I believe that it's uncommon in the USA to invite people to part of a wedding, but it's common in the UK. "Not someone invited to the whole day" implies a second-tier guest, who's been invited to the ceremony and the after-party, but not to the meal.
The ceremony is technically open to the public in any case, usually.
Usually it would be either the full day (ceremony, meal and ‘evening party’ which we commonly call the reception) or just the reception. No one is being asked to skip the middle part of the event.
Less than 20% of weddings are religious (and a smaller subset of this will be in churches), and I don’t really hear of anyone just turning up at the ceremony of someone they don’t know.
> Less than 20% of weddings are religious (and a smaller subset of this will be in churches)
That's a likely a fair underestimate because many religious marriages aren't legally valid because of various requirements that the Church of England doesn't have to follow as the state church. In Catholic churches for e.g. they need to register the building, then either appoint the priest as an authorised person or get a registrar to come to every ceremony as in a civil wedding. They do usually do this but most non-Christian religions don't bother with this at all and so the couple end up just having a civil ceremony first and the religious one after.
I've seen posts from wedding photographers who would pass around cheap/older cameras to guests. This lets people scratch the shutterbug itch while avoiding all the problems that come with a room full of people trying to get a shot.
> please don't take photos of the bride and groom in the church and it still gets ignored
Counterpoint
I've never known such requests be ignored here in Blighty. Ditto requests not to upload photos to social media.
Unrelated to this post but what does it mean when a person isn't invited to the whole day?
I've been to weddings that had an "open" ceremony and a closed reception. This has generally been at a church, where the wedding itself is announced to the whole church community, but then the reception is a more limited number of family and friends.
More commonly though, I've been to weddings where they had a small private ceremony (just the couple, officiant, and a handful of family), and then a large reception for everyone in the evening.
In weddings in the U.K. (or at least in England) anyone can attend a wedding - legally they have to be open.
It’s therefore not uncommon if it’s local for more distant friends of family, neighbours, etc. to pop along to the ceremony at invitation of the couple or their parents as a result, but not to be invited to the party part. Sometimes older guests will just come to ceremony too.
What the fu-
That's an insane legal requirement. I'll do the legal wedding in the most unceremonious, quickest manner possible, and then have my real ceremony in privacy and not tell anyone about it.
It's largely historic these days, there's been various proposals to reform it and other mad rules (e.g. can't get married outside, can't get married after 6pm) but it's not really viewed as high priority.
They're not invited to the ceremony & wedding breakfast (which often isn't actually breakfast), just the evening reception. Unlike US weddings, the evening event is generally not the most expensive part of the affair.
It could be more that those hanging around on wedding planning forums aren't really representative of the younger generation. If it's a wish of the couple, they should clearly communicate this on the invitation.
If someone asks you not to record them at their own event, and you do, you're an asshole.
Not even to not record. Just to treat the pictures as private, which is an entirely reasonable request.
Anyone breaking the rules would be banned from my next wedding.
Yes, that's an asshole move.
I think it's also pretty weird to ask people not to take photos though.
edit: "no photos during the ceremony" is different than "no photos the entire event", obviously
I think the request was to not post them to social media.
A wedding is one of the most fundamentally public events that have ever existed. The purpose is so that as many people as possible should know that these people are taken.
Asking guests to not take photos is such a faux pass that the couple has destroyed their reputation completely.
They can have a quiet and private ceremony instead if they have stage fright.
> A wedding is one of the most fundamentally public events that have ever existed.
Not sure why you think that?
Although weddings can be in public places, they don't have to be and it's quite common for only invited guests (ie not the public) to be present.
Historically at least, it's not that weddings are in public places, but that they're inherently a performance for the community. Like the reason for having a wedding is to make a commitment publicly in front of your friends and family. That doesn't mean it needs to be open to all who want to wander in, but it's strange to think of it as a secret event.
I feel like it's pretty strange (and mildly rude) to insist no one take/post photos of a wedding, and also very rude to take/post photos when asked not to.
> but it's strange to think of it as a secret event.
Not sure why you're using the word "secret" there? Something being not-public (ie invitation only) doesn't mean it's secret or hidden. It just means it's not public.
I think he was talking about weddings from historical perspective. Like, everyone needs to know the couple are married (taken) and through this public knowledge the marriage is confirmed.
Weddings held in churches have been public with nobody turned away at the door. Perhaps you are thinking of receptions, where invitations are checked, and accountants are eyeing the attendees accordingly.
An impending wedding is usually one of the most publicized events in any city. The banns must be published, typically in a special section of the newspaper. In order to give notice for anyone who may object or know about a prior bond. Also any hint of duress or urgency that may impede free consent. The banns are the actual execution of the ceremonial “callout” you see in films.
The witnesses of a wedding are not optional. The witnesses serve as representatives of the general public. Typically a clandestine wedding would be invalid without witnesses to verify and vouch for the identity, presence, and consent of bride and groom.
Taking photos for verification is sort of after-the-fact, and it would be most unfortunate for the banns to miss the mark until after the ceremony, or the consummation.
But only crazy people would consider a wedding ceremony “private” or “closed to the public” other than “renting an officiant” and flying off to a Caribbean elopement that only your billionaire girlboss bridesmaids can afford.
> Weddings held in churches have been public with nobody turned away at the door.
Most ordinary weddings *are* invitation only in Blighty. Both church weddings and secular weddings held at registry offices, town halls and the like.
In the US this is generally true as well. It’s not that there will be security at the door checking invitations, but it’s be very rude to show up to a wedding ceremony you weren’t invited to.
You may need to define your terms more precisely.
By “Blighty” are you referring to Great Britain, or a town in NSW, population 326? That seems to be a vast difference!
And I am at a loss to imagine security guards checking invitations at a church door and giving heave-ho to the unworthy. What particular denominations have you polled on this? How many different types of ceremonies have you crashed?
I've touristed in several countries where the church was closed because of a wedding.
You are at a loss to imagine something that is extremely common worldwide. Though not "security guards". You don't need security guards, because when a little lady tells you to please come back in an hour and a half, people don't push her aside and scream "freedom!".
> And I am at a loss to imagine security guards checking invitations at a church door and giving heave-ho to the unworthy.
Especially with churches in most cases nobody will be shown the door especially as in (Christian) church tradition the wedding is before God and the community, which traditionally is the village. Nonetheless many cultures will see it as somewhat private. Especially the reception or a non-church ceremony.
It’s a 326 to 60,000,000 chance they are referring to NSW.
Do Englishmen frequently refer to “Blighty” in ordinary conversation?
I refer to my homeland as “The States” out of courtesy to those from Canada, UK, Australia, but I had to rack my brains, and Wikipedia, about “Blighty” because it seems archaic, stilted, and arcane in a tech forum.
I’ve heard England called a lot of things by its citizens, but I was under the impression that “Ol’ Blighty” died out with Queen Victoria.
> Do Englishmen frequently refer to “Blighty” in ordinary conversation?
At least online, yes.
I suppose if they are comfortable with confusing foreigners with this lingo.
In all my years on the Internet and written forums, as well as watching British TV for 50 years, there has been no notable usage of “Blighty” that caught my attention.
If I had been aware of the usage, (other than archaic slang) I would’ve learned it sooner. But it’s notable that this Anglophile hadn’t been bothered until the Year of Our Lord and Reign of His Majesty Charles III, 2025.
No worries. Not sure if it's your cup of tea, but "The Register" might be a good example of a place which uses the term: https://www.theregister.com
It's still a public event even if everyone is not invited. English lacks the word to differentiate between "public" as "no secret, out in the open" and "public" as in "free for all and gratis".
In this case we're talking about a public wedding as opposed to a secret wedding.
Thus: A normal wedding with a normal amount of invited guests is one of the most non-secret events to exist.
Asking for no photos is like participating in a big sports event as an athlete and demanding nobody takes photos.
English lacks the word to differentiate between "public" as "no secret, out in the open" and "public" as in "free for all and gratis".
Try using a pair of words. Publicly announced vs publicly accessible.
> Thus: A normal wedding with a normal amount of invited guests is one of the most non-secret events to exist
private !== secret
You seem to have this concept crossed in your thinking. Just because people know about it doesn't make it not private. Try getting into an event at Davos. Try getting into any well known event without an invitation. You'll see just how not public they are.
The fact that people think it is acceptable to post pictures of other people on their social sites says it all. This couple's request is not egregious. Just because you can't imagine not posting something doesn't mean everyone else thinks the same way. This is just another example to me of how few people think of others first, and only ever think about "me me me"
> Just because people know about it doesn't make it not private.
That's exactly what I adressed in my comment above. You're explaining to me exactly what I've explained to you.
Public can mean something which has been publicized = made known to the general public. In this case it doesn't mean that everybody is invited.
You have a very hostile tone, for no apparent reason. Feel free to blow off steam if you need to, but try at least to understand the argument I'm making.
If you only had made the argument you thought you made, but didn’t. And then not even made the effort to understand that the point your discussion partner made was actually in stark contrast to your point in the result they were arguing for.
You ended with:
> Asking for no photos is like participating in a big sports event as an athlete and demanding nobody takes photos.
A private, invite only, wedding isn’t comparable to a sports event that you described. Because this is by definition public. Why? Because anyone can buy a ticket to that event. That makes it open to the public. Yes, you need a ticket to enter. But it’s not invite only.
Imagine a big baseball/football/soccer event. The stadium is packed. Anybody can film to their liking. This is the public part. Now imagine the owners box way at the top. Not one of these humans down in the regular seats will be able to get up there. It’s invite only. That makes it private. Even if there are many people in that box.
But the owner (or in case of the wedding the couple getting married) chose who Would be allowed to partake in that event. And so, they also get to make the rules.
If you, with your attitude would be at a private event I was hosting, you wouldn’t be there long. Because you still need to learn the difference between public (in theory anybody can attend and the host doesn’t get to choose) and private (only the host chooses who can attend).
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Again, you seem to think that public/private need to be used at the same time. You can have a private event that is publicized so everyone knows it happens yet only those invited can attend. A royal wedding would be an example to keep it in the same realm as the topic. The entire planet knew when William at Kate were getting married, when it was, and where it was. If you tried to get into that event without an invite, you were turned away. If you continued to argue like you are in this thread, you'd probably be detained.
Why you think that a wedding needs a public announcement because of regulations is relevant or not is something I cannot see the point of making. It does not mean the event is open to the public. You seem to think that more words are needed in English to get the concept across, yet you seem to be the only one with the inability to grasp the concept.
I'm deliberately ignoring your diatribe on hosting events as it is totally unnecessary and brings nothing to the conversation.
The fact that the event is known about doesn't mean everybody is invited or it being appropriate to share pictures in a different public from the event.
Let's take some specific events: Weddings of British royalty. A simple peasant can't simply walk in and take a seat at a front row of Westminster Abbey, despite being the probably most public wedding.
Or other related example: When they televised the coronation of Elizabeth II the coronation was extremely public event, probably the most public event of that decade, however the actual moment where the crown was put on her head was purposly hidden from cameras behind the bishops robe for spiritual reasons.
And then consider: Weddings are often extensive celebrations, which take long, with lots of food, lots of alcohol. Many chances for unpleasant photos. Those who were there saw it, but a different public doesn't need pictures of drunk uncle Bill and the bride doesn't want the most public picture of here wedding to be the one where the dress isn't in order.
Being well known doesn't take away privacy.
You continue to argue that I'm saying the exact opposite of what I've said. Are you arguing only for the sake of it?
> It does not mean the event is open to the public.
I have never said any such thing. It is public in the sense that it is publicized, as I've now mentioned countless times. The word "public" also means something that is "official" and out in the open. It doesn't always mean that it is something which the general public is invited to attend. A good example is the one you gave on the royal wedding. All weddings are public weddings in that very same sense.
> You seem to think that more words are needed in English to get the concept across, yet you seem to be the only one with the inability to grasp the concept.
Clearly there are more words needed, since you continue to understand the exact opposite of what I'm saying.
> Why you think that a wedding needs a public announcement because of regulations is relevant or not is something I cannot see the point of making.
Then ponder it.
"It's still a public event even if everyone is not invited."
You are not stating the same thing. You are saying that an invite only is not a private event. You've apparently misread the bit you quoted as it is a double negative; "> Just because people know about it doesn't make it not private". Just because people know about a private event does not mean the event is public. Knowledge of the event is not what makes it private. What makes it private is the host's restriction of who can attend.
Also, I'm not hostile. You're being defensive on an indefensible position and not liking the fact you are being called out for that position. There's a difference.
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This is one of the weirdest takes I have ever heard.
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Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Those include not trying to impress strange rules on guests you invite to an event.
I think you will find it is both good etiquette and very common to make polite requests ("rules") of guests you invite..... whether these be to 'bring a bottle', 'smoke outside', 'wear black tie', 'wear your birthday suit' or 'don't film us'.
If you can't accommodate such requests, don't go.
One of those is different from the others. And yes, it's very common for people to not go to an event if the hosts are making up strange demands.
How are they different? It appears you agree that if one does not like the rule they should not go. At the same time my impression is that you still want to go but dislike the rule.
I think its that the rules they agree with are okay, and everyone should agree with that. The one rule they disagree with isn't okay. We're left to guess which rule isn't like the others. I personally would find it very strange to be asked to show up in my birthday suit.
I think you might find that most parties where the request is "show up in your birthday suit" also request that you not film there.
Wedding photographers often ask people to refrain from taking photos during the ceremony. It sucks to have every photo that you hired a professional to take have a sea of people holding up cell phones so they can each take their own photo. In this case it's not rude to request that people not take images, it's a practical matter so people can have photos of their wedding instead of photos of people taking photos of their wedding. Much of this wouldn't be necessary if people could just be present at events instead of rigorously chronicling their every experience.
I'm not familiar with this old and cherished tradition of each guest taking photos and videos of a wedding they attend, in order to show them off to anybody who will look in exchange for reputation points.
Your idea of a polite society sounds rather rude to me.
Okay? Most of my friends don't take videos and post them on the internet when I invite them around for games, or a nice dinner, or a birthday. If they started to I would ask them not to come, or invite them on the condition they don't do that. If they don't come because they have to do that constantly, and I don't want to participate I'm not sure what I'm losing.
Lets replace take videos with something maybe more obviously offensive to most people:
Most of my friends don't insult my mother / wife / husband / partner when I invite them around for games, or a nice dinner, or a birthday. If they started to I would ask them not to come, or invite them on the condition they don't do that. If they don't come because they have to do that constantly, and I don't want to participate I'm not sure what I'm losing.
I personally find not respecting my privacy preference in my home pretty darn insulting.
Also people have been having friends over for dinner 100x longer (probably much longer, but I'm just going with how long things have been written down) than video recording has existed, so I'm unsure what traditions you're trying to uphold.
Also I have guests over for dinner because I enjoy their company, not tradition.
> It seems to be that there's a very strange crowd hanging out on Hacker News, who are not aware of very basic social rules. Those include not trying to impress strange rules on guests you invite to an event. Because people will simply make excuses and not come to your wedding or whatnot.
Are you genuinely suggesting that there is a basic social rule that says no other rules can be impressed on guests at an event? I don’t think that stands up to scrutiny.
Every event has rules — it’s inherent in being “an event” as opposed to pure chaos. Whether or not the rules are strange is open to individual interpretation. If you can’t abide by the rules of an event you are not welcome at the event. People’s polite tolerance of others’ anti-social behavior does not mean the behavior is welcome.
Your comment is confused as to you believing that people would want to come to events with strange rules and not follow those rules. What happens in real life is that people decline to go to those events. Everybody knows how to behave at a wedding and what is proper conduct.
> Are you genuinely suggesting that there is a basic social rule that says no other rules can be impressed on guests at an event?
Absolutely, in the case of strange, unusual rules. If you're invited for dinner to somebody and they ask that you oblige to things which are outside of the norm, would you be very keen to go? Or would you make up an excuse and do something else?
It seems you are trying to say "You're not welcome here!" to people who already declined an invite?
> It seems you are trying to say "You're not welcome here!" to people who already declined an invite?
These things are not mutually exclusive.
If you don’t want to abide by the rules, you are not welcome and you should decline. Perhaps the organizer isn’t aware of your preference and your declining helps inform them. If they prefer your presence more than they like their silly rules, they might change them.
Deciding to attend a social gathering where you intentionally ignore the rules that you don’t like is narcissistic and rude behavior.
> If you don’t want to abide by the rules
It's really not about this. Many (most?) people don't want to go to events where the hosts are acting weird against their guests. When it comes to weddings, it's not unusual that you haven't seen the people for several years. And in that time people change.
> Deciding to attend a social gathering where you intentionally ignore the rules that you don’t like is narcissistic and rude behavior.
That's why I've said now about fourteen times here now, that people are going to decline an invite to events with strange "rules". For an adult the normal thing is that events you are invited to do not have any rules at all, because everybody already knows exactly what is appropriate. So real people have a low tolerance for those kind of things. If you're looking for "narcissistic", then maybe look at those people inventing strange rules for what is supposed to be their friends and family?
Maybe it is because HN is a forum for people who work in very corporate settings and are accustomed to having to follow a lot of silly rules without the option to decline?
I think everyone agrees that some rules for guests are fine, and some are silly. "No flash photography or leaning into aisles during the wedding procession" is a reasonable rule, "No taking photos when we're dancing and having fun" seems silly to me.
Just like a dress code for a wedding is fine, but if they said "also you need to wear blue cotton underwear" I'd think that was a bit inappropriate to require.
> It seems to be that there's a very strange crowd hanging out on Hacker News, who are not aware of very basic social rules.
This is a hilarious example of pot calling the kettle black.
It's a result of the law and the state taking the place of morality and ethics. If it is against the law it is bad and wrong. If it is legal it is OK and good.
A large component of society has no particular code of ethics, religion, or internal moral framework. End result is if it's legal I can do it, and I shouldn't feel bad for doing so.
The traditional purpose of the wedding was meeting and joining of families. The "as many people as possible" knowing about it was not a consideration all that much.
> They can have a quiet and private ceremony instead if they have stage fright.
That would be called "a wedding".
There's definitely very huge cultural differences that might be getting in the way here. Many wedding traditions explicitly invite all and sundry to attend and witness. Most historical traditions around weddings that I'm aware of treat them as a community event at the very least, not a private affair involving only two families.
Of course it was a huge consideration, as adultery was taken very seriously. And still is in some parts of the world.
> That would be called "a wedding".
That would be called a secret wedding, a very popular trope in old romance novels.
Clandestine weddings have presented a huge problem for Church and State authorities at various points in space and time.
A clandestine wedding would often leave significant doubt about the facts of the ritual, the participants, and their actual state of mind. In most places it really is not legal to conduct a clandestine wedding without strict regulation and some sort of documentation, before and after the fact.
No officiant: invalid. No witnesses: invalid. Prior bond: invalid. Duress or coercion: invalid. These are all really, really important reasons for public ceremonies attended by, essentially, randos off the street.
> Asking guests to not take photos
I think they asked guests not to post photos of the couple.
> A wedding is one of the most fundamentally public events that have ever existed.
Important context since it seems you have never been to a wedding: they are almost all invite-only.
>> Asking guests to not take photos is such a faux pass that the couple has destroyed their reputation completely.
The day is not about you. Just like people are free to exclude children from weddings, if they ask you not to take photos and you take umbrage at that, you need to take a hard look at yourself. It's. Not. About. You.
I think this is a strange and very modern conception of weddings. Weddings are not just about the bride and groom; they're about the bride and groom and the community of their friends and family. That third part is a key component! It's why we invite people to weddings, so they can witness and help the couple in making and keeping the commitment of marriage.
True, of course, but they're the ones spending a fortune on it. Not only so they can have a memorable day but so their guests enjoy it too. Seems fair that if they ask you to do something really really easy like not take photos, you do that.
Almost every couple manage to arrange their wedding without any unusual rules and demands. So most people seem to have taken your advice at heart. My advice to you is trying to make your argument without tired and boring insults such as "take a hard look at yourself". People have different opinions and perspectives, you can only accept that.
I've never made any strange rules for guests when I host, and I've politely declined the very rare cases when I've received such an invite. Because I know it's not about me.
You're free to dislike the request of the couple. I have no argument with that. People can be over the top. But I can't imagine skipping the wedding of someone I care about because I don't want to adhere to a simple request like not taking photos.
So if you have a quiet and private ceremony is it ok to ask people who come to that not to take pictures?
Yes, why not?
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I went to a middle eastern wedding recently and they gave everyone these phone pouches to keep their phones in that were locked for the event's duration.
Honestly made the whole event better
I attended my first GenZ wedding a couple of months ago and they (someone on behalf of the couple) announced this request. It applied specifically to the wedding itself, not the post-wedding party (at the same venue).
Certainly the first time it had ever come up, but it made sense to me. If you're invited to someone's wedding, it's only natural to respect their wishes.
Not everything needs to be documented online!
Anyone finding it rude would find themselves not only on the "formerly invited and definitely not welcome" list. But also on the "good riddance, it was nice having known you once" list.
People with such little respect for boundaries are just not welcome in my life.
That person might be close family, and many folks aren't as ready to go full no-contact with their mother's sister or whomever it might be.
Especially if they are close family I would be even more harsh about it. If my family f*ks this much with my borders, I am so getting rid of toxic assholes. I ab-so-f*ing-lute-ly not care about blood relations, when it comes to people ignoring boundaries.
I - for example - ditched every contact to my aunt after she accused my SO of being just a gold digger. At my dad's (her brother's) funeral. So no - I don't care for blood. I care for being a decent human being and treating everybody with the respect they deserve, as long as the reciprocate. If not, I treat them with the interpersonal equivalent of a killfile.
Good luck with that. People like the spectacle, do it in court with a casual dinner, nobody takes pictures.
I'm from Gen Z and the idea of being filmed and published online without my consent sounds like a nightmare. It is my belief that it's an invasion of privacy (even in a public space) and questionable from a (cyber)security perspective. In France we got the Droit à l'image (Right to the image) which makes it illegal to post images or videos of people online without their consent, so that may be why that feels very strange to me.
Aside from the Eiffel Tower what actually benefits from that right?
In many ways an unenforced right is worse than no right at all.
The Eiffel Tower situation is a somewhat complicated matter. You can (of course) publish a photo of the tower on your social media account. But the nighttime illumination is apparently copyrighted and it's not clear to me if the prohibition about publishing extends beyond commercial purposes anyway.
I agree with your broader point. Recognizable people get their photos published on social media every second of every day and, while someone can probably find an outlier example where someone got prosecuted for doing so, it's incredibly rare at the least--even in countries where it's technically a violation of some law.
In German, we also have a "Right to the image". It is based on our constitutional rights.
But, if you are a public figure, as in you are a media person, a celebrity or politician. As in you are actually searching for publicity, the situation changes. Here the beauty of shades of grey and work for lawyers begins.
Because while you have lost the clear cut black or white, there are still things that will get the person publishing into trouble.
When I started my career in online journalism this was a very long discussed topic while we had our course at the Academy for Journalism in Hamburg.
But for ordinary people, the right to your image is a quite strong protection.
And yet it happens thousands (or more) times a day. Even in the US there is the idea of publicity rights--I can't use an easily identifiable photo of you in an ad or other marketing materials. But posting on Flickr or wherever where someone hasn't shoved a camera in your face but you're easily identifiable?
Happens all the time.
France - where the 'Society of the Spectacle' was written by Guy Debord in the 1960s, where he predicted late stage capitalism as being mediated by images, so rather than reality, human existence and relationships between people are 'mediated by images'.
This is at the heart of what is going on. Society of the Spectacle is not an easy read, but it most definitely is pertinent to what is going on. Instagram is the final boss!
> I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.
I’d argue photos can be more invasive. If someone makes a 10 minute video and you’re somewhere in the background for 5 seconds, no one may ever notice. Furthermore, with compression artefacts for motion you may become difficult to recognise.
But if you’re in a photo, people will be looking at it for longer and are thus most likely to notice you and possibly zoom in on you with all the quality the static sensor provides.
Furthermore, photographs have greater potential to create false narratives. A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can easily make you look like a creep or weirdo when a video would’ve made it clear you were just turning your head or starting a yawn.
> A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can easily make you look like a creep or weirdo when a video would’ve made it clear you were just turning your head or starting a yawn.
Taking a screenshot from a video for exactly this reason is incredibly common. Look at any photograph accompanying a political story about a figure from "the other party".
See for example this Reddit post about the "triggered" meme origin: > Ironically, if you ever get a chance to see the video of this incident, this woman and the man she's speaking with are actually having a polite discussion. But... She has very animated facial expressions and the photographer just happened to catch this frame at an inopportune moment.
So it seems to me that since a video is simply thousands of photographs with a soundtrack, video is strictly more invasive than photography.
https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/adyt1d/comment/hvp04...
It is precisely because the video exists that you have the opportunity to correct the misconception, which is exactly what happened with the discussion in your example. Had it been a photograph, that context would have been lost and no one could refute it.
The compression artefacts help there, because they make it very clear this was taken from a video, meaning one should look up the source because it probably exists.
That is a perfect example of how a photograph could be worse than a video.
you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship
Your perception of this as a risk probably suggests cultural and/or generational differences.
But for the actual circumstances of the fine article’s author, video is a norm of the community the author seeks to join. Within the community, video is an established practice and making a video rig signifies a higher degree of commitment to the community.
Not accepting the use of video, is at least a partial rejection of the community values. Accepting video is a tradeoff for participating in community practices. The practical alternative is usually to find or build an alternative community. [0]
To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
[0] sure logically it is possible to change a community, but marginal members (e.g. new, casual, low status) are rarely in position to overturn established practice and run the risk of being set up for the agendas of established members.
> To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
How do you define community? Seems like a bit rigid of a implied requirement.
The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me, and it's definitely not rare, but an individual is perfectly within their right to go about engagement in their hobby with other people who have similar interests on whichever terms they like, which seems like community to me, as long as some form of commonly understood communication is present.
Likewise the people who do want to establish certain requirements, gates if you will, have the right to do so, but not as a whole. Country clubs don't and shouldn't have exclusive domain over golf, and I don't give the slightest fuck about recording myself at the bouldering gym or skateboarding, but that shouldn't prevent me from being part of either culture or community unless a specific club within those forms around publication.
I'd concede that it's possible that a community could exist in such a way that the act of documenting is the exclusive basis for which people are able to communicate at all, in which case perhaps that defines the boundary, but again it seems like it would be rare for that to be so pervasive as to encapsulate the entirety of a hobby.
The birdwatching community is similar to a collecting community insofar as seeing a bird is like having it in your collection and going out to birdwatch is like hunting items to add to your collection.
Lists and records fill the role a physical collection plays in collecting hobbies.
The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me
Usually that simply means a community is not for you and the birdwatching hobby is not for me either…though I have driven a few hundred miles out of my way to see the California Condors at Vermillion Cliffs (I didn’t write it down).
On the other hand, not-for-me just means not for me to me. I can see why people do it and it is pleasant to ask them what they are looking at and congratulate them if they tell me it’s a lifer…
Anyway, birds fascinate me and I am blessed to live along the Pacific Flyway in a location with abundant wildlife and natural areas outside my door (it’s why I sometimes chat with birders). But it only took me one look at what the birdwatching community values to know it was not for me (same as most religions, political movements, ideologies, etc.).
That all sounds fantastic, I'm sure I'd find that pretty engaging and I enjoy making small collections of hobbyist interests and going on adventures in-pursuit of niche experiences as well.
I wasn't so much curious about the mechanics of the hobby, although it is interesting, rather what defines it as a "community". Like what qualifies or doesn't qualify as being in or out of the "community"? If I make a list of birds I've seen, and don't share it with anyone, am in a community? If I share a photo on Instagram and mention it in passing to my close friend, am I in a community then? Do I need to be on some common platform, communicating at all about other bird lists? My grandfather kind of has a similar hobby with planes, but I'm sure he doesn't think of himself as part of a global community of plane enthusiasts, yet his local wood carving community is a place he goes and talks to people he knows by name and has spent years around, evidently a community with the requirement that you're into wood carving
what defines it as a "community"
Norms and continuity maybe?
But my point is that air soft has norms and if video is among them, then that’s just how it is.
And for what it is worth your theoretical exercise of keeping private lists of birds is fine by me. But if it is just you, it is not a community because that’s not how we use the word community.
Likewise, the community of birdwatchers typically uses the word birdwatching to include the kind of activities I mentioned.
It is not a generational thing at all.
There were plenty of TV shows centred around candid camera / security camera / home video footage back in the 1980s/1990s well before digital cameras or the internet was ubiquitous.
Or look at newsreels, or news reports from ... any time up to the 2010s. Obviously people's faces weren't blurred before we had the tech to do it. It's some entirely new, modern prissiness. It screws up the documenting of social history when you can't see any faces. There's been an internet fad for restored film of street scenes from 1915 or so: imagine if all the faces were blurred to protect the privacy of people who no longer care, that would suck.
The difference is that social media now exists. The fear of an embarrassing or compromising moment causing social embarrassment at an unlimited scale or affecting future employment prospects indefinitely is not based on nothing - we have all seen examples of this. Even an unlikely scenario is worth considering if the stakes are that high.
This situation compounded very gradually. In the late 90s, it was extremely common for young people to make each other laugh by doing dumb things in public (sometimes knowingly on camera) that they’d never expect to be seen by a wide audience. Then in the early 00s, the experience of going a little viral (just within your college Facebook community, before the word ‘viral’ was a thing) was actually pretty common and this started to make people just a little more guarded about being photographed. So those who got filmed doing something drunk/dumb would be more likely to go more viral, as it was now a rarer sight. And so on. It’s a recursive effect that made us all duller and more image-conscious and anxious in public. This process took a couple of decades to end up where we are now. It’s not just some new modern prissiness.
> The difference is that social media now exists. The fear of an embarrassing or compromising moment causing social embarrassment at an unlimited scale or affecting future employment prospects indefinitely is not based on nothing - we have all seen examples of this. Even an unlikely scenario is worth considering if the stakes are that high.
Realistically unless you are doing something absolutely unforgivable it will be forgotten about in a few days/weeks. At worst you will become a reaction emote.
Also going viral is a huge opportunity. Some viral people have ended up in commercials, podcasts etc.
Lets not pretend it is all negative.
> Then in the early 00s, the experience of going a little viral (just within your college Facebook community, before the word ‘viral’ was a thing) was actually pretty common and this started to make people just a little more guarded about being photographed. So those who got filmed doing something drunk/dumb would be more likely to go more viral, as it was now a rarer sight. And so on.
No this is a rewriting of history. What happened is that employers started looking through potential hires and/or current employees and quizzing them about getting drunk at a party a few years ago. This seemed to happen in the US more than other places, or maybe it was reported there more.
Then everyone with any sense made their profile semi-private (friends only) on Facebook.
Also a lot of the stuff that went viral was often clever marketing. There are advertising agencies where they have case studies detailing how they have done it.
Also there is a whole genre of streaming where people literally act outrageously in public, called IRL streaming. People have gone/are going to prison in hopes of going viral.
> It’s a recursive effect that made us all duller and more image-conscious and anxious in public. This process took a couple of decades to end up where we are now.
This is absolute nonsense. I am old enough to remember how people acted before social media in is largely the same while out in public. In fact I would say it was actually the opposite of what you claim.
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Watch any home VHS video from the 80s. Half the people the person holding the camera points it at say "stop filming me"
There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.
> Watch any home VHS video from the 80s. Half the people the person holding the camera points it at say "stop filming me"
I suspect a lot of that is more to do with them being worried about their how they look on the film than actually being on the film itself.
> There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.
Of course there are going to be people uncomfortable with it. I am. The issue is that it isn't ever going to go backwards and being video recorded in public by amateurs has been around for almost 40 years. The ship has sailed a long time ago.
I mean, I feel like the mindset of privacy and no one can have photos of me is a fairly recent phenomenon. Parents or grandparents definitely had books photos of everyone important to them and probably would have found it weird for someone to ask not to be photographed.
Those photos would have been taken with the understanding that they woupd have ended up in Grandma's album, maybe flipped through a few times, but never spread far and wide. The stakes change quite a lot if those photos can be published.
I’m Gen Z and I get how someone could be annoyed by this, but it’s also just part of life. I get annoyed when people smoke in public or pointlessly honk horns at night. But you have to accept that being around other people means some people do things you aren’t a fan of.
> but it’s also just part of life.
It’s not, and your two examples are perfect proof of it.
Indoor smoking bans have been implemented in several countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans
https://health.ec.europa.eu/tobacco/smoke-free-environments_...
Countries applying the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic only allow honking in two specific situations. In addition, it’s culturally dependent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_horn#Regulation
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/perspectives/readers-views/the-...
Don’t assume something is an immutable part of life just because it was in place when you were already born. Change can and does happen.
Smoking in restaurants and bars used to be a part of life, until it wasn’t. It took about 5 years for that shift to roll out pretty much everywhere. And it’s so much nicer without it.
There’s nothing stopping us from saying this sucks, it’s socially toxic, and we’re not going to put up with it anymore.
Smoking in restaurants and bars used to be a part of life, until it wasn’t.
A couple of years ago I went to a restaurant and for some reason automatically told the hostess, "Two, non-smoking."
She looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.
I think that topic worked because a lot of people directly noticed a difference. With the filming it's honestly part of internet culture now. Considering its been illegal in Germany for as long as I remember, it still happens extensively. Especially when you dont know your being filmed.
That's a completely ridiculous comparison. Pointlessly honking or smoking does not create a public record of your activities shared globally without your consent.
No, it just smells like shit, subjects you to a small risk of cancer, and the other disturbs your sleep resulting in a number of mental and physical health issues.
I’d much rather be shown on YouTube playing a sport.
Smoking also disturbs sleep
Difficult to do both at once, certainly.
Smoking in public has been banned in a number of large cities around the world and so has honking your horn when there is no threat to life.
>number of large cities
States usually, most of EU/Europe is banned (but not everywhere).
No threat to life sounds kinda wild.
>but it’s also just part of life.
Yeah? Who said that? Any selfish person can say the same about anything. "Yeah my dog shat your lawn but that's just part of life. Deal with it". What's part of life is different for everyone.
>I get annoyed when people smoke in public or pointlessly honk horns at night.
Yeah that's annoying, but neither the smoke or the honk are records of your private life published without consent on the internet, forever. So apples and oranges.
I personally don’t believe that filming airsoft is unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable for OP to not like it, but the majority are either fine with it or filming themselves. So it’s a situation of either dealing with it, or finding a new group to hang out with.
The problem is not being filmed, when the recording is used in small circles. The problem is when it's published for the world to see.
As a rule of thumb, for my children at school, I refuse any use of their image if it's not for something that was already possible in the eighties.
Publishing school party pictures and videos for the whole world to see was impossible in the 80s, I thus don't allow it and if it happens, it's an invasion of their private life (as per Belgian law at least).
Hanging on the school walls some pictures of the classes, or children, doing some activities: that's OK, it could already be done in the 80s and might be useful for the school community. Publishing these in a printed yearbook: I accept. Publishing it on the Internet in electronic format: this was not possible in the 80s, thus I refuse.
I think this time strikes a nice balance for everyone involved.
By the way, in Belgium, you are allowed to film in public places, but not to misuse the image of others if it's disrespecting their private life, unless for legal requirements.
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Agree. This isn't about consent when he knows he'll be recorded and participates anyway. Putting it on a consent form wouldn't make it any clearer.
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Flip it: The filmers are too lazy and disrespectful to find a group of people that want to be filmed.
Dog shit is a part of life. Shitty people are a part of life.
your way of thinking shows clearly your lack of comprehension on the subject... you didn't experience the world before the internet, so you think that the internet is "part of life". Let me tell you as someone that helped build it, that it isn't part of life. It's something that we made up, like our ancestors build the railways. Those were neither part of life. Unike the addiction to social media that was carefully engineered by top class psychologists, without anyone realizing. That shouldn't be part of life, but here we are :(
Every airsoft event I've been to has been on private property.
Solution here is to use a private airsoft field then make no filming a condition of entry. If they violate the rule, trespass.
It sounds like your solution is to /own/ the private airsoft field, not just use it.
That's the solution. You don't want to be recorded? Attend "no-recording" event. If there are no such events, tough luck. Market is not obligated to serve your particular needs. If you thing enough people care, organize it yourself.
This comment doesn't engage with the topic at all - you've just used "the free market" as a pass to avoid any meaningful discussion of privacy, consent, and social contracts in the digital age. If your "solution" is literally "tough luck" (we both know "no-recording" airsoft events are extremely unlikely to exist) - what has this added to the conversation?
> we both know "no-recording" airsoft events are extremely unlikely to exist
Let's assume it's true. What does it mean? That pretending to ruthlessly murder people while not being recorded is a niche kink and society doesn't owe this guy any special accomodations.
Thanks to the internet, which publishing prowess he abhors, I'm sure, this guy will still be able to find group of fellow degenerates so he can have fun with his exact perversion down to a T.
Or he can relax his requirements and perhaps attend swingers club instead of airsoft, because they don't usually record their hobby. Or keep doing pretend murders but relax his stance about recording it towards more mainstream sensibilities.
Is this sufficient engagement with the topic for you?
Or do I have to spell out that privacy is not special. You aren't organically owed anything when you are with other people, except for what current societal sensibilities dictate.
This is so fucking weird and needlessly hostile to the guy.
One more thing. You don't affect current social sensibilities with a blog post. Society is a function of technology. Want privacy? Nothing short of inventing some privacy tech will get you that.
I think for airsoft a facemask and pseudonym will do so you don't even need to invent anything, just apply it.
> You don't affect current social sensibilities with a blog post
Do you think they hoped their blog post would have the force of law? I think the many conversations started on the front page of HN were probably more than sufficient impact. You _really_ don't need to be so defensive of the status quo.
Your comment doesn't engage with the topic at all either bro
Sounds about right.
These kids have been on camera since they were in the womb. The delivery had a pro videographer. Parents had baby monitors with a video feed, later a nanny cam. Schools had cameras in the classrooms and busses from before first grade. Higher grades onwards all their peers had smartphones and social media accounts.
Some middle aged dude who doesn't want to be on video makes no sense to them, like that weird uncle of yours who in 2010 had no phone or email address.
It is very much cultural. In the 2000's I moved from Japan where they're very strict about public filming/taking pictures (it's something you don't do, period) to the US where people were uploading photos to Flickr and tagging people there. Completely different worlds, and we're not even talking about Gen Z because none of them were old enough to be even teenagers.
That seems weird to me. I remember in the pre-smartphone days when Japanese were the nationality whose tourists were snapping pictures everywhere and group photos in business settings was the norm when Americans at least were sort of thinking weird but whatever.
It is primarily a cultural one. You won't find many countries with the "well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces" opinion outside the anglo-saxon world.
The UK is a special place because culturally it belongs to the anglo-saxon sphere but legally it inherited the strict EU personality rights.
> The UK is a special place because culturally it belongs to the anglo-saxon sphere
I hear US culture is fairly dominant in the USA, too?
you should read the entire sentence before replying
I did, have again, and still have no idea what you mean.
It's special because both parts apply to the UK, not just the one you quoted.
And I said nothing to the contrary? I just thought it was funny to describe the UK as 'part of the Anglo-Saxon sphere', like Rome is 'among the cities with Roman influence'.
>> The platypus is a special animal because it lays eggs but nurses its young with milk.
> I hear chickens lay eggs, too?
No. I just thought it was amusing/redundant to describe the UK as among the Anglo-Saxon sphere; your mock example is irrelevant - the point of mine was that 'US culture dominates the USA' is obvious, I wasn't just... I don't even understand what you think I was doing, just stating some random other fact?
You’re right. My comment is irrelevant (I didn’t read yours carefully enough) and the phrasing of the original one was somewhat amusing.
I'm a youtuber to support my programming project, and I see many people in my situation being a lot more shy about doing that. It's a lot of work to do it properly and takes dedicated attention to not have your parasocial community turn sour or vicious on you: it's no joke.
I wonder how much of this is people expecting that ANY media presence will throw them into the troubles people experience when they have all the media presence. I know if I blow up big enough (not much of a threat right now) that someone will come to hurt me, no matter how I am. That's not about me, it's about statistics. If I blew up that big I could probably afford security…
I think some people assume you'll be confronted with that sort of problem right away just by appearing on youtube etc. Sure you will… eventually. Or if you're staggeringly unlucky.
From a professional perspective, I never worried much and I'm pretty sure it helped me. But I totally understand if there were/are people who are very concerned about putting themselves "out there" when there is at least a remote possibility of some offhand remark or paragraph costing them their job.
I don't even understand how photos are less invasive of privacy. I try not to be too weird about it, but overall I dislike getting photos taken of me. Why should I put up with that if I want to participate in a hobby?
I'm also old enough to remember not having to worry about this and what irritates me more is - I don't want to be part of someone else's "content".
I think the generational fracture may cut the other way. My impression, consistent with the polls, is that the younger generations are much more willing to embrace authoritarianism when it advances their personal values and interests. They think that the threat of violence from the state to prevent others from forming an opinion of them based on information they don't control is perfectly acceptable. Laissez-faire is passé.
Sadly the problem is only going to become bigger with upcoming smart glasses once masses adopt it, everyone will be recording each other without consent.
In the event of litigation (in court or in the public sphere), one would be at a disadvantage if they don’t have video of their side.
Like how you should have a dash cam for your side in a vehicle collision. Although, maybe sufficiently convincing fake videos will make it a moot point in the future.
I think it'll just desensitize people. Long time ago a kiss on a movie theatre screen was enough to make people protest and leave in indignation. Now everybody is few taps away from hardcore porn all the time and not many people care.
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Yeah, I feel like the new generation are recorded and published to the world literally on their first breath, right up until their funeral.
We had this idea that privacy violation is like pollution. But now it's like how our generation is used to plastic in the ocean and never seeing all the stars. It's just life.
I think there is an age range where all this "posting" has been normalized, but outside of that generation it's not appreciated. I'm old enough that this kind of shit is still taboo to me, and I know my young kid and her friends are all deeply aware of who's being photographed, and what to share online and what not to. All the kids seem to deliberately distinguish between photo/video of objects and of people around them, when they go to post things. They're definitely aware and careful. It's this middle age range of maybe 25-45 year olds (?) where a sizable number of people are just careless or even accept casual posting of other people's photos and video.
> There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube every single week".
And there's such a focus on the law and expectation of privacy in public places in these comments. There's a huge difference between someone complaining about being recorded in a small hobby community and complaining about being filmed on a public street.
My theory is that those "you just have to accept it" people are unwilling or unable to confront their own wrongdoing. Out of principle, and also triggered by the recent "AI uses all data available" situation I've tried to voice my disagreement when someone was talking a foto of me. The reactions were all around the same: Nobody was willing to just say "Sorry, of course thats your choice". everyone had some lame excuse or was trying to pressure me socially. "But my brother is deaf and just wanted to show it to his friends". As if I care if someone has a disability or not, especially since I am blind myself.
To sum it up, in my experience, people are just not willing to respect your boundaries if you make them aware they overstepped yours. They will always go for some excuse, instead of just accepting they erred.
I don't think its so much an age thing. Plenty in the younger generations are more careful what they put online than older people, because they have grown up/are growing up in an environment where it's a thing actually happening and they see the problems, and "I (believe I) can legally do this, so I will do it and don't care what you think" is a common attitude in older generations too, combined with lack of belief in the harms.
I'm not sure about generational. We take our baby to swimming classes where it is forbidden to take photos or record video — except on the family day. It's always the millennial or boomer parents/grandparents recording stuff and breaking that simple rule.
I think it's a matter of rudeness or carelessness about other people's rights and wellbeing. I want to record this so screw the rules and other babies' privacy.
The classes are pretty mixed, it's Belgium after all. If anything perhaps the next generation is so exposed to TikTok that they might find things less compelling to record? I can't say.
I wish respect and treasuring things without video evidence were on the rise.
I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on? Who's to say how much of you I have in the shot? Do you feature? Did you flash by? Are you blurred? Recognisable?
I was shooting video of a car park exit last year. (I was trying to prove to the shopping centre owners that it was dangerous.) Mundane footage. Some lady drives out in her car and sees me. Winds the window down and starts on the you don't have the right to film me carry-on.
I politely informed her that, I'm sorry, but I do. She's in public. That's the law (in Australia).
Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
"This sounded much more interesting on the radio", the cop says. They left us alone to finish the shoot.
Basic human decency.
Just as the author says: “Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.”
It doesn’t fall to the legal level, but a social rules level.
People who obnoxiously recording people in public, even if 100% legal, and disregard the wishes and conform of others around them deserve social consequences.
Some things should only exist at the social norms level. IMO it would be hunky dory if societies considered what “privacy in public” looks like in the modern age, and came to the conclusions like “no dragnets pls”.
>Basic human decency.
You've got a very large, diverse population without a strong social identity and ever-fraying trust. So you won't consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group with which you have real social ties and obligations. Most people don't have this any longer.
Even if what you're saying is true, and I'm skeptical that it is, why is the solution to give up entirely on trying to preserve or promote it?
I agree. I understand that there's no expectation of privacy in a public area and this is amplified by people having cameras/video recording capabilities in their hands than ever before. I think it's different though when it's at a private event though, like a birthday party, funeral, etc and folks shouldn't default to livestreaming
> So you won't consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group with which you have real social ties and obligations.
This is nonsense. People started taking photos of crowds almost as soon as the camera was invented.
But back then 99.99% of those pictures did not get published anywhere.
That’s true, but what does publishing have to do with being indecent, and how does that relate to in-groups and out-groups?
let's not make grand conclusions from singular observations, especially if they align with your own opinions. That's a recipe for deluding yourself.
Human decency still exists as it has always done. But perhaps not in a form that we all agree on.
> Basic human decency.
While I think we all agree that this is crucially important, for many of us the affront to decency is not the capture of photons that have previously bounced off someone's skin, but the very idea that that person has a claim to those photons in perpetuity.
I think it's indecent to suggest that someone needs to avert their gaze (or in this case, their CMOS sensor) because I happen to be in the area.
Right. If you had a swimsuit malfunction on the beach in 1995, a few people got an eyeful of your unmentionables before you could grab a towel, someone might whistle or laugh, you'd blush, and then the world would move on and you'd forget about it.
If the same thing happens in 2025, there's a decent chance your unmentionables will end up posted online for anyone to ogle in perpetuity. If you find out about it, it could really eat at you.
I don't have a solution to it, or even know if there should be one. But I think it's undeniable that it's causing a fundamental shift in what "private" and "public" mean, in people's minds if not legally. We used to be more private in public than we are now.
Who cares, your body will degrade and ultimately decompose in few short decades.
If people aren't decent enough to wait till you are dead and bother you over the footage of you they've seen, you should go after them, not the person who recorded the footage. They are the ones who cause you inconvenience.
Young girls are killing themselves every day over something you're saying "who cares" about
Go after the people who make young girls think it's something they should do in that situation.
The people making them consider suicide are the people snapping creepy shots of them and posting it online.
This isnt rocket science guys, why are we all acting stupid.
Do other apes want to kill themselves when their photos with no clothes on are taken? If not then it's some kind of sick culture that makes humans think in this manner. Fix that. It will need to get fixed eventually because technology won't go back. It will go forward faster and faster.
Even the richest man on earth's (one of them) solution to related problems is a tall hedge around his property that he gets fined for. There ain't no going back.
Fix... The patriachy? You want me to fix the patriarchy?
Again, let's stop playing stupid. And, while we're at it, let's stop suggesting "solutions" that we know we can't implement.
There's a very simple solution we can do right now: don't take naked pictures of people.
> Fix... The patriachy? You want me to fix the patriarchy?
Sure. Also sexism, puritanism, security through obscurity and abrahamic religions while you are at it. It's long overdue.
> There's a very simple solution we can do right now: don't take naked pictures of people.
That's a very temporary solution since in a very near future everybody will have their pictures taken all the time and not necessarily in the wavelengths that stop at clothing for one simple reason, technology exists.
Don't worry, you don't really have to fix anything. Just peacefully die and let the next generation grow up without your cultural burden. It's also a temporary solution but feasible for now since death is still a thing people do.
> That's a very temporary solution since in a very near future everybody will have their pictures taken all the time and not necessarily in the wavelengths that stop at clothing for one simple reason, technology exists.
What? No.
You can't hand wave away absolutionism. You can't just say "well thing X will definitely happen!"
That's not an argument, that's a belief. You've just told me your religion. Not an argument.
There's absolutely zero fucking reason why we need cameras everywhere taking naked pictures of people. That isn't just inevitable - you literally just made that up.
This "slow March towards tech gods" thing I see pisses me off beyond belief.
Because people act like it's an argument or a style of logic. No. Its a religion. You're a scientologist. You don't need me, or hackernews, you need a fucking therapist.
I mean, do you even hear yourself? You're saying we should be allowed to take as many pictures of nude women and girls as we want because you believe, some day, some Angelic tech will appear that will be omnipotent.
Dude, you sound insane. Like legitimately insane.
Also, the whole "well technology exists!!1" mindset is just so obviously fucking wrong and stupid.
You know what other technology exists right now? Today? Guns.
Does that mean I can shoot you in the face? Well the technology exists! Making murder illegal is a temporary solution! The real solution is teleporting to an alternate reality where evil does not exist!
Come on.
This is a very reasonable, thoughtful answer. array_key_first is a gaslighter and not worth your time.
> Fix... The patriachy? You want me to fix the patriarchy?
Uhhh, yeah. Instead of crippling society by suggesting we remove our eyeballs or brains (or their electronic equivalents), let's fix the actual problems.
Your use of the "playing stupid" cudgel is not helpful. Instead of accusing others of playing dumb, let's hear: how do _you_ see an internet age free of patriarchal and sexist structures emerging?
> Your use of the "playing stupid" cudgel is not helpful.
Its not meant to be helpful, it's meant to be true. Sorry about it.
> Uhhh, yeah. Instead of crippling society by suggesting we remove our eyeballs or brains (or their electronic equivalents), let's fix the actual problems.
Ahh see here's the underlying problem: you have a religious belief that you're quickly trying to pass off as an argument!
You cannot, under any circumstances, just compare humans to computers for free.
Humans have special rights, and have always had special rights, forever. You cannot just undo millions of years of understanding and expect me to go along with it.
A camera DOES NOT HAVE RIGHTS. A camera is not an eyeball. And LLM is not a brain. And so on and so on.
Some LLM singularly type folk, call them tech Christians, hold the belief that technology will soon supercede humanity and therefore LLMs are equivalent to Brains.
But that is a belief. Let me repeat that. That is a belief. That is not argument.
Right now, computer programs do not have rights. Its not an if, not a but, not a maybe - they don't have rights.
We're allowed to do this because we are human. We give ourselves special privileges.
That's why if I eat a good steak then that's just a nice dinner. But if I chop you up and eat you, I'm going to prison.
We haven't even given fucking cows rights yet. And they're literally alive and conscious. We can't just give cameras or programs rights. Come on man.
> Instead of accusing others of playing dumb, let's hear: how do _you_ see an internet age free of patriarchal and sexist structures emerging?
Slowly, over time, and predominantly not by objectifying women by proposing we should be allowed to take naked pictures of them whenever we want. Duh.
> Do other apes want to kill themselves when their photos with no clothes on are taken? If not then it's some kind of sick culture that makes humans think in this manner. Fix that.
/thread
> Young girls are killing themselves every day over something you're saying "who cares" about
...I think this advances the point GP makes. We have allowed obsession over body image to take on religious proportions (falling off both ends of the spectrum, toward tiktok swimsuit edition on one end, and the burka on the other).
Part of this obsession is the claim of ownership of every photon that bounces off one's skin until it is eventually captured by someone else's eye (biological or electronic).
A healthy internet age is one in which we find comfort in our bodies, fitness in our habits, and security without needing to control every depiction of us.
The post here makes it explicit that that the issue is with posting that video, not capturing it.
>Basic human decency.
If this existed we'd have a lot less problems in this world.
It exists
Life would be absolutely impossible without it
The debate is about its extent
I have no problem with that, but there are a lot of commenters here arguing that it should be enforced at a legal level, rather than a social rules level.
For a forum that tends to trend libertarian, I'm genuinely surprised by the level of enthusiasm for using the government to police the photos people take and share of people in public spaces.
> For a forum that tends to trend libertarian
Seriously? This one? This place is Reddit with more words, in my ever-degrading experience.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I can understand some people preferring not to be filmed in public or shared commercial spaces, but ultimately if you are truly in public then being photographed or recorded is just part of the deal.
I don’t think some people have thought about the second-order effects of things like requiring model release forms for everyone who enters the frame. Imagine getting a ticket or being sued by your busybody neighbor because you took a video of your kids in the backyard and they walked past. Laws like this are frequently abused by people who want to wield power over others, not simply people who simply want to protect themselves.
When you extend the thinking to topics like news reporting and journalism it becomes obvious why you don't want laws requiring everyone to give consent to have video shared of themselves in public: No politician would ever allow footage of themselves to be shared unless it's picture perfect and in line with what they want you to see.
I don't think the author was arguing at all that these things should be illegal, more just that there should be more consideration of other people's preferences where possible.
It's also legal to play an annoying song on repeat all day on a quiet hiking trail, but people (rightfully) recognize that as improper socially.
There are at least 3 completely distinct actions at stake here, and we should not pretend they are the same:
1. Taking pictures/videos for personal use.
2. Taking pictures/videos for internet fame/money.
3. Taking pictures/videos as a check on abuse of power.
Most opposition now is due to #2, sometimes under the guise of #3; #3 also has divisions between "is it {illegal,unethical,immoral,weird}?"
>I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I don't know about that. Aroudn this time was the peak of "Glassholes" for those who remember that phenomenon. People really didn't want someone to be potentially, passively recording their conversation. Would that not be a thing should Google re-launch Google Glass today? That might be a real factor given how Meta is trying to push AR glasses.
Here’s an article from 20 years ago on the subject, to support your memory:
=> https://web.archive.org/web/20040611150802/http://villagevoi...
> I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic.
My very very strong gut feeling is that this is an influx of bots muddying the waters of discussion in concert with the unleashing of the secret police force that is ICE.
It seems to me that every real person sees the crucial importance of public photography in peacefully maintaining accountability.
And of course nobody in this discussion has said anything against photographing officials and news-worthy events. "You should not publish photos/videos of private individuals without consent or a very good reason" and "you should be able to freely document police activity" do not contradict each other.
...and how does that work when we complete the abolitionist struggle and no longer have a separate segment of society assigned to "police activity"?
Then we don't need to worry about documenting ICE activities anymore and still don't need to publish photos of random people without a good reason.
Is that true? There are many level of exercise of political, social, and economic power that happen in the commons. The camera is a primary tool of defense against injustice in this area.
Restrictions (especially with the force of law, but also social pressures) of the basic and deeply human capacity to capture photons and vibrations, and to make depictions of the results of that capture, are invariably used by the more powerful against the less powerful. eg: cops playing "copyrighted" material to prevent posting to youtube.
Much safer and fairer is to just give ourselves the same rights we might imagine are afforded to an alien, 4 light years away, looking through an extremely powerful telescope. Do you suggest that earth laws extend to this alien? Is she prohibited from posting the activities she can see of ours through her telescope?
Maybe our society has failed if publishing such photos is needed to maintain accountability... I really do not see that step for actually functioning society.
...we have evolved eyes, brains capable of retaining visual memory of what they capture, and communications media capable of describing and depicting those captured photons.
If you believe in the basic right of general purpose computing - not just a political right, but the idea that general purpose computing is the lifeblood of the internet age - then it seems to follow logically that the capture of photons and depiction thereof are part of the functioning the commons.
But, OP was not in a public space.
Part of the issue is, big portion of the footage being recorded, is not worth recording, let alone publishing. (Except for personal value of the person recording, but that doesn't require public sharing)
With the OP example, people getting recorded are not bystanders catching stray camera focus, they are the subject of the video. Without other participants, there would be little 'content'. Imagine going to an indoor climbing venue, recording someone else, and publishing just that.
Not to mention "auditors", whose goal is to use the ambiguous nature of feels-like-a-privacy-invasion-but-legally-isnt when you stick a camera in someone's face in a public place to try and get a rise out of people and prance around as victim.
I think this is a case where the reasonable person test is excellent. Is this use of a camera reasonable for personal/professional purposes
You should be expected to take reasonable steps not to victimise someone by use of a video camera, subject to public interest. That means filming strangers with intent to provoke them should be a crime but raging car park lady cannot reasonably claim to have been victimised. Consent affects what is reasonable without creating a duty-bound obligation not to film without consent.
We already have "reasonable expectations of privacy", why not flip that?
The idea of public and private needs a similar distinction like libel and defamation.
Ephemeral public has no expectation of ephemeral privacy, but me walking down a street with a handful of people on it should not lead me to expect that being recorded and having it broadcast to the entire human race, permanently, for eternity.
>...but me walking down a street with a handful of people on it should not lead me to expect...
You shouldn't have an expectation either way. If anything, the expectation that you will not be recorded is more of a violation of the social contract that the reverse. It's a public space that can be used for many purposes. If the effect on bystanders is minimal then attempting to exclude an activity is wrong. Can we say "I don't want you to see me, so look away whenever I am out." "I don't want to wait in traffic so everyone else has to pull over and clear the road when I am driving." "I didn't consent to this smell, so this restaurant has to turn off their stoves and ovens hours before I will be coming by."
Reality is that you can't exclude others if they aren't doing something that excludes you.
The way they do it in Germany is it's legal to have a recording that incidentally includes a person but it's not legal to have a recording of the person.
To be clear, I am talking about a hypothetical ought-to-be and not specifically discussing the current law anywhere.
I hear you and I agree public spaces involve us working and coexisting together, not tailoring the public space to what one person wants.
On the other hand, there is something in me that doesn't like for-profit rage bait creators monetizing how I react to a guy shoving a camera in my face and doing something irregular. I feel like it is a type of assault we don't have a name for yet but that should conceivably be criminal.
I just realize that I'm acting like the those that first saw the printed word or a camera and felt uneasy about it, I am just an old man angry that video cameras and globalization of content exists. I'm probably just a luddite trying to stop the world from progressing.
“How To With John Wilson” is an entire genre of precisely this.
I think the context of the original article is important: at an airsoft range, you’re on private property. You’ve signed a waiver to be there, there’s already rules to follow. Having formal rules for filming would be a totally reasonable and practical thing to do.
Just like some gyms are accommodating to people filming TikTok’s and some aren’t, an airsoft range could have camera or no camera days, if that was something their players wanted.
This. People should either be banned from filming at the private site, or be required to agree to some form of consent seeking.
Or required to agree to be filmed.
It's always a possibility that the owners of the range have already considered this and found there is virtually no market for no-camera days. Excluding your most enthusiastic members to include a miniscule number of camera-shy weirdos is unlikely to pay off.
The venues for these things are private and so they can set their own rules. The author proposes a rule: A simple purple lanyard indicating that you don't wish to be included in the published film.
This doesn't necessarily need to be an article, because the author could have just handled it with each venue individually, but this just gets the conversation going about general sentiment and wider applicability.
My guess is that early on this kind of youtuber was relatively rare and so being captured occasionally wasn't a big deal, but that now the trend is catching on, a it's happening regularly and becoming a concern for some people.
The author is a tech lawyer. I think the article is there to start discussion. I agree with him that if private venues allow people to record like this they should offer, at the very least, an opt out. "Purple lanyard" seems like a good way. It's also a pretty easy spot in post production where you can either blur or cut as appropriate.
There is a super obvious opt out that doesn't require people to take special actions.
Don't go to places that allow recording.
From the article:
I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby).
Aren’t these venues small businesses that very much appreciate whatever publicity someone sharing their venue on social media gives them?
I guess they can weigh that against their customers desire for privacy.
In many hobbies, recording footage and reviewing it later is very valuable for improving. Think about football players reviewing game footage as a team to discuss what they did well and what went wrong.
Many hobbies are like this. The majority of footage people record on their GoPros is for themself. It's rare for someone to edit it into a YouTube video. Even more rare for someone to go see it.
The AirSoft example is interesting because players where so much protective gear and face masks that it would be very difficult to recognize anyone's likeness anyway.
The author suggests this was not a public space. Legal or not, it's more about not being a jerk. I think this is especially important in the context of a hobby, and the local community around that hobby. There are easy ways for everyone to get what they want in these situations.
So, why not get a release? Why not perform some light video editing to cut/blur out people who don't want to be there? These are not high bars to clear. I've done similar things, you have every opportunity to talk to the group and sort this out, and explain why you're filming and where you're publishing. Then people can come to an informed decision...
Yes? I'm not sure I understand here.
If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info? If it's for personal use, sure thing, but when you are making money on it then you should absolutely get releases and default to bluring non-released individuals.
I think the bigger issue is that our laws (in the US at least) haven't really caught up with this gig/creator economy. It would be no different than a blockbuster film group filming a war/battle sequence and having to get permission ahead of time from the location and individuals.
My work will have signs up or ask explicitly if they are filming and intend to publish. If you go to a private org with the intention of filming, you should follow the same rules for a full-budget production group.
> If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info?
The model release laws are usually tied to commercial use where some endorsement is implied.
That’s why your company must secure a model release when filming in your office: The material is being used in a manner related to the company and as an employee in the video you are implicitly part of that.
If the AirSoft facility was filming customers and using that footage in an ad, they would probably require model release forms.
There are freedom of speech protections covering the capture of likeness for artistic display, editorial use, and so on.
If the YouTuber made some video in this case as an ad for some AirSoft product and included other people in it without model release forms in a way that implied they were part of the endorsement, they could be in trouble. If they’re just making videos reporting on their games then I doubt there’s an argument that you could make requiring a model release, even if the channel was monetized.
This is also why news channels don't need to secure model release forms when reporting on public events. If we required everyone to do the model release form thing to show any video of them, you would never see any negative videos of politicians or criminals agin.
The alternative is for the venue to have "recording time" and "non recording time." If you go during non recording time, you're not allowed to bring cameras into the space. And if you don't want to be recorded, you go then. And if you want to record, go during recording time.
Think of it like a public pool. It is unreasonable to say that there should be public pools that children aren't allowed into, but it's also unreasonable to expect all adults to want to swim with children. This is why we have the concept of adult swim time.
Blur the people who didn’t give consent. The problem is cultural, not technical. Even YouTube has the native ability to blur out faces at the click of a button.
Obviously isn't going to work for OP case. He's playing airsoft. No faces are visible.
> I get it, but the alternative is what?
Stop taking video in public, or at least of the public. You just assume you should be able to do that and the whole world should adjust to your preference. Maybe it should be the other way around.
Do you also support a blanket ban of CCTV in public spaces? I am pretty sure that the bank had a camera in the ATM recording a public pavement 24/7 and nobody bats an eye.
> Do you also support a blanket ban of CCTV in public spaces?
I'm not sure I support anything. I'm just pointing out that there is a path available if you don't just assume that you should be allowed to take video.
But it wouldn't bother me at all to have, say, a rule that you couldn't have a surveillance camera covering any space you didn't own, and furthermore that if you had a camera covering a space that you did own that was open to the public, and recordings would be deleted after say 24 hours unless there was special justification to keep a specific one.
Many people are actually quite uncomfortable with the prevalence of video surveillance, in fact.
However, there are significant differences: 1. The camera is in a fixed position, 2. The footage is not typically shared let alone published online.
Here in Spain if you don't get explicit consent you can get sued for publishing the video (it's fine if you only showed it to the shop owner and didn't publish it), but if someone tells you explicitly they don't want to be recorded you have to stop and delete the video (I assume if you refuse they can just call the police, but I've never seen it happen).
Well, the first step is not being sued and taken to court, but receiving a cease-and-desist letter. But for that to happen, the person that has been videoed needs to be aware of that his face is on YouTube, which in most cases you won't even notice unless it's a video with a very high click count.
OP offers a reasonable idea of wearing a lanyard or badge to indicate you'd like to be censored out of the final video. that's practical and provides community enforcement -- for example if someone publishes a video with a subject like that, the community can shame them for it.
Shouldn't it be opt in, not opt out? Wear a badge if you are okay being in it. People who aren't wearing it are blurred out or otherwise removed.
that's how I would do it. but we have to start somewhere and maybe zoomers really do enjoy being recorded? who knows?
You can use AI to blur anyone that doesn't give permission. You can't use the excuse of "it's too much work!" It should be the law that you can't indiscriminately video everyone for your own financial gain.
Blur is boring, but swapping faces or other recognizable features to something similar but AI-generated sounds cool.
Sounds like the central idea of the "scramble suit" from A Scanner Darkly.
> Do you feature?
Yes, this is what the author is concerned about. There’s a big difference between being filmed incidentally, and being filmed on purpose for the activity you’re engaged in. Being accidentally in the background is one thing, while being the subject of a video and having the camera aimed at you is another. Even though public photography is also legal where I live, and I believe we should keep that right, if I filmed close-ups of people in the car park getting in and out of their cars, I’d expect most people would object and find it uncomfortable.
Shooting video for yourself is one thing, sharing it to a third party like Google, MS, or Apple is another. Unfortunately many people have been brainwashed to not consider or even understand the difference.
I'm fine with being recorded as long as you keep it private. Not with that video ending up on your Drive backups or OneDrive etc, let alone YT.
This is drawing a very different line from the majority of conversations in this thread, I imagine.
"Sharing with a third party" because you have phone backups enabled is very different from streaming live or uploading to social media, like most are actually discussing here.
I'm replying to this
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
The offline alternative exists even if your OS employs dark UX patterns to make that frustrating. GP is the one who is conflating things.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
i think i would prefer this. i'd rather live in the world where no one can record or photograph you in public than the world where you're streamed or entombed in a vod for life.
I get it, but the alternative is what?
Don't publish the videos unless you have a good reason to. There is no upside to just throwing everything you record on the internet. People don't watch the videos, your channel is degraded by having tons of garbage on it, and people in the videos don't want to be online like that.
If you stop pretending that a random video is somehow going to 'go viral' or make you famous, the entire problem just evaporates.
If you want to publish videos put the effort into making good ones that people will actually watch, which means raising the bar by (in part) finding people who want to be in them. Videos of random people doing pretty mundane things like their hobbies won't turn you into the next YouTube star.
As an American living in Europe, I have seen Europe do "no cameras by default" quite successfully.
Are dash cams / bicycle cams not ubiquitous in Europe by now?
I would have thought they would be very useful for adjudicating high cost events such as automobile collisions, or even police interactions.
Like most things with "Europe" - it depends, because it isn't one state with universal laws or even cultural expectations. Go to somewhere like Poland and everyone will have a dashcam and it's almost expected at this point(imho). But in neighbouring Germany you are technically allowed to have a dashcam, but any recording is legally inadmissable in any court case. So even if you have a recording of someone crashing into you, it can't be used because the other person never agreed to be recorded. Meanwhile Austria and Portugal have banned them completely, even for personal use.
Germany specifically doesn't like dashcams that record continuously. Legal ones just keep a short buffer and when they detect a crash or a button is pressed (or a voice command in fancy ones) they'll write it to storage. Because if something happens you have a valid reason to have and use footage, you just can't record people without a reason.
No private cameras (maybe)
>I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
Only if you publish the video, if there is indentifiable information or when the person is the center piece of your video.
If you are professional company, you have profesional that do this for you. If you are not professional, you can make the time, because you are not doing it often.
> Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
Either that or, if you can’t get a model release, make sure to blur their face in editing. This used to be standard practice.
In Germany it's generally illegal to film people apart from certain exceptions (mostly public events and public spaces). Even when filming something in public, you must be filming the event/space and not a person or group who happens to be occupying it, which is a fine distinction. Even surveillance cameras have strict requirements to be legal. You don't want to be the guy who goes to jail for having a surveillance camera, right?
Tangentially, nightclubs put stickers over your phone cameras and that is a great idea.
I think there is at least something of a middle ground for almost-but-not-quite-public spaces and events. In this case the author is talking about airsoft games; it seems totally reasonable for the venue or organizer to enact policies, whether "no cameras allowed" or "purple helmet means don't show / blur this person".
In fully public spaces I think we're pretty much out of luck, though I do think that laser/lidar-based countermeasures should be legal.
> I get it, but the alternative is what?
Airsoft sites ban/allow videos in certain matches.
Not rocket science. We manage in public spaces like toilets ok.
They also point to purple lanyards in conferences and suggest an equivalent in Airsoft.
Why is this comment going back to zero? Does Hacker News not have the ability to move forward? Is this a central tenant to the nihilism worship that is Hacker News?
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
This seems reasonable to me. If its airsoft, how many people are involved? 10? 20? Just go around and ask people if they will allow you to post video of the game with them in it.
> I get it, but the alternative is what?
If AI photo/video generation continues to improve then it shouldn't be a problem as the photo/video taking culture will most likely die off once people assume any photos/videos they see are generated.
If I see someone filming me while driving I usually give them the finger. I suppose that's my consent for them to do whatever with it. I don't foolishly believe they can't do it, but I do suggest maybe they shouldn't.
The alternative is not uploading video of people doing a hobby.
I don't think your situations are the same as someone appearing on some youtube channel without their consent every single week unless they opt out of participating at all.
Well the majority of the facilities are private land, right, not public, right? Organize formal sessions during which photography is prohibited. If you don't get any takers, the sport might have left you behind.
> during which photography is prohibited
or expressly allowed, so that this dude knows not to go there
> Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
> We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
Heh. As a photog I've have plenty of similar run ins with people...but only when wielding an SLR (or similar). Was once standing on a sidewalk, saw a building that looked cool, took a picture. I'm more into architecture than people. Security comes out from the lobby to accost me. I very politely told them "Dude, I'm on the sidewalk, you can't do shit"
I also had the local transit agency threaten to call the cops on me for taking photos. Literally of just the platform and rails (without people) when I was trying to document the system for Wikipedia. Even though on their website it EXPLICITLY states that what I was doing was within their rules. Ignoring the fact that it was totally legal regardless.
That time I just (metaphorically) ran away rather than dealing with a belligerent station agent. Was what I was doing wrong? No. Was it legal? Yes. But did I want to deal with the transit police? Nope.
The thing that drives me batshit nuts is no one seems to care if you're taking a picture with a phone. The latest iPhone have megapixel counts in excess of many DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I can be way more sneaky with my phone. By using a DSLR type camera I'm being very public that "Hey, I'm taking a picture here" that should assure people, rather than scare them.
The the author of the article wasn't in a public area, but in a private area at a private event, perhaps model release forms are a really good idea for participants.
Filming and publishing is different things though legally.
E.g. you can film public spaces as much as you want, but be careful of what you post to YouTube.
What if there was some sort of middle layer escrow holdings platform for users to sign up to that has your identity, facial biometrics, and crypto wallet. The user can also specify how they want their likeness used, or if they do not want to appear, etc.
Any user uploading to a video platform has to run their video through this integration user-facial detection layer at some point in their editing pipeline. Payments are made accordingly.
Just brainstorming.
>I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
Not every thing has to be recorded.
It is like all those runners and cyclists who log and share all their runs/rides on Strava without even taking the time to figure out if it really serves a purpose other than a vain attention seeking.
This reminds me of that time secret US military bases were identified from serviceman's social fitness data?
https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-f...
Honestly, the older I get the more I cherish that I grew up in a time before the compulsion to post literally everything.
> vain attention seeking
Why are you shaming people for seeking what they obviously lack and need for their psychological well being?
Good to know you reside on the other side of the planet. I wouldnt want to meet you in public under any circumstances. So much entitlement and disregard for other people is sickening.
... The bank was filming the ATM the whole time.
There are a lot of '1A' auditors on youtube. They can be nasally and annoying but it's hilarious how often people go into a rage that they're being filmed despite the fact the people getting angry are doing the same to everyone else.
Back in my day shakes first there were places where someone could do things that would normally be mildly embarrassing because they were in a supportive community. In this example, it could be playing pretend and possibly saying goofy things or falling over and tripping or getting your butt handed to you by someone half your age or something.
When I was young, it would have been playing open mics as a teenager. I wasn't amazing but it's really important to play publicly in order to grow as a musician, and that means kinda sucking in public. I would not have become a musician if I didn't have that supportive community.
In this day and age, if I were to do that, someone would probably live stream it or film it on their phone and put it on YouTube, then It would get found by the kind of awful kids that like to make other people feel awful for no reason, then they would have found my like Facebook or social media or something, I'd catch shit at school, and I never would have touched an instrument again.
So yeah, save your highlight reels for someone else, thanks.
It may be an exaggeration but it feels like half the problem with the internet has been this sort of “dunk culture” that’s proliferated in the past 10-15 years. How heinous is it that anybody can gain significant notoriety by just providing a steady supply of innocent people to lambast?
It's definitely not an exaggeration. YouTubers talk about this all the time. The videos that do the best are the ones that are negative.
One day somebody is going to run for President who had an extensively online youth and it's going to be wild.
Well J D Vance has all those awkward pics of him as a young fellow and it hasn't hurt him. He made VP coming from nowhere.
I don't know if that's the best example when the presidential candidate running has literal criminal records against him. We are clearly not in times where "binders full of women" is an election ending quote.
They still get used to try and discredit him all the time. Same with the videos of AOC dancing.
Yeah but both of those are clearly ineffective since both those people won their respective elections.
I get your point but even if elected it can sway public perception of character
Any negative perception of JD Vance is due to his recent behavior and statements, not from his awkward youth.
I wouldn't be surprised if spurious criticisms about an awkward youth and couch fucking have inured him to very real criticism of his governance.
It is funny how insular and US centric many of the comments here are. In fact many countries do have legislation requiring consent in many scenarios for photographing or publishing photos. And it turns out that it is not actually very problematic.
Wikimedia has some examples, but I'm sure it is not comprehensive: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...
1. The author of the article is in the UK
2. Recording people without their consent still happens in lot of other countries other than the US. I bet I'm in tons of YouTube videos showing skiing in the Alps.
Because the US has other laws that make the kind of laws you're talking about very difficult. You have to look at the laws together as a part of a system and not a one off set of actions.
In addition laws in the US tend to protect the rich very well and get wholesale ignored for the poor. That is Jeffrey Bezos will punish you with the full extent of the law for taking a video of him beating a baby fur seal to death with a bat, while star-wars kid will be begging for venmo donations in order to get thousands of copies of video taken down while law enforcement ignores the situation.
I don't think the law is the issue here. Stuff like #metoo shows how devasating effects can be even if you eventually sue and win. And the audience sentiment never really changes because they never come back to the story.
Mix that with the lack of general shame for this stuff and you have this weird state of affairs where you don't want to do anything slightly risky. Nothing silly, nothing that can cause you to be looked over on job apps, nothing that you enjoy by yourself but others find "weird".
I mean there is a "photo release" or "Model Release" contract used often when taking pictures in any private place that grants the right for the photographer to use those photos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release
Not really, other European countries also have the "don't participate if you don't want to be filmed" mentality.
E.g. author says:
> But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conference
I've been to many such conferences, and they all make it very clear that all the photos can be taken and used in advertising by anyone, both in agreements as well as entrance banners. Same as in US.
Some conferences I've attended provide stickers to put on your badge and if you don't want to be photographed/published the conference organizers may pay attention with respect to their publicity photos. Of course, others snapping pics with their cell phones may not. (And, in Germany as well as other countries, I've never seen explicit warnings about not publishing photos of people at a conference without permission.).
Most people are pretty reasonable and aren't aggressive with their picture taking. But there are almost certainly photos of you online whatever the local country laws may say.
In my country is like this, or was, I have not worked in that space for a long time.
An individual can record you on the street without problems.
A crew can't record you on the street for anything that will be aired on tv/cinema without your signing that you give your permision.
A Youtuber can record you on the street without problems.
Well, the author in the article is in the US, posting about behavior they experience in the US, so it really isn't that surprising.
ah, .co.uk, the TLD long favored by lawyers blogging in the US, indeed.
I would also push back against the whole "this is just being perceived in public" thing, because you're not consenting to being perceived by the entire planet, you were consenting to being perceived by the people present and in the community. Like if there's a bully in the community, the community can do something about it or you can at least avoid them. Like you are consenting to interacting with a culture of like-minded people, and you know they're like-minded because they all showed up to the same event to do the same thing. That is not true of the open internet.
I feel this has some parallels to concerns over house/porch cameras which are proliferating these days.
I have no problem with the idea that everyone on the street is recording from their porch... as long as it's for their own siloed use, and it takes a conscious act for them to share it. If someone wants to stalk you, they'd need conscious assistance from your neighbors. If the police are tracking a hit-and-run, they need to ask people for footage during a time period, etc.
But the moment someone says "hey let's network all those with object/face recognition so that you can easily trace every person walking down the street", then we've got a problem.
I agree that we need a renewed social agreement on "no perception of privacy in public" concept now that cameras are everywhere, are smaller than a pinhead, and cost pennies .
Laws aren't sacred, they are just the rule over the living by the dead. All of our privacy laws were made when the technology , culture and demographics were completely different.
The thing that I find more frustrating than anything is photos of children. I'm not so bothered about myself.
I have a young child - he's two and a half. Most people are considerate and ask if it's OK to take a photo - and I generally say yes if it's friends - but we were at a wedding recently and a staff member, total stranger, at the venue was laughing at him running around and asked if they could take a picture, and then got stroppy when I said no. I just think it's quite strange behaviour to want to take photos of a child you don't know. It's quite different to the professional photographer taking photos for the hosts in my mind, which you basically accept by bringing your kids to an event like that.
A mum at a playgroup just took out phone and started filming my son playing with her child. My wife asked her to stop and she again got quite stroppy, even though the group explicitly said that photos should only be taken with consent in that space!
Does stroppy mean angry where you're from? Where's that?
I’m from the UK
It does yes but more like in a bad mood. A teenager who is rolling their eyes and making a comment because they’ve been asked not to do something could be described as having a strop.
I can tell you're really fun at parties /s
I agree a lot with the sentiments here and I think people who want to avoid being filmed should have that right. But, as someone who doesn't mind (and is younger) I suppose I could share my rationalizion for it (as flawed as it may be)
One often mentioned reason is the fear that in some way your likeness will end up in something significant, or viral. That makes sense, it's the most invasive and significant violation. We "risk becoming the side character in someone else's parasocial relationship" as another commentator mentioned. I myself wouldn't want that either, but I derive some comfort from one main observation: virality doesn't scale. A lot of the worries come from the fact that "everyone is filming now", "everything is shared now". That's true, but the likelihood of any of this ever becoming popular or even seen goes down as the volume goes up. That alone is enough for me to not be that worried, at least not by the increased prevalence of public filming/photography.
On the other hand, this does nothing to limit the effect of data harvesting and government espionage, a real worry I might have.
It's interesting that you mentioned being younger. One thing I've noticed is that as people accumulate different experiences and social groups (not necessarily just because of age), they often develop different "personas" depending on the environment. In one setting, you might be an enthusiast sharing a video about a hobby, while in another you might be a CEO interacting with your team, shareholders, partners, or customers where you naturally behave differently. The challenge is managing these "many worlds" without them colliding. One solution that's becoming more feasible now is the ability to modify your appearance and voice depending on the context.
I think I'm sympathetic to both sides of this.
If my kid is on some fun Disney ride, and I take a short video of them, and also there are some other people in the background or also on the ride, I would still fee comfortable sharing the video. Well, I wouldn't, because I don't put videos of my kids online, but if I was comfortable doing that, I wouldn't feel deterred by the presence of others.
But also, if someone else takes a photo of my kids in public (or at Disney), I would feel somewhat uncomfortable about it, and I'd feel even more uncomfortable about finding that photo online.
I don't know how to square that, ethically. Sometimes I see posts on Reddit that go "hey, I was out at the beach, and I saw this couple proposing, and I got this amazing photo of it, does anyone know them so I can send them a copy," and I think "you just took one of the most important, intimate, private moments of this couple's life and posted it online without their permission," but it doesn't seem to upset anyone because the couple will look really great in the photo. Does that make a difference? I've got no answers for this, just questions.
I think conversation gets more telling if you include some more protected groups like children. And then more slightly more intimate places, like say pools or beaches and expand it to proper zoom and telephoto lenses.
Is there still in those case no expectation of privacy? Where exactly is the line? Maybe changing rooms and toilets are not public places anymore... But is the line really that clear?
I encounter people taking pictures, making video calls, and recording insta/tiktok/whatever videos in the gym changing room all the god damned time. I keep telling people to stop, but not once has anyone responded with "oh sorry". A belligerent "why?" is the most polite response I've received.
Genuinely curious: what concrete negative consequences are there from appearing in the background of other people’s photos/videos, in a full face mask no less?
Is he afraid that someone will be able to identify him as engaging in a hobby that some people might be judgmental about, e.g. a potential employer finding the footage and concluding “this guy spends lots of time and money playing a children’s game; he’s clearly not a serious person.” That I can understand.
But it seems like his position is stronger than this:
>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
So essentially, it’s wrong to publish any photo that happens to include people in the background? If I take an artistic photo at an art museum [0] or a restaurant [1] or a streetscape [2] and there happen to be people in the background, what possible harm could come to the people incidentally captured?
[0] https://500px.com/search?q=the%20Met&type=photos&sort=releva...
[1] https://500px.com/search?q=Busy%20restaurant&type=photos&sor...
[2] https://500px.com/search?q=Times%20Square%20&type=photos&sor...
You're looking for a generic reason, I think, and there isn't and doesn't need to be one other than "people can desire their privacy for various reasons"
Maybe publicizing where someone is every week lets criminals plan their crimes. Maybe it gives away someone's location to an abusive ex or family member or stalker. Maybe people just don't want Google and the like to have even more data about our whereabouts and actions and identity.
These are all nice concrete consequences, but I’m not sure having public images meaningfully exacerbates them.
>robbers
Why would a criminal take time to comb through random, anonymous, uncategorized images of people to ambiguously identify someone who might not be home (and might not even have a house worth breaking into), when it’s much easier to just stake out wealthy neighborhoods and definitively see who’s not home and who has unsecured valuables, as has been done for centuries?
>stalkers
So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet to find the handful that might incidentally contain their victim? Someone that determined would just hire or use the methods of a PI, which have long been effective at finding people who don’t want to be found.
>Google et al.
The solution here is to regulate what Google et al. can do with your data, not regulate what people can post online.
>So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet
This argument is so poorly formed I almost believe it's in bad faith.
Both you and I know that a stalker wouldn't do that. People tend to congregate their online behaviors in a very small circle of sites based upon their physical locations, I'm not going to index files in Japan to find someone in Iowa. Digital footprints are both large and small at the same time.
> when it’s much easier to just stake out wealthy neighborhoods and definitively see who’s not home and who has unsecured valuables
Because it's risky and time consuming to be there in person. In fact it's even easier to setup a camera in said neighborhoods and have software track users behavior then to sit around there yourself.
> So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet to find the handful that might incidentally contain their victim?
Stalkers often have knowledge of the victim’s friends and associates and have no problem combing through their social media looking for photos.
> Someone that determined would just hire or use the methods of a PI, which have long been effective at finding people who don’t want to be found.
PIs will not do work for people without a legitimate purpose, as they could lose their license. Stalkers with ill intent will also be leaving a paper trail if they hire a PI. And non-PIs may be able to use some PI methods, but they won’t be able to access the full range of PI tools or PI relationships.
> So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet to find the handful that might incidentally contain their victim
Or use an image search engine that does facial recognition. Already exist, and likely to become more common.
> Why would a criminal take time to comb through random, anonymous, uncategorized images of people to ambiguously identify someone who might not be home (and might not even have a house worth breaking into), when it’s much easier to just stake out wealthy neighborhoods and definitively see who’s not home and who has unsecured valuables, as has been done for centuries?
Knowing your target's movements and schedule has also been an integral part of crime since forever. Also, you are again focusing on the generic - the goal being hitting any wealthy target, not this particular target.
> So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software on every image on the internet to find the handful that might incidentally contain their victim? Someone that determined would just hire or use the methods of a PI, which have long been effective at finding people who don’t want to be found.
Maybe they know their target likes airsoft but, probably due to the stalking, has changed locations to try and get away. Looking at the few local airsoft places is probably way cheaper than hiring a PI. Can one easily hire a PI for stalking purposes, anyway? Seems like an industry that has some strong regulations but I don't really know.
Besides, you don't need to worry about things like a PI or finding random images if, for example, a friend or acquaintance in your group posts a lot. The stalker need only find that one person to keep an eye on their target - a very common tactic by abusers, by the by: being aware of your target's social circle and using it to keep tabs on them.
This also seems to focus on the physical aspect of it, as if getting attacked/kidnapped is the only possible result, but constantly getting messages like "Looks like you had fun at X" from an abuser can cause harm too.
> The solution here is to regulate what Google et al. can do with your data, not regulate what people can post online.
There are 2 separate issues. Should we regulate what people can post online? And should we expect people to respect our privacy, even if they're not legally required to? One is a legal question, the other is social/cultural.
There are A LOT of concrete reasons you might not want to be recorded at an airsoft event:
* Don't want to be ridiculed if you look silly (it is airsoft, after all)
* It's distracting to be videoed
* You have a stalker trying to find information about you
* Makes you feel pressure to put on make up and look "decent"
* Something you say might sound bad out of context and result in being ostracized or otherwise socially punished
* You might have a secret airsoft tactic or codes you don't want people to know about
* You don't want facial recognition trained on you
* You told someone you couldn't go to their party because you are sick and don't want to get caught lying
* etc etc
These aren't all huge issues, but they are reasonable.
* You called-in sick for work :)
> what concrete negative consequences are there
It isn't necessarily about consequences. I don't want photos of me on the internet. I don't like the idea that other people get to do that without my consent.
I don't have any power to stop it. I am not even sure I should, or what limits it should have. But I don't think I should need to justify that as a preference.
what possible harm could come to the people incidentally captured?
That is not the point. If someone doesn't want to be in someone else's photos or videos without consent, it is their choice. It is their face afterall. It doesn't matter why. They do not owe an explanation.
The polite thing to do would be to blur other people's faces (or remove people altogether) before adding our photos to the gajillion others already floating around on the internet.
Maybe you just don't want the AI that Google is definitely training to predict video frames to insert your face into AI-generated videos?
That would be the fault of Google.
It's stated in a terms of use agreement that you are simply not a party to.
>>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
If you don't want someone to make a record of the photons that arrive at a particular place because those photons bounced off you, then don't let them go out into the world far beyond your private space.
Why are you trying to dehumanize the idea of taking a picture of someone and possibly posting it publicly by referring to it as photons? Yes we are all just atoms moving around in 3D space but it doesn't take away the fact that people should be allowed to exist outside their house without some random person recording them and possibly posting it to the internet. You don't care and that is totally fine but some people do.
I'm not dehumanizing it, I'm making it clear that photography is generally a passive activity. Where's the line between "don't record me" and "don't look at me"? If it's ok you look at you, but not record you, where's the line? Can someone use a telescope to look at you? Can a store have a camera and a live TV view of all the people who walk in? Can there be a live camera that captures the people on a sidewalk and display it on a giant billboard on the side of a building? If you're at a sporting event can they aim a camera at you in the crowd and put you on the jumbotron? These are all amplifications of visibility, which ones are allowed and which are not. And why should you be able to insist on the absolute bare minimum of noticeability when you are out in public?
How is it passive? You are literally choosing to use a camera by pointing it in a specific direction and press a button to make it record. The problem is how people who record videos of others are perfectly fine with it while other people might not be. It's not other people seeing me or noticing me that is the problem. It's random people I don't know recording me because I don't get to choose how the video/recording stored on their device will be seen or distributed in the future.
Businesses recording security footage is different because there is some type of social contract that they won't publicly release it. If I knew for example that the grocery store I shop at was posting security videos to youtube I would go spend money at another grocery store. I can choose not to go to a sporting event concert because I don't want to be on a jumbo tron. I have way to choose whether or not some random person will record me while I'm working out or taking my dog out.
> Genuinely curious: what concrete negative consequences are there from appearing in the background of other people’s photos/videos, in a full face mask no less?
How about if you're overweight, doing airsoft to try to get into shape, and bellyflop into some mud on video?
That's social media crack right there, boys and girls.
Can you understand why someone might not want that kind of thing posted?
I mean the whole point of privacy is you not knowing... It kind of defeats the point if you need a reason, because the reason is probably...private
I had this when I rode with a motorbike group. It was a loose collection of people that rode a specific route on the weekend.
I only went a few times, but it was obvious the people with the cameras were looking for interesting content and drama. I cut an open corner and ended up in the highlight reel as some example of what not to do. Even though everyone there was 50% over the speed limit and riding “dangerously” in the eyes of others, what got put on the video was the interesting stuff. And of course, you never got to see the speedo of the camera man as he went 2-3 times the limit.
Another biker I knew said he didn’t ride with those guys because they’re just out there to bait for content.
We, a group of people living on a street where we get a lot of dangerous motorbikers passing our homes, started collecting these video's recently.
Our goal is to get the roads closed for motorbikes, place bike-repelling infrastructure and to have police involved in the many cases of one-sided accidents. For that we need to convince local governments that motorbikes are misbehaving.
So we now sift through instagram, youtube, etc to find such video's you mention where they ride "our" roads. Or where individuals that we've seen riding our roads misbehave in other places. This is obviously nothing "legal proof", but it's a growing dossier. And also a clear reason why someone may not want to be filmed. In one case, a motorbike lost control, narrowly missed a thick metal bar and plowed through two front yards of neighbors. Police was involved. We managed to find this individual on several other such videos clearly racing way over the speed limit. He lost his drivers licence. Not because of the video's, but they did help make the case this person was structurally misbehaving, not a one-time mistake or technical error.
---
Sidenote, to illustrate this is not a few "get off my lawn" people, but that this is an actual problem: These motorbikers are but a few dozen individuals over the year, yet their noise and the danger and agression towards others road users is out of any proportion. This is a quiet nature reserve where people come to run, stroll, watch birds, go swimming with family, drive grandma around, bicycle, skate, picknick. Where our kids play and where our teens cycle to school. On busy days there can be hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians in a sunny afternoon. The speed limit is mostly 30km/h (18mph), the road is 2.5 to 3m (8-9ft) wide, traffic from both sides. Motorbikers have been seen to hit 130km/h (80mph). Where children are cycling, couples are walking, fitgirls skating and so on.
I sympathise with this, people who are endangering others deserve consequences of the law. I live in a city near a straight road and often hear bikes step through 2-3 gears at night. I know how fast that is and it’s dangerous.
One of the reasons I stopped riding with this group was a few people there didn’t have a strong will to live and so adrenaline and confrontation was what they were looking for.
The specific route I mentioned though is 50km outside of the nearest city, through a wasteland and ridden at times to minimise traffic getting in the way. The best time was 6pm on a Tuesday night where you’d be lucky to pass anyone.
lol why do you want to punish all motorcycle riders instead of the actual people who are misbehaving....
If you have a way to "punish the misbehaving motorcycle riders" while allowing or even welcoming the rest, please share.
We've researched this. It's a European wide issue that's discussed, researched, tested and so on, throughout many communities and places. So far, there's no way to prohibit only the bad actors.
Part of the "infrastructure" changes would be things like speed bumps. Where it pays off to ride below the speed limit, and hard to ride above it. But that then makes some misbehaving drivers use their "0-100 in 8 sec" that their motorbike builder once promised. Going through four gears on a 500m stretch. The disturbance and noise gets worse then.
It gets harder because many solutions will harm all the other legitimate usage too, or harm them worse. Speed bumps and farmers' harvesting with large tractors are terrible for our houses that then literally shake on their foundation.
If, like us, you look at "motorcycle riders" as a community, it makes sense to point at that community and say: solve the danger and disturbance that those few amongst your community clearly pose to others. Because the alternative is that we'll have to "punish" your entire community.
New people will always be popping up to misbehave. Addressing the problem at the infrastructure level is the only way to ensure it's permanently solved.
Kind of like "why would you want to build a pedestrian bridge instead of just jailing the driver who hit someone at that intersection." The odds that it'll be the last time are basically zero.
> There has been no “put on this purple lanyard if you don’t want to be included in the public version of the video” rule, which I’ve seen work pretty well at conferences I have attended (even if it is opt-out rather than consent).
This bothers me. The default should be not including people, and instead offer lanyards (or whatever) who want to be included.
I know why it doesn’t work that way, though.
I’m not sure if anyone has missed the delicious irony that airsoft is one of the rare sports where faces and thus identity is covered , pretty much the whole time. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a human face or anything identifiable in ANY airsoft video I’ve ever seen.
So while the author makes an interesting point about surveillance I can’t tell if he’s being ironic on purpose.
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Haha I find this could be true but can you explain your reasoning if you don’t mind ? Thanks !
I wonder what would happen if someone wore a T-shirt with an ITAR restricted weapons blueprint on it or something. Hypothetically it would be legal to display that in public in the US, but illegal to post it publicly facing for foreigners to access on the internet.
Even if it were a gray area, the serious penalties would probably be enough to make someone want to blur it out.
> Hypothetically it would be legal to display that in public in the US
Would it? I'm certainly not a lawyer or ITAR expert, but I would think that if you walked through a public space where you couldn't positively confirm that everyone present (and everyone who might view it transitively via video recordings, live streams, etc.) was OK to access the materiel on the shirt, that would be considered an export and you'd be in big trouble.
I'm no ITAR expert either, but IDK how wearing a T-shirt could possibly be an export. My lay understanding of export is that the information would somehow have to leave the country; if someone looks at the T-shirt and transmits it out the country they'd be the exporter, not the person wearing the T-shirt. If someone records the t-shirt and transmits it, they'd be the exporter.
>My lay understanding of export is that the information would somehow have to leave the country;
It's not just physical items like munitions, but also things like transfers of information (blueprints, technical data, documentation, etc.) or services being performed, regardless of where (inside or outside the USA) or how (paper, electronic, verbal, etc.) it takes place.
Have a look at [1] § 120.50 (Export) and § 120.63 (definition of Foreign person).
>if someone looks at the T-shirt and transmits it out the country they'd be the exporter, not the person wearing the T-shirt.
I believe the person wearing the shirt would be considered the exporter, as that is the point where the information moves from (I'm assuming for the purposes of conversation) an USA citizen to a foreign person.
But again, I could be wrong. Safest bet is not to print the shirt to begin with :)
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M...
Hmm... I'd be interested to look at any 1A cases regarding that. I'm unable to find any 1A exceptions regarding mere information on weapons. The US is allowed to suspend constitutional rights at border controls, which is how they prevent exporting the information outside the US, but I'd bet dollars to donuts the blueprints/information part is unenforceable as non-commercial speech within the US.
Here's an example of T-shirt with a machinegun blueprint on it for instance, for sale in USA without any checks as to your immigration status [note US law considers a device that induces automatic fire as a 'machinegun' despite the fact the device itself isn't really a gun]:
https://ctrlpew.com/product/yankee-boogle-tee-gatalog-editio...
I'll continue in the "not an expert" chain, but my understanding is that ITAR's prohibitions include communicating the information to a non-US person (a US person is a citizen or permanent resident), even if that is done on US soil.
ITAR was circumvented for PGP by publishing a book of the source code and exporting that. I fail to see how publishing a video would be different.
My understanding following Cody Wilson's lawsuit to publish gun plans online, which is a more recent case, did not follow that. He ended up having to follow ITAR export compliance, although he was allowed unlimited distribution to US nationals and granted an ITAR license that might let him export under the conditions of that license.
Nowadays you'll find most gun plans end up on odyssee or surreptitiously on github or something like that. If you go to high-profile 3d gun websites they will almost always point you to a decentralized server that the government can't go after.It seems maybe they might allow you to export it, but you'd have to get a license first, even if they were required to issue it to you could take years of lawsuits that a youtuber probably will not pursue?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Distributed_v._United_...
I would like to share an even more extrem version of this.
I come from a country that could be potentially affected by the Russian-Ukranian war.
A couple of years ago, the government presented a program for volunteers, consisting of a military crash-course over a weekend to get to know the basics. Military service is voluntary in my country, so I thought it might actually be a good idea to have had a rifle in my hand at least once. You never know.
So I decided to sign up and got a few documents to sign. One of them was explicit consent for the organizing party to use any pictures taken during the training in order to use it as promotional material. No opt-out possible.
You understand? They could take pictures of me during a voluntary training, and post them on Facebook or anywhere on the Internet!
I even sent them an email asking to clarify and if I could opt out. They refused and would not allow me to participate if I didn't accept.
That is a positive example of respecting consent:
They asked for consent before filming.
You disagreed and didn't participate.
They didn't record you and didn't publish video of you.
I agree with the author, and it Reminds me of people who video at the gym. I think it goes to a deeper issue in our society: people love taking video of other people, and then put them on the internet, which always runs the risk of being turned into a meme, etc.
I lament that this guy may have to wear a mask, And I wish more venues had no photography or video. The last thing I wanted to go to the gym and working out, and I accidentally glance over at someone, who videotaped it, and then put me on the internet with some caption..
This isn't a general solution, but since it's Airsoft can't you just wear a helmet that covers your whole head?
^ you should be wearing a mouthguard and goggles anyway, add a skate helmet and your head is probably not visible
I agree and it bugs me too.
Sometimes I just want to enjoy a thing with other people enjoying a thing without any expectation that it might end up as "content" to be monetized by the algorithm.
I don't look forward to mass adoption of things like Meta glasses, where even the mundane examples of _going outside_ are all content opportunities waiting to happen.
>I don't look forward to mass adoption of things like Meta glasses, where even the mundane examples of _going outside_ are all content opportunities waiting to happen.
My first experience akin to this happened when I was at the grocery store during Covid. This guy stood near the checkout lines and just did a big arc with his phone filming all of us and mocking masks. Like the author of the blog sometimes I’m just like “it’s not worth it” but I had one of my kids with me and when I asked the guy to stop, he started ranting at me about how he uses an app that blurs faces, it’s a free country, etc. I just moved on but it’s like… dude, we’re all just trying to get through the day out here and I’m with my kid at the grocery store. Do I really need to be putting up with this crap?
I imagine if people actually start wearing any of these smart glasses in any appreciable number these experiences will be sadly pretty typical.
Yeah, because he's right, it is a free country. He shouldn't be arrested, or thrown in prison for it.
But I'm also free to apply societal pressure to behave like a grown-up.
> societal pressure to behave like a grown-up.
I think this is the key.
It might be legal, but it's not polite. It's a bit like blasting crappy music from your phone on the bus without headphones. Grown ups should know better.
> It might be legal, but it's not polite.
Too many folks forget this.
Do what you want, but I'll tell you if I don't like it. Others might too.
They're not infringing on your rights, but it might make you a little uncomfortable.
People like the guy I encountered are basically allergic to discomfort of any kind. Even the slightest inconvenience in their lives is seen as an incredibly personal and intolerable affront to their liberty, and they want to make damn sure we all know about it at every possible opportunity! Hence the behavior.
If I were to compare it to a client relationship, it’s the kind of person who throws the contract in a partner’s/client’s/vendor’s face anytime there is a minor disagreement or discussion about details. Reasonable people know you only start pointing to the contract when things escalate to a certain point as it locks everybody into a defensive posture and now everybody is going to be rigid moving forward.
> Reasonable people know you only start pointing to the contract when things escalate to a certain point as it locks everybody into a defensive posture and now everybody is going to be rigid moving forward.
First, and arguably most important, thing in learned in tech & business. Once the contracts come out, it's game over.
I know when I freelanced if somebody started frivolously pointing to the contract I immediately determined I wasn’t working with them anymore afterwards. Luckily I can only recall like two times that happened
The answer seems pretty simple.
Ask your teammates not to take videos, or find a different group or a different hobby. But since they genuinely enjoy posting the videos, and there's nothing wrong with that, you're probably the one who's going to have move on.
You're entitled to not want videos of you taken in public places showing up online. But you're not entitled to getting that outcome.
I expect an airsoft venue is actually a private space, not a public one. Airsoft but-actually-in-public would have people concerned about a terrorist attack, not being recorded for insta.
To that extent, the hobbyists who like to create content for the internet should be asking for consent since their footage, and arguably their clout, depends on the participation of everybody else in the group. Otherwise they're just traipsing around a private plot of land all kitted up but with nobody to shoot. If they're monetising that content then they are profiting from the OP's likeness.
This is not far removed from the (fully understandable) blowback on influencers recording themselves (and often other people for rage-induced clout) inside gyms. These are also not public places.
> Airsoft but-actually-in-public would have people concerned about a terrorist attack, not being recorded for insta.
I live in Taiwan. My friend and I were drinking beers by the river one night and decided to go on a late night bike ride, maybe 1am. We grabbed citybikes and tooled along the river, which in Taipei in many places is a nice bit of pavement next to massive mangroves and then the river itself. We were coming up on a brushy bit when a squad of completely kitted out soldiers came out of the bush with massive rifles, night vision goggles, full camo, geared to the nines. My buddy and I both nearly fell off our bikes and were immediately thinking the same thing: Oh fuck the PLA is here. Common knowledge is they'd come up that exact river and make straight for the presidential palace if they were gonna do their thing.
Turns out it was just very enthusiastic airsoft players. Apparently you can just play it wherever in Taipei, there's not really rules about it? So people play in the riversides at night.
Their kit was ridiculous. One guy had tracer pellets. They let us wear their night vision goggles and shoot trees. Great time.
If it's private then it's up to the owner.
And they may very well have decided that more customers want to take and share videos, than there are customers who are bothered by it.
And nobody is talking about monetizing content here. There's no profit. If there were, that would be a different conversation obviously. But the post did not bring that up.
> There is no profit.
We don't know that.
Also, the bar of “you have no privacy if you can’t figure out how the entity stealing your data is profiting off it” isn’t great.
At the very least, these videos are being used to train models. That’s a good way to bypass the union contracts that prevent Hollywood from digitally cloning film extras.
And also, some people could suffer real damages. Imagine if someone is lying to their wife about what they do on the weekend or about who they've gone to a conference with. Or imagine if someone has found themselves with dangerous enemies who discover where they go, what they do and with whom.
At the moment, these things are not the problem of the person taking the video
right. My younger sister was stalked by a crazy ex for years.
According to some of the people here that would mean she had no right to participate in a regular activity.
Since you're allergic to peanuts that means everybody should be banned from eating peanuts and we should stop growing them, right?
While directly providing said stalker with information seems like a harmful, and likely prosecutable behavior, the indirect providing of information is not a burden the general public should bear for another parties already illegal actions.
> Since you're allergic to peanuts that means everybody should be banned from eating peanuts and we should stop growing them, right?
My kid's school strictly bans peanut products due to at least one kid having a severe and potentially deadly allergy. It seems like a reasonable and necessary precautions to avoid harm or injury.
Which likely increases the risk of more people getting peanut allergies.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/introducing-pe...
That link has nothing to do with the effects of withholding peanuts from children above 5 years old (school age children).
Peanuts aren't served on a plane just in case someone with a peanut allergy has a bad time as result. Peanuts (and other things people are deathly allergic to) are also not served or used as ingredients in restaurants where there is a risk of cross contamination.
What you've done is bring back the equivalence to a public place so that an absurd argument can be made about banning peanuts wholesale.
As far as any non-public situation goes, it's a simple discussion of consent and it's easy: just ask for it instead of feeling entitled to it.
No. It means you get a restraining order if there's a threat and contact the police the moment they violate it. We already have laws for that type of thing.
Preventing anyone ever possibly taking pictures where you could be in the background is not the answer.
there's a difference between
> Preventing anyone ever possibly taking pictures where you could be in the background is not the answer.
and asking not to be recorded at a recurring event.
They could also blur the requester's face for the second or two it's likely in frame in the process they're very likely already editing the video before posting
There's also the option of having a detailed image of a penis on your clothing so that any sort of social media app will R-rate a video featuring you.
I wonder if this works if you use pictures of Disney characters instead (to generate copyright strikes, or mandatory relicensing fees).
If the two tactics don’t work separately, would they work when combined?
Of course it doesn't.
There aren't any social media sites that take down images of people wearing a Disney character on a shirt. That's not a thing.
You have to upload actual extended direct footage of a Disney movie.
I'm embarrassed I didn't think of Disney characters first.
I would suggest Pokémon (fighting monsters after all), but apparently Nintendo lost its edge, considering that recent ICE debacle.
Disney characters work too, from what I hear.
If the problem starts to become big enough, I'd expect airsoft venues to offer special streaming or non-streaming times, depending on which group is bigger. Similar to how Saunas offer special clothed or women-only days.
We should be entitled to that.
You can also ask for your face to be blurred.
Think bigger - public spaces, streets, in general. Would be nice to solve this.
It is solved. Videos and photos are allowed in public spaces. You just don’t like the solution.
Heh, you could be right on this one. But on the other hand, if I was the one filming and I knew a person in the frame wanted more privacy if possible I would be glad to omit them or cut them out.
But you can already do that.
This discussion isn't about what's polite.
It's about what you think ought to be against the law. And being fined or thrown in jail if you break the law.
I was really thinking of imposing a framework where people know someones preference even when looking at the videos later. I would be fine even if there is no fine, if someone found me on one of your photos and say - look a lanyard, what a jerk for putting that online, without any additional consequence. EU came into my mind because of the existing GDPR and as a platform where this could be propagated. No I would generally not want anyone to go to jail even it the footage wracks my life somehow, but I would want a mechanism to broadcast my preference to the recording world.
> if someone found me on one of your photos and say - look a lanyard, what a jerk for putting that online, without any additional consequence
You can wear a lanyard today!
BUT it has no meaning in the society, does it?
I think this is a key difference between US and Europe.
It seems like you believe that if the government passed a law then it will have meaning in society? It's still as meaningless as if you just wore one today.
Sure. They could simply ask you nicely and accept whatever the result is. This is the case now.
But what if you weren’t glad to omit them or cut them out?
What happens then?
It’s solved. You can take pictures in public in the US. That’s part of our fundamental freedoms.
I disagree. It wouldn't be nice to solve it, because it would mean nobody could ever take a picture of anything where there might be anyone recognizable in the background, without getting them to sign some kind of model release first.
Is that what you want? For innocent photography in public to be essentially outlawed?
The article is discussing a private rather than public space. We've got loads of private places where photography is restricted - usually when that space involves physical exercise (gyms, pools, etc).
I don't think it's unreasonable to have a level-headed discussion about how society and technology have evolved since those norms came into practice, and if they should be expanded now that photography is ubiquitous.
> usually when that space involves physical exercise (gyms, pools, etc).
You might have that wrong. It's when that space involves people wearing revealing clothing. And Airsoft kit is... not that.
It's not about exercise.
Absolutely at least publishing it. If you want to publish it on say social media. Censor in some way everyone you do not have explicit written consent from for that specific image.
> Is that what you want?
Yes. I would like to go back to a time before everyone had 3 different cameras with them and the ability to share those photos to a global network so third parties can use that data to track what I am doing literally everywhere.
I no longer leave my house except for strictly necessary obligations.
You sound like you may need some sort of mental health assistance if you no longer leave your house, especially because of fear of some sort of global dragnet using Facebook videos that you may be present in. I hope you can get some peace.
Genuine question, what are you worried about that this is affecting how often you leave your house?
What is making that the best cost-benefit analysis for you?
I would also want to know. Did the game of being incognito grow into the logic that leaving your house is not viable anymore or something else?
Or you know, not making it public.
And if you might need to make the photo public, you could blur the faces.
And your want to make that the law, so you get fined or go to jail if you don't blur everyone's face on every photo you post if you haven't gotten a signed consent from them?
OP didn’t respect his fellow hobbyists by asking them to not film him. Why should OP expect respect in return?
For me not necessarily, I would like a mechanism for distinction and a culture where you respect people you record.
Yes.
Well, thanks for being honest.
That's not a world I would want to live in, and I guess I'm thankful most other people don't either.
The ability to photograph is important for accountability and truth in a democracy, it's important to families wanting to document and share their trips easily, and it's important for art, among many other things. Fundamentally, it feels like a kind of freedom to me.
But it's interesting to see there are people who disagree.
What part of those requires posting my unblurred face online?
Why should I legally be required to do that, and go to jail if I don't? What makes it so important you think it should be criminal not to?
I think you should be fined for posting pictures of people publicly without their consent.
None of those things require you to invade their privacy and enjoyment of public space — you’re just negatively impacting them because you’re lazy and antisocial.
Fines are how we handle such nuisances in other cases.
Nothing requires you to get upset about showing up in the background of someone's photo either. As far as I can tell, you're the one being antisocial because you're trying to make demands on what people do with their photos just because you happened to be in the frame. And it's not like they're trying to sell the photos or anything.
And fines aren't some kind of innocent thing. If you don't pay the fines, the police come to seize your property. If you resist, you go to jail. That's what you want?
Again, that's just not the world I want to live in.
You’re the one trying to include people in your photos without their consent.
Everyone should be allowed to enjoy public spaces without you imposing on them for your activities — and that includes you taking photos.
Nothing about their desire not to be photographed requires that you not take photographs — just that if you do, without their permission and with identifiable features showing, you’ll have to take a few seconds to blur that before you upload it publicly.
Yes — that’s absolutely an antisocial imposition on their enjoyment.
And yes — you should be fined for doing that.
> You’re the one trying to include people in your photos without their consent.
You don't think people just happen to be in the background?
> Everyone should be allowed to enjoy public spaces without you imposing on them for your activities — and that includes you taking photos.
No, they shouldn't. It's a balance. When people play frisbee, that's "imposing" on me too, because it's not easy for me to put a blanket down in the middle of their game. Should they be fined too? I don't think so. I think I can just live with the inconvenience of walking 30 more seconds.
And I don't even know what you're talking about with blurring people's faces being so easy. My camera app doesn't do that. And even if it did, manually clicking on every single face in all 40 photos from the park that don't belong to my friends and family? No thanks. People can live with their faces in the background online, just like I can live with people playing frisbee where I'd rather be sitting.
I mean, what's next -- I'm not allowed to quote things people say in public and attribute it to them? I'm not allowed to say so-and-so was in this public park in a blog post? You don't have privacy in public places, because they're public.
You can do all of those things without creating a public record of me.
What if I can't?
What if you're in the photo? What if you're doing something newsworthy? Or what if you're right behind the person doing something newsworthy?
> What if you're in the photo?
Blur that region before posting it with an algorithm that can't be reversed. The camera app could even do this automatically.
> What if you're doing something newsworthy?
Every good rule has some exceptions.
Sorry. I just don't think parents at the park who take photos of their kids and share them on a public site with friends should be legally required to blur any passerby's face or go to jail.
If they want to do it voluntarily then great. But making it criminal if you don't -- I don't understand that.
Why shouldn’t they be fined for invading someone else’s privacy because they’re too lazy to touch up the photos on their phone? — why should their laziness negatively impact others use of public space?
You’re just making an argument for inconveniencing others out of laziness — but trying to dress it up in principles.
Because it's a right to be lazy. And thank goodness it is.
You can inconvenience other people in a thousand different ways every day. And should be allowed to.
The idea that laziness or inconvenience ought to be outlawed... do you realize what you're saying? The kind of police state you're envisioning?
This is a principled thing. What's next, I get fined for walking slowly on the sidewalk? For holding up the line at the supermarket for a price check? For paying in dimes instead of dollar bills? Think about the legal principle you seem to be suggesting.
We have numerous laws that ban those things in shared public spaces:
- littering
- jaywalking
- excessive noise
Etc.
And we impose fines for all of those — under the consistent logic that you can’t infringe on others use of public space with your own.
I’m glad that you can admit this is not about your usage of public spaces though — it’s just about you wanting to be a nuisance to others without consequence.
No, it's not about wanting to be a nuisance. Please don't claim I said things I didn't.
It's about not wanting to outlaw every possible nuisance. And you're right -- we do outlaw plenty of things. But we also have to draw the line somewhere.
Jaywalking is a great example. It was finally repealed in NYC. Since it's fundamentally a pedestrian-first city.
And public photography is one of those things where it's such a tiny nuisance, and the cost of regulating it would be so onerous, that we wisely choose not to.
I'm not nearly as strict: I just prefer that pictures of my kids not be uploaded to social media (or cloud photo hosting services, etc.)
Regardless of that, some strangers think it's fine to take pictures of them in public... sometimes they ask first, sometimes they don't.
In Netherland schools have to ask for permission to use photos of your children on social media or elsewhere. I have no idea if the same holds true for non-schools.
I think this is something you need to address with the owner or organizer of the event. If they say you can film, you can. If they say you can't, you can't. I imagine there might be sufficient demand for airsoft fights where video is not allowed.
And there might be events to find that explicitly state no filming.
I don’t know about the UK, but in the USA the idea of “if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces” is pretty regularly upheld in courts. You don’t have an expectation of privacy in a public space.
You might have some recourse if another person’s video singles you out, but just being one of the several people in an airsoft video, where your face is partially obscured anyway, isn’t much of a legal standing.
Yea, and in this case unless the property owner says no filming said person would have no legs to stand on.
In most 'fun' events like this with random members of the public said venue has a monetary interest in ensuring people can film in the vast majority of the cases. People go there to have fun, and sharing videos of said fun is but one more way to ensure they get future customers.
> You don’t have an expectation of privacy in a public space.
Pretty similar in the UK.
I do a lot of photography, including "street" photography, but I don't shoot photos of people. I believe that you should be asked for your consent to be photographed, and I tend to avoid social interaction whenever possible. I empathize with the author here. I would probably say "yes" in that situation, but I would also expect to be asked.
I also do occasional street photography. I'm opposite of your view. I don't ask for consent and take photos (even candids). People rarely have problems. If they have, they'll come and ask me not to include them in the frame.
It's really interesting that the big objection is really about sharing the resultant video (widely).
I actually feel the same, I don't really mind if I'm at the gym and in the back of a video someone's taking of themselves to review later to take notes on their form. I actually do kind of care if it gets posted to YouTube and now 100,000 people have seen me covered in sweat or struggling with something or whatever. It's something that's technically 'illegal' in a private space here in the UK, so why do we all just accept/allow it anyway? YouTube or Instagram could easily work out if the video was taken indoors and show a 'are you sure' message.
Just a thought. It's not that big a deal, of course, though to some people it might be (for good reasons).
If this was beach volleyball I would be more inclined to agree with the poster, but surely everyone is wearing face masks playing Airsoft?
As an avid beach volleyball player, every tournament and most league games have one or more people recording them with cell phones or go pros on tripods at the end line. Just part of the game.
Nobody bats an eye, I assume because we're already out in public, basically in bathing suits.
The one time I was accidentally captured on video, I was filtered out, but I actually wish I was there.
Many years ago, I went to a Green Day concert where they played 21st Century breakdown for the first time. There was a large video camera on a crane above the floor. About a year later, I visited a friend and we played Green Day's (then) new Rockband game.
I noticed that Tre's dance around his drums looked awfully familiar, and then at the end of one song, the camera focused on a statue next to the stage, that I was staring at before the show. My friend didn't believe me when I told him I was in the concert they recorded to make the game.
Unfortunately, all the people in the crowd were removed and replaced with faceless stick-figure-like people. I really wish my face was in there, because it would have proved that I was there, and give me something to look for when someone else is playing the game.
Unfortunately, being serious about privacy is socially damaging. I've experienced it.
I eventually accepted that being outside my home meant I gave up on my privacy. I still take it seriously in my home and online, but not in public.
I'd love to see the culture shift on this, but I won't hold my breath.
A counterbalance is that there's such a colossal volume of new YouTube 'content' published every day that approximately no one will end up watching an obscure video with your cameo anyway.
I guess the concern then shifts to dragnet automated surveillance of it.
We Brits don't speak up enough in general. An e.g. German would have no qualms about going up to the person filming and making their concerns known. That's exactly why it's become normalised
Also many people just flip out even about the most reasonable of requests.
>We Brits don't speak up enough in general.
They would be wrong to, given that it's legal to take photographs or videos in a public place.
There is no expectation of privacy in a public place in the UK.
The law is not a moral compass
How do you rationalise being pro-photography in public but anti free speech?
Airsoft fields are generally private property.
If someone went up to me and "made their concerns known", I think I'd likely just walk away. It's the best way to defuse the situation.
So point blank refusal to listen to someone's concerns? Very on brand for the society we live in today. As long as something is legal, it's fine right.
Also not sure why you assumed there was any situation to be "defused". Weird. I guess you may be the type I referred to in my last paragraph
> So point blank refusal to listen to someone's concerns?
If you know you're just going to remain in disagreement, then hell yes. It's not worth the conflict. Now, if they could point to a law I was breaking, then maybe I'd entertain them for a minute, but this is not that.
> I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I’d be hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not done this.
I've done this several times in various contexts. If you ask in a nice way, it usually works
If you don't ask, it's very unlikely people will have the telepathy needed to understand what you quietly want
For air-soft specifically it is also very feasible to wear a full face mask and become very hard for regular people to recognise.
Great points. With Meta glasses and other similar gadgets I think manual consent is not enough. There should be a 'protocol' to announce that you don't allow your images to be included in social media. I propose a QR code that would signify that you don't want to filmed. We need to push for legislation allowing (returning) such liberty. After such automated consent is legal it will be up to social media platforms to blur and anonymize individuals with such preferences. Finally we will have a job where AI could be put to good use!
I feel it spans way wider than just hobbies. For example, when people film in gyms, which is a private place. Or everywhere you go, there is a good chance you will be in someone's vlog/photo/youtube video.
Last year I was at a concert hanging outside enjoying a J and my beer. Suddenly there were four young women shoving a phone in my face asking me questions. I was a deer in the headlights. Turns out they were live streaming and just talking to random people. It made me quite uncomfortable - who's on the other end looking at me? They were later live streaming from the pit...
Of course Ive had video cameras in my face before at concerts but they weren't streaming and the results were probably seen by very few people. Now its instant broadcast to whoever is on the other end.
In Germany, they have to ask him for his permission. If he insists, the video has to get deleted. If they publish the video without his consent, he can sue them and – aside of deleting the video – they may face penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment, though both are improbable in that context.
https://www.prigge-recht.de/filmen-im-oeffentlichen-raum-was...
Genuinely curious, not trolling, why is it considered acceptable to spray plastic pellets into the woods?
Why is it considered acceptable to shed millions of tons of tire dust in to cities where people live and breath.
In the order of environmental issues, these plastic pellets are insignificant.
If you want to get up in arms about something, look at how many container loads of plastic feedstock falls off of ships per year and you'll see a problem a million times bigger.
I have the same issue with board gamers. Now, admittedly it isn't as intrusive as audio/video uploads. But so many want to record the game along with the names of the players. When I request they don't use my actual name and just put Player A (or whatever) they look at me like I'm a weirdo. When did it become weird to want as little information about yourself to be online?
Every picture of you posted publicly will eventually be linked to you. Probably by Palantir.
There's face recognition. There's gait recognition. There's inference of the likely participants from cell phone data and known movement patterns. Some of this is probabilistic but still useful. Even if the matching wasn't done at the time, it can be done later.
On one hand: You are not nearly as important or meaningful as you think, and no ones brain will store and index your face for more than the length of the video. With online content the way it is now, you are a blade of grass in a continental sized grassland. It should be liberating to understand how little anyone actually cares.
On the other hand: The threat of being fed into a future AI-god is real, the the downstream effects unknown.
>I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly
I must be living in a parallel universe of airsoft players. I can't possibly imagine anyone in that space changing their ways because somebody kindly asked them to
I always wondered: who is picking up all that plastic waste afterwards? Never been myself, but I was told 1000s of shots being fired during one session is not an exceptional case. The author talks about "Running around in the woods" so I'm a bit concerned that this may cause undesirable amounts of environmental pollution.
I would bet that dumping a 747's worth of plastic BBs in remote UK woodland is probably not as bad as everyone driving their petrol-powered cars there.
Yeah unfortunately those BBs are going to stay there basically forever. Biodegradable means it'll degrade in like, hella hot temperatures that you'll never get unless there's a forest fire.
Plus side I don't think they degrade into microplastics? And aerate your soil! :D
Though water bottles is probably orders of magnitude more harmful to the planet.
It's being done on private property, so presumably the property owner is okay with that damage?
That plastic is still going to be there thousands of years after the property passes out of the current owner’s hands.
Biodegradable airlift BB's are unfortunately an exception in the sport.
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This is an issue a lot of gyms are facing; idiot "influencers" coming in and not caring who or what they film. It is really up to the private establishment to set rules for taking images and video within their facilities, but most will allow it because they want that almighty dollar to continue flowing in.
This is one of the reasons I use the free county gym — there are no influencers here (it's bare bones dudes slamming weights, only). I used to pay for a membership at a higher-end local establishment (and could still afford to), but got tired of all the glimglam of social gyms. The only thing I miss is the yoga class.
So sue. Don't expect legislators or online legions to protect you. Sue to protect others in the same situation.
The common-law tort of invasion of privacy grows to encompass new situations only through court cases.
Courts (i.e., judges) are not looking to create rules out of thin air, but look to reflect when expectations have changed in a way that tracks the principles behind the tort.
In this case, an initial historical period of permitting publication by default can be followed by a restrictive period of prohibiting invasions, based on the recognizing dangers from publication, e.g., permanent and lasting damage to one's business relationships through disclosing of embarrassing but irrelevant images.
To make law you have to get out of the realm of personal feelings and start expressing principles for the way people should live together.
Maybe off-topic and patronizing .. sorry about that.
"Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people, in pursuit of a contrived-to-be-fun mission, turns out to be, well, fun."
I was wondering if there are no biodegradable bullets for Airsoft and found out that they exist. Maybe a better solution than plastic in the woods.
They make PLA ones, advertised as biodegradable, but AFAIK the settings for them to biodegrade never happen in nature, it's ever so slightly better than the alternatives but far from perfect, or even good.
https://www.filamentive.com/the-truth-about-the-biodegradabi...
> PLA is only biodegradable under industrial composting conditions and anaerobic digestion – there is no evidence of PLA being biodegradable in soil, home compost or landfill environment.
PLA is also commonly mixed with mystery additives which likely aren’t biodegradable at all.
Yeah, that's a bit of a sham. I was thinking like compressed paper or something.
I read up on PLA when I got my 3D printer because it's popular material for that. From what I understand, it's biodegradable above 50° C. Not something you'll find outside Death Valley. Still better than most other options, but it would be nice if we had something that was stable for weeks and then degrades nicely.
Not all PLA are created equal though. Raw PLA pellets won't behave the same way a 3d printer filament choke full of dyes, additives to make them more UV resistance, &c.
There are plenty of posts of people putting 3d prints in compost piles, for months or years, and visually not much happens. Even stuff advertiser as bio don't fare that well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tavrkWrazWI
If you dig up a sufficiently old landfill you’ll find pristine newspapers.
The idea that you can coat much more resilient stuff in PFAS and label it “biodegradable” is at least as big a scam as California’s $0.10 “reusable” bags, or mixed stream recycling.
I’m for taking each use of plastic, by global volume, and then banning them, in order.
We should probably start with fishing nets.
Alternatively, the industry should need to produce 200% as much post-consumer recycled plastic made from the same grade as they’re manufacturing. This would act as a tax, strongly encouraging investment in more sustainable materials. Maybe drop that to 150% if the plastic in the product is 100% recycled.
> From what I understand, it's biodegradable above 50° C. Not something you'll find outside Death Valley.
We’re not that far off in Europe. Give it a couple of years more and climate change will make sure we get there.
https://jakubmarian.com/highest-recorded-temperature-by-coun...
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Most of the brands use PLA. Most of the fields (all the ones I’ve been too) require the use of biodegradable (PLA). PLA is plastic.
Edit: forgot to say. In every field I’ve been too, there’s millions of leftover BBs, and I’ve never seen one with signs of degradation.
Not patronising, this was exactly my first (and off-topic) thought as well.
We have lived in our house for +15 years and we still regularly find small fluorescent yellow ball bearings in the garden soil from the previous owners family. These things are here to stay
I haven’t played with airsoft since I was a kid, but I remember the biodegradable ones back then had issues. They would fall apart when you shot em, sometimes deteriorate inside the gun and muck it up.
I’m sure they’re better now, but I have no idea!
Most of them usually are.
As someone who plays a lot of online games, there is a similar problem with streamers. While I don’t say anything I wouldn’t want to be recorded because that’s probably a good idea anyway, it is certainly possible I could end up in some kind a fail compilation or otherwise.
But I don’t really care, for one because the stakes are lower when it’s fully online behind a mostly anonymous account, but also because I am confident if anyone was actually watching a streamer in my game I would find out about it.
If the YouTuber at your local field was raking in views, you would probably know about it, and could you try to resolve it with them. Otherwise these videos are probably not being seen by anyone but their recorder.
Meanwhile in another part of the galaxy…
“Burning Man’s number one rule of etiquette for photography is Ask First — you should get permission before taking somebody’s photo.”
https://burningman.org/about/about-us/press-media/photo-guid...
Posting videos on YouTube is commercial use. Even if you earn no money, the intent is almost always to “grow the channel” to the point where you can monetize it, sponsorships, brand deals, etc.
Commercial use in most jurisdictions is handled differently from the “free speech” exception. There are generous carve outs for art though. Which is interesting. If I sell a photograph it’s art but if I sell it to an ad agency for use on a billboard it’s commerce?
But the world we live in is so changed, it is a very recent change where taking a photograph was almost always a 1:1 photo to print ratio. It’s very new the idea that everyone is carrying around an internet connected video camera that can publish live to billions of people. This absolutely changes the calculus and laws should be updated accordingly.
I don’t know what that should look like but it seems we should acknowledge that this activity is primarily commercial (clout is marketing and/or brand value a/k/a goodwill in accounting parlance) and that laws intended to protect art making maybe don’t / shouldn’t protect this form of commerce as much as they seem to presently.
To be clear: if you are in public and someone takes a recognizable photo of you eg your face and uses it to sell perfume congratulations on being beautiful and also call a lawyer because that use is not protected just because you were in a public space.
But you can make a print hang it in a gallery and sell it for whatever price you want. (AFAIK). Maybe there’s more nuance— could you put it in a book of your work and sell it? On the cover? Make postcards? NFT’s (remember those?) etc.
Anyway there are already limits and we should maybe enforce the ones that we have in some of these circumstances. I wonder if it’s already happening- I can’t be the first person to view this activity as commercial right? There must already be precedent somewhere.
Just like how every YouTube gear review says “company X sent me this but they have no say and no money changed hands” is pretending it’s not a sponsored video. It’s absolutely a sponsored video. 1. You are paid for views 2. People watch reviews on “release day” aka embargo day 3. If you get the product later you will have less views and less money, and you will miss the window of product hype cycle.
So just like every not sponsored review video is absolutely sponsored live-streaming a kids birthday or whatever is commercial and you need model releases. I guess these people will have to post notice of filming warnings at the door along with the balloons.
One time I rented and apartment (in California), and the agreement said they can make promotional media with me. I tried to fight it, but they didn't really care -- big real estate company is not going to redline legal agreement for me.
I was having a similar discussion regarding the Renn faire this weekend. It's silly fun, but it used to be you could dress up as your persona and escape for a while (see also: larping, SCA, or really any number of similar outlets) . However now everything is being recorded, and those recordings act both as unwanted publicity and as a method of cultural mining and extraction
What once was a funny little niche character at the faire is now a TikTok tourist spot.
Where once you could dress up as your pseudo anonymous alter ego with friends and have fun, now you get recorded without consent and get to enjoy all the perks that can come with
Ultimately it will be up to us as a society to determine what is acceptable or how to communicate boundaries for this new element in our culture, with the understanding (to the authors point) that some of us will be against it and others will be enthusiastically for it.
Social dance (swing, Latin, etc) has some of this too. I think generally where most scenes have fallen is “only film yourself and your friends, unless it’s something intentionally performative like a jam circle or competition, in which case go nuts.”
Not to mention EDM festivals. Remote bush doofs where everyone is off their chops, escaping reality, dancing during the day, exposed in the light.
Being recorded in 4k from different angles including action cams on people's heads on the dance floor, is a far cry from the relative anonymity of festivals of old. I remember when the only people who'd see you all bright eyed and bushy tailed were other participants in the party mayhem, which is how it should be.
Is the airsoft range on public property? If not, you could probably complain to the owners. If its on public property then you probably can't do much about it except complain to YouTube and ask them to take it down.
don't tell author about new meta glasses everybody and their grandma will wear 24/7 in 10y. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283306
They probably are very aware, and it makes having this discussion more important, not less.
Google Glass has been a thing for 12 years, Snapchat's glasses have been around for 9. And you rarely see someone using them. (I'm aware of reports of ICE officers wearing the Meta glasses, but this is probably an extension of norms around police bodycams)
I think the issue is "available to the whole world". "Back in the day" people would take photos or even videos (remember camcorders?) and it wasn't a big deal because well, only that person would have it and maybe show it to some friends or family (or give you a copy).
But now it means archived for the whole world to see, potentially forever. 30 years from now, someone might dig it up.
So it's not so much about the photography (which as someone pointed out, might be allowed in public places), it's about posting the photos/videos into a potentially eternal public archive.
Doesn't a LIDAR break digital cameras?
Maybe those who don't want to be filmed should be walking around with some portable LIDAR device, de facto breaking the cameras of people who don't respect their desire to not be filmed.
I have changed my mind on this topic recently. I believe that when you video in public everyone that gets videoed should require explicit permission or their face and voices should be removed. The only exceptions would be videoing public servants and if a crime is being committed. Videoing for private consumption would also be allowed in my opinion but not if it's posted in a way that more than a handful of people could see or if its uploaded to a site.
With AI this is entirely possible and if you are going to post videos on youtube or anything, you should be able to afford the removal of non-verified participants.
I feel like this a lot of the time too.
The author describes the sentiment nicely. I don’t like it, it feels icky but I also don’t ask people to stop. I just wish that culturally it wasn’t assumed to be ok by default
> Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
This is not clear at all to me.
When you go into public you’re accepting that you might be filmed. The reality is that you are being filmed constantly. It’s just that it bothers you sometimes.
It reminds me of The Light of Other Days (a book about a society where technology makes any privacy impossible). Nearly everybody gets over it really quick and the world moves on.
The good news about this is that hardly any normal person would ever watch these Airsoft videos for more than 5 or 10 seconds.
> Nearly everybody gets over it really quick and the world moves on.
Perhaps this article being #1 on HN right now is evidence that your perspective is not the same as "nearly everybody" else
The evidence I present is that I have never seen someone complain about someone else filming in public. I’m not sure that the articles position on HN says anything about the majority opinion on a topic, only that it’s of interest.
You must not have looked very far. Here's one example from circa 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN9E3vJzxk0
People respond to a camera shoved in their face. It's not felt the same as simply being looked at.
I have practiced "street photography" for years, where I purposefully take pictures of people on the street. Sometimes people ask what I'm doing, I tell them, and they say "cool can I see the pictures"? Sometimes I send them a file or whatever. No one's gotten all out of sorts over it.
To be fair the sentence prior I thought made clear I was referencing the plot of the book.
So you only have to worry about consequences from not-normal people, and that's the good news?
EDIT: to bring a specific real-world example: A friend of mine does classes at a local studio that also offers martial arts courses, and some of the local right-wing bubble has gotten it in their head that this has to be "antifa combat training" and keeps screaming that this needs to be monitored. The current local government has been ignoring them, but a lot of people are probably quite happy now that there isn't an easy-to-get public record of who was there and "needs a visit".
No, you only have to worry about the consequences from everyone.
You certainly dont want the government defining “not normal” people. Or maybe you do!
In Airsoft, there's a niche audience for people wanting to see other people get hit. Just like there's a niche audience for people who like watching car crashes. Just like there's a niche audience for people who like...
While you may not like being recorded, the player is well within their right to do so. Just label them a "mech" and award 5 points for the take down. If you have a squad of filmers, put them all together. Your problem is now isolated to the roaming mech beast in the woods. Flank right and live out your day.
>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.
Why?
I dont ask this dismissively. Im not suggesting he's unjustified. That's just the interesting question to me and the author doesnt explore it. I believe this feeling is a new trend.
I dont think people had these qualms, say, 20 years ago. The world was a very different place back then. At the end of the day I suppose it's because 20 years ago, even with a totally permissive policy, you'd never expect footage of you to reach any significant amount of people. It would rarely happen and when it did there wouldnt be a huge audience to share it with.
But does it go beyond that? Would people have cared even if it did reach a wide audience? Is it possible people seek more privacy and control over their image than before? And not just as a reaction to how global everything is because of the internet? Gen Z being afraid of answering phone calls, etc.
This strikes me as similar to the attitude towards phone number privacy. People used to publicly share their phone numbers by default. You were included in the phone book unless you specially requested not to be. Now it feels invasive for parties to ask you for it, even when they have some plausible reason.
Social media is why. 20 years ago social media was not what it is today. The dynamics have changed.
For me, the "why" is a mix of:
1- ubiquity: now, virtually everyone's got a device capable of capturing high quality photo/video of you at any time
2- discoverability: social media gives anything the potential to go viral which might put you in the spotlight or limelight, and the frequency at which things can go viral "enough" is way higher (more platforms, larger follower counts, etc) (this is I assume what you meant by "reach")
3- "content creators" are everywhere: people want to turn anything into something, through all kinds of incentives that were unavailable 20 years ago, so it's a much more active "capture and use it" context
Things just aren't the same as they were 20 years ago.
What changed?
Awareness and prevalence of dragnets, AI, surveillance economy.
I don't want to be someones "content", even if it is due to my rougish good looks and a suave mix of bond with john wick on the airsoft battlefield.
You can always leave or ask the airsoft organizers to make new rules. The more interesting question is whether there's some legal avenue to avoid being someone's "content".
Reality TV has to get consent + releases so where is the line?
> I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I’d be hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not done this.
I feel like the reasonable place to start is here no? Why write this whole post when this would probably be easier?
Even simpler, have a discussion with the group once and have cameras either be prohibited on all days except X, or allowed on all days except X, depending on the majority preference.
> when this would probably be easier?
I don't think it would be. It sounds incredibly tedious in the long run.
In the context of airsoft I guess you could cover yourself completely and why not shoot yellow plastic bullets at the cameraman.
The cost of filming is very low. Even people who aren't interested in taking pictures or filming now have a camera with them at all times.
I remember a village in Africa about 20 years ago where people thought cameras stole their soul.
Technology steals everything it can. I mean think of all the data that went into google maps or chatgpt, to only name a couple of apps.
I relate some to the premise but for an entirely different reason than privacy.
Simply one of my less common hobbies has an incredibly high hit rate of gimmick social media accounts stealing videos for their own profit, with zero credit, while highly misrepresenting things. A problem not nearly unique to the hobby nor any one type of media, but a problem plaguing it nonetheless.
Its basically pushed an already obscure hobby even more so.
this is exactly about what is legal or not. If I remember correctly in Germany there's a distinction about people being the focus of a photograph or people in the background. You can e.g. publish a picture of a public place without asking everybody on that place for their consent. Another corner case would be filming police brutality. What if the police officers in question wouldn't like to be photographed being brutal!? Local laws do apply.
This law badly needs to be updated to account for the fact that photo/video resolutions have massively increased since it was written, and "not the focus of a picture" is no longer enough to prevent you from being identified/tracked in the picture, which was the original intent.
Have you seen the cameras on cell phones compared to the cameras of yesterday? Resolutions are up but faked through software. A 640 picture from 2004 can be enlarged with clearer detail compared to a 2000px of today always looking sharp but never truly capturing a clear picture.
Yeah, I am not looking forward to Meta glasses being widely used. But that is probably inevitable. Being anonym in public will be a dear memory from the past.
Private site. The event site could hold events where cameras are forbidden. There are other examples like spas or swimming pools where cameras are forbidden.
Agree with author. Laws do not necessarily dictate right vs. wrong. Filming others to publicly share that video may be legally allowable, is unethical regardless of the laws. It's like those crazy people who start playing their social media feed without headphones in public places like airplanes, or bathroom stalls....it's so weird, and annoying.
I am not a lawyer.
In the USA, anyone is allowed to photograph, video, or otherwise record anything they can see from a public sidewalk, subject to some soft restrictions like it being illegal to impede the movement of others. Any attempt by law enforcement or others to restrict this would likely fail in the courts.
Folks can get pretty upset by this in the real world.
The story is about a person on private grounds. They could talk to the owner and ask them to make a rule about no filming, but the owners probably like filming because if a cut goes viral on their airsoft grounds, it's like free advertising.
Then don't make them and be happy.
Perhaps it is a generational gap, but the idea that I have to justify NOT attempting to squeeze a hustle out of absolutely everything I do reduces my trust in any content generated in [current year] as nothing more but a carefully crafted advertising space.
This is a concern I also have in youth sports. People are filming practice and games then posting that on social media and sometimes the goal is to show their child (sometimes as young as 5) "embarrassing" someone's else's child with a move. It's unfortunately very common.
Somehow you eventually have to square the fact that if you do things outside of your home, you are going to run into other people, who are very much going to do whatever they want, regardless of any existing laws, customs, or mores. And factor that into your decision making.
I feel like I can't really have fun and be myself when I see people shooting video all around me.
I like to be silly with my kids and close friends, I like to act out around the people who find me fun or funny. But the rest of the world would ridicule me, or make fun of me, or make me a meme possibly.
This makes me sad because as a young man I could just be out there and fun, and at the end of the day, I held a place in the memories of my closest friends, maybe a handful of bystanders. But today, I could be gif'd and immortalized for my silly actions without my permission.
I disagree with the sentiment, you're in public, it's fair game. That just means I have to bend to your world-view, and you don't have to be considerate of mine.
This behaviour is a thousandfold worse when you have kids, especially at social gatherings like birthday parties. Other parents (at least in my age cohort) assume it is OK to film them and post it to whatever social media they have without even asking.
Here in Germany we are about to start our daughter in pre-school ("kita") and every single parent had to fill out a few forms explicitly stating if they were ok or not ok with having photos or videos taken of their child (both by staff and by other parents).
Seems like the most reasonable answer would be to have days where no video was permitted, and days where it is. Then you can attend on the days where no video is permitted but the ones who like creating and uploading videos can have their chances as well.
> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
Not wrong, it’s rude.
Be nice to just live without needing to feel like crowd sourced surveillance all the time.
There's several caveats to this but generally it seems silly to me to worry about people posting pictures with you in it. It seems a bit selfish to me to be concerned about "your image" being out in public instead of living in the moment.
I think though, with the internet and social media came 2-3 generations that really wanted to share what was going on in their lives with other people and with that came harsh resistance to even being in the background of someone's picture.
I thought this post was going to be about not wanting to share their hobby in a blog, pictures, or video form. This is something I have struggled with, because I would like to get started with blogging and a podcast but I have held back because a lot of people are so mean and harsh with their replies and I tend to take things so personally that it really hurts and keeps me from doing it.
The best answer is becoming comfortable with the part of yourself that enjoys your hobbies. Embrace it, let go of the anxiety. Strangers have thoughts like oceans have waves.
No alternative's being made. Only considering his own feelings, everyone else should follow. Expects people to not film (read: shoot) him because he asked. Neil's a bit of a Karen in this one I'm afraid.
This is a very reasonable concern in the general case, but airsoft in particular is probably one of the few social activities where it’s not entirely out of place to wear a balaclava and tinted goggles.
> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
We are getting monitored all the time, we are in an age where cameras are omnipresent. Everyone carries one in their pocket in the form of a smartphone, and countless stationary cameras are installed throughout cities.
When you walk through streets, buildings, and especially public facilities, you can see cameras almost everywhere. While it is often said that these devices exist only for security purposes and that footage is routinely deleted, this is no longer the reality. In many cases, people can request this footage through FOIA and use it as they wish, including uploading it to platforms like YouTube.
> In many cases, people can request this footage through FOIA and use it as they wish, including uploading it to platforms like YouTube.
Please don’t assume the world is limited to the US. In Europe you cannot do that.
When I worked for a us company, as a European, i filed a foia. And then a gdpr request from their eu branch. Both were successful- i corrected some information i knew to be incorrect, and there are now signs by each 'hidden' camera.
> We are getting monitored all the time
That doesn't make it right, so we should keep questioning it until it's right.
Being monitored, or tracked or stalked, is different from having your photo published.
How does the new Denmark "copyright on your body, face and voice" work in this aspect? I read that the intention is to combat deepfakes but does it also work for uses like this?
It wouldn't do anything in this case. Its only about manipulated media content that imitate personal characteristics.
Clearly, author needs to work on their camouflage skill like John Cena.
As a street photographer this constant video/livestreaming culture shift in the last 10 years has made it really hard to not make folks uncomfortable when out in public.
I don’t understand the author, everyone in airsoft wears masks? You’re an anonymous person, just a brief obstacle the cameraman shoots quickly on his way to the real fire fight.
Well I never liked bigger Airsoft events - going into some abandoned buildings with 5-10 guys we know well to play was always best fun for me.
Downside is you cannot do that in current circumstances.
I'm with Neil on this, but I'd go a bit farther. This whole idea that you somehow give up the right to privacy because you're in a public space is fucking nonsense. Your personal right to privacy should be an inalienable right unless you specifically consent, regardless if it's public or not.
Just because you possess a device that records images doesn't automatically give you the right to record/post/upload images of me without my express consent.
I understand the overall sentiment of the post, but in this particular example, isn’t everyone who’s playing airsoft wearing a full face mask anyways?
> I am very much enjoying my newly-resurrected hobby of Airsoft. Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people
What's wrong with you?
I think the laws around this are fairly antiquated. People should clearly have the right to photograph in public, however, I strongly believe that should someone take someone else’s photograph they shouldn’t need their consent to post the photo publicly or monetize it in anyway. Obviously, there should be some limited car outs like public servants in the commission of their duties, legitimate news organizations, use in court etc.
Edit: I don’t think k posting a photo on a private social media profile / group chat would count as public, but rather anything the general public has access to.
The laws in Switzerland are actually what you're describing.
In the whole EU, I think.
No, doesn't work like that in plenty of places in the EU, and additionally Switzerland is not in the EU.
I don't think I implied it was, but would you mind sharing examples?
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Czechia etc etc.
What exactly doesn't work like that in the countries you mentioned?
Why did you say "in the whole EU, I think?" It seemed to imply you grasped the context of the conversation already, but now the thread has taken what feels like a bizarre turn in a recursive direction.
You claim that it is not the case, so I would like you to point out which of these aspects is different in one of these countries. Do you claim it's not allowed to photograph others in public without their explicit consent in Czech Republic, for example?
No, read back on the thread. The person imagined a kind of law that limited public photography except for cases of preventing crime etc. I said it works like that in Switzerland. You said also in the rest of the EU, and I'm pointing out it does not work that way in the rest of the EU, because countries like Czechia are far more lax about public photography than Switzerland or even The Netherlands.
> People should clearly have the right to photograph in public
> should someone take someone else’s photograph they should need their consent to post the photo publicly
> I don’t think posting a photo on a private social media profile / group chat would count as public
That all sounds pretty similar to what I know from EU countries. Of course, there are also exceptions like photographing groups of people etc., but I don't think that goes the spirit of the balderdash's concept.
I think you meant "they should need their consent to post", right?
Yes I did
Wow, such a nice idea with the purple lanyard it would be great to have something like this in general, walking down the streets someone films you and them or even YT or viewers to scan/flag the videos in question. I guess EU could put forth such regulation - no biggie. Maybe we could also create a framework on existing legislation - design a lanyard, put a QR on it leading to a "I do not consent" site. Advertise it a bit and I'm sure it would be newsworthy, at-least in EU, not sure about the rest of the world.
I think even better option is some type of public opt-in. Maybe purple or green screen lanyard. Publishing material of anyone without one would not be allowed.
Doesn't seem too big ask to edit out anyone who has not opted-in. Especially in age of AI that should make it trivial.
Sorry, but why even care about this? Is it an invasion of your privacy if strangers see you walking down the street? If no, how is strangers seeing you walking down the street in the background of some youtube video a privacy violation??
It's the same reason why people are okay being carded, but not okay with submitting their ID digitally to be recorded and retained forever.
Meeting people in public has an obvious, logical bound. Being recorded does not. When you pass by someone in public, you're one of a thousand - passers-by see you once and then never again, they don't permanently remember you or what you did, no one but the people who know you care in the slightest.
When you get recorded, the data now exists forever, backed up in several places and basically impossible to get rid of. Most importantly, you can't ever know what will happen to this data in the future once it's there. Unlike meeting people in public, the internet doesn't forget. If in 20 years, someone puts up a service that let people upload a picture of your face and have it return a dossier with every bit of video you've ever appeared in, you have no recourse or say in the matter. It's "public data" after all, right? Basically equivalent to just being in the public!
> no one but the people who know you care in the slightest
> someone puts up a service that let people upload a picture of your face and have it return a dossier with every bit of video you've ever appeared in
Okay and why exactly would anybody be interested in that? Sounds like a pointless hypothetical
> I guess EU could put forth such regulation - no biggie
Yes! Another EU regulation will solve this right quick.
Well, actually this could be just a means of letting people know your preference without direct communication. Maybe it could fall under existing GDPR regulation, as an extended part about a public "non consent" marker.
How would you solve the problem in large scale, low effort way?
> How would you solve the problem in large scale, low effort way?
The problem is solved in a large scale low effort way (in many places)! If you are in public you can be legally filmed.
- I was at public park. There was an event. I remember there was a warning/poster/whatever - this place features XYZ and is being photographed. If you do not like, do not participate or stand here or something along the lines.
- When kids came to my workplace as part of educational program to show how people work - we gave them out papers, adults had to give approval that their child will be photographed and photo shared on social network. If any would opt out, we would just photograph without him. I think the sole purpose of that event was to photograph on some background with national flag or something and just publish it online.
Sometimes it is ridiculous, but still this thing works like this: the school or kindergarten wants class photo: please sign here that you consent. Basically this photo is not public but limited to families for all the children that attend that class. So seems kind of too much, but ok, can live with that.
I live in EU
Yes that all does seem like too much.
Great idea, and soon there will be a "I accept to be recorded in public" button you need to press before you're let out of your house.
Ah yes, identifying people with special items has always worked extremely well to protect freedoms.
Attention-seeking behaviors (such as an obsession with recording everything and putting it online) are unhealthy and a possible symptom of anti-social traits such as narcissism.
Unfortunately for all of us, if public-by-default becomes the norm, then this is gonna lead to even more social cooling, more conformism and less freedom.
Just tell the other person "please blur my face out if you publish this online" in 2025, this is easy to do.
I'm surprised that YouTube doesn't have a "blur everyone's faces except for me" feature to post process on videos
i'm not going to address the central complaint, but what i think is weird about this version is the venue: everybody is essentially wearing a disguise, and you could consciously disguise yourself even more with no inconvenience except less of a chance of being hit in the face with a paint ball
I can relate, and it's especially concerning when it comes to my child ending up in videos (and pictures) by random people.
Running around littering the forest with plastic, and he is concerned about his privacy. This is the state of modern man.
I think you can make arguments for and against the fundamental right to record or to not be recorded.
If someone is doing something bad/illegal, do we have a right to record/document it? If I am outside minding my own business and not doing anything bad, do I have a right to not be recorded?
What is the difference between seeing and recalling something that happened vs recording? What happens when technology blurs the difference (for example if we all start wearing and using camera AR glasses)?
A purely technology-minded compromise to this question (aka how to support both the "good" and "bad" kinds of recording), is probably something along the lines of expiry and enforcing a lack of permanence as the default (kind of like, the digital age recording-centric version of "innocent until proven guilty", which honestly is one of the greatest inventions in the history of human legal systems). Of course, one should never make societal decisions purely from a technological practicality standpoint.
Since you can't be sure what is "bad"/illegal, and people will just record many things anyways without thinking too much about it --> then the default should be auto-expiring/auto-deletion after X hours/days, unless some reason or some confirmation is provided to justify its persistence.
For example, imagine we lived in a near-future where AI assistants were commonplace. Imagine that recording was ubiquitous but legally mandated to default into being "disappearing videos" like Snapchat, but for all the major platforms (YouTube, TikTok, X, Twitch, Kick, etc.). Imagine that every day, you as a regular person doing regular things, get maybe 10000 notifications of, "you have been recorded in video X on platform Y, do you consent for this to be persisted?", and also law enforcement has to go through a judge (kind of like a search warrant) to file things like "persistence warrants", and then maybe there is another channel/method for concerned citizens who want to persist video of a "bad guy" doing "bad things" where they can request for persistence (maybe it's like an injunction against auto-deletion until a review body can look at the request)... Obviously this would be a ton of administrative overhead, a ton of micro-decisions to be made -- which is why I mentioned the AI-assistant angle, because then I can tell my personal AI helper, "here are my preferences, here is when I consent to recording and here is when I don't... knowing my personal rules, please go and deal with the 10000 notifications I get every day, thanks". Of course if there's disagreement or lack of consensus, some rules have to be developed about how to combine different parties wishes together (e.g. take a recording of a child's soccer game, where maybe 8 parents consent and 3 parents don't to persistence... perhaps it's majority rule so persistence side wins, but then majority has to pay the cost of API tokens to a blurring/anonymization service that protects the 3 who didn't want to be persisted -- that could be a framework for handling disputed outcomes?)
I'm also purposefully ignoring the edge-case problem of, what if a bad actor wants to persist the videos anyways, but in short I think the best we can do is impose some civil legal penalties if an unwilling participant later finds out you kept their videos without permission.
Anyways, I know that's all super fanciful and unrealistic in many ways, but I think that's a compromise sort of world-building I can imagine, that retains some familiar elements of how people think about consent and legal processes, while acknowledging the reality that recording is ubiquitous and that we need sane defaults + follow-up processes to review or adjudicate disputes later (and disputes might arise for trivial things, or serious criminal matters -- a criminal won't consent to their recording being persisted, but then society needs a sane way to override that, which is what judges and warrants are meant to do in protecting rights by requiring a bar of justification to be cleared).
> Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people
sounds like an environmental nightmare
Plastic pellets in the woods?
Is it what it sounds like? As in plastic sprayed in to the ground?
Collected? How?
Have you considered taking up your hobby in Afghanistan? Somewhat tongue in cheek, but a locality under the Taliban have ratified a morality law that bans photography of living things https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-media-moralit...
This only applies to airsoft and paintball, but don’t players wear full on masks for both protection and camouflage?
Check out first amendment auditing for a look at the edges of this at least in the USA.
I feel this about all of the AI notetaking bots that everyone is adding to web meetings these days:
“Welcome to the meeting. Your voice is now being recorded and sent to a server somewhere in the world to be processed by an AI and you have zero control over it. If we were to get hacked, it will be impossible to you know if your voice will be synthesized and used to scam, abuse, or any other nefarious purposes between now and the end of time. Happy meeting!”
I’ve seriously been in meetings with 3+ AI bots from different companies I’ve never heard of.
On the flipside, if I'm attending a meeting, I should have a right to my choice of disability assistance. I have glasses to deal with vision impairment, and notetaking assistance to deal with short term memory impairment. The AI is a part of cybernetic "me", rather than the platform.
Many people are claiming it is legal but it's not that simple in Europe and the UK.
It is legal (in most places) to film people in public but it is not necessarily legal to post the video to social media.
The Irish Data Protection Commission says:
> There is nothing in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that prohibits people from taking photos in a public place. Provided you are not harassing anyone, taking photographs of people in public is generally allowed and most likely will qualify for the household exemption under Article 2(2)(c) of the GDPR.
> However, what you do with that photo can potentially become a data protection issue, for example, if the photograph, which contained the personal data of individuals, was sold for commercial gain or was posted publicly on a social media account. Under those circumstances, you are likely to be considered a data controller which brings with it a host of obligations and duties under data protection law. In particular, it would be necessary for you to demonstrate, amongst other things, your lawful basis for the processing of such personal data under Article 6(1) of the GDPR.
I agree with the author here.
Go to a restaurant with friends or family for dinner - someone has to request the waiter to take a photo of all our faces stuffed with food, can't even have a meal without modeling for stupid photos.
Go to any event - we have to take photos, we have to pose for photos. Back when meetup.com was a thing, every event people were more interested in taking photos than having meaningful conversations.
Go to any tourist place - flashes everywhere, photos everywhere. I used to live in Manhattan, you can't walk 10 feet without some tourist group posing for photos. You have grit your teeth and wait for their photo session to finish, or feel bad for interrupting it.
Couple of years ago (I forgot exactly when) I noticed the self checkout kiosks at WholeFoods had video cameras. I can't even buy half a pound of tomatoes without being on someone's camera/database. As if WholeFoods is some top secret nuclear facility...What crime am I gonna commit there? Steal onions?
And on and on and on...
Who even looks at these stupid photos anyway? Do we really need to document what we ate for breakfast along with our faces, as if we ate some exotic fruit that is only available once every 25 years? It is the same shitty toast and crappy coffee
Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.
This makes perfect sense. I don't want to take anyone's photo (even those people I know very well, like family and friends) without their consent. Same way, I don't want anyone taking my photo either, and most certainly don't want anyone posting them online where it is gonna stay there forever.
We are just plain stupid, as a society
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
I find these kinds of argument somewhat odd, as they imply that "this kind of thing" is some unacceptable violation of clearly pre-established rights.
Rather, one must realize that existing in society always had the implication of being visible to society, and that public spaces are just that: a place accessible to all, where if you chose to be you must also accept being observed by its other attendants.
Some physical public spaces might be crammed so full of people that it's hard to breathe, while others will have them few and far in between. Some virtual public spaces might be breaking records with their viewer counts, others will never be graced with the presence of an eyeball. Streamers just connect a physical public space with a virtual public space.
Being recorded and published in a final edit of an on-demand video is slightly different (and not implied in streaming), but that is a much older dilemma that we have had more time to adjust to and hammer out rights regarding, and few would really pay attention to someone recording on the street with anything other than slight curiosity.
So no. I believe this is the society you must accept being a member of. The only thing that has changed with time is the medium (memory and word-of-mouth, paintings, photos, video recording and finallys livestreaming), not the actions. But as important, being caught on rando streamer's camera will by default only contribute about as much to your internet fame (and loss of privacy) as going to the local grocery store.
(For those curious if age contributes to the standpoint, I'd fall in the 30-40 bucket.)
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
> Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
Well, here is the heart of the disagreement. I suspect everyone agrees that the social norms are "clear," they just vehemently disagree about what those norms are.
I don't know anything specific about the implicit cultural norms of airsoft, but it sounds like the author is playing at a privately owned facility which I would expect to have very explicit rules and liability waivers. I'd be surprised if those rules don't cover photography.
>well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces
equates to
>you only have to worry about surveillance if you are doing something wrong.
This is, 100% guaranteed, a systematically injected narrative.
Nah, its a free country. You come to a public place, you accept the risks. Others have a right to live their lives too. See you in court
This made me chuckle remembering the time a friend photographed a dog in a bicycle in Berlin and was yelled at by the owner until the photo was deleted. Photographing a pet crossed a big red privacy line. Seems absurd, but I think sensitivity to the phenomenon the author is noting will vary by country.
That does sound absurd indeed.
What if the dog was on the lam?
https://xkcd.com/642/
worth looking into Camera Lucida by roland barthes, sontag's on photography and for something more recent, bernard stiegler's writings on cameras as technics if interested in some of the headier aspects of what cameras and photography do to culture and human relationships (as opposed to, say, legal implications). i tend to agree with the author: the presence of cameras in community spaces have completely ruined my relationship to those spaces. ive seen people here call the author a karen which, maybe, but the last time i went to a small DIY rock show in my community there were more people taking pictures than there were watching the show. what value is it if everyone films and uploads a set from a local band on youtube? what is the point?
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
I feel the same way, but that's just not reality anymore. If you go outside your home, you're on camera. If your home faces your neighbor's door, you're probably on camera even in your own home unless you have constant obstruction of your windows and doors. I regularly see camera on apartment doors surveilling the interior of secure high-rise residential buildings. Guess you just gotta know when unit 18A takes out the trash...
A very valid and timely concern, in my opinion!
Switch to paintballs and shoot the cameras.
Their venue, their rules. If you don't like them, go to somewhere else or run with airsoft "gun" alone.
This is mostly a joke, but objects in fantasy land are sometimes closer than they appear.
Major cloud compute and OS infra providers should provide a global opt-out of public bystander-recording. OK, record me, but it will be known by my face, location stamps from my device, etc, that it's me, and post-processing will anonymize me.
Legitimate public interest? EG, I stole your car and it's on tape? Sure, provide the cloud provider with a warrant for 'originals'.
Aim for the expensive kit.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
I think this is the rule that is currently under renegotiation in society. At one point you could imagine saying "I should be able to go out in public without having had a certain medical procedure (like a vaccine)." Now, I don't agree with that.
The overton window of behaviours is always shifting and not always in ways that we like.
It's a legally grey area. In most countries, you can't really stop people from shooting video and photos in public spaces. But you can do something about publishing the material. Most stock photography websites and similar websites will insist on permission from identifiable individuals in photos or videos for this reason. And a lot of conferences or fairs will give notice of the fact that there will be photos and videos taken at such events (thus clearly marking them as public events). I've seen that here in Germany at least.
And this is a sensitive topic here. Some people here get upset if you point a camera at them and will aggressively demand that you delete their photo. I've seen that happen a few times (not to me). Some people really get pissed off over this here and they tend to known their rights. So good luck arguing otherwise.
If you look at the rules here, they are quite sensible. You can't just publish photos or videos with recognizable people in them unless it's clearly a public event (like a demonstration, concert, etc.). Taking the photos is mostly OK (up to a point). And there's an exemption for private photos. But you can't just publish photos with people recognizably in them unless falls under the narrow set of exceptions to that rule.
Photos of people actually count as personally identifiable information under GDPR. So, people can object to that being stored by companies, ask for it to be removed, and companies need valid reasons for storing such photos.
In this case, the person is in the UK where people simply have less protections against this. Which is something the tabloid press there tends to abuse by trying to get photos of famous people in private / embarrassing situations by all means possible. That would be a lot less legal in Germany and expose you to lawsuits if you were to do that. The German tabloid press has a rich history of that happening.
In the US in most states it's illegal to monetize the image of children [without consent] unless it's just incidental to the film.
I'd imagine if 17 year olds were allowed you could make it legally dicy enough for someone that they'd not want to do it, if they were profiting off of it.
I feel like at least part of the issue is that the internet is a different kind of public than everywhere else. it's not transient, and it's not limited to the people who happened to be in the same part of public as you at the same time. instead it's a fully-automatable, permanent record that is 100% available to all present and future humans. that deserves consideration to my mind.
I found this frustrating to read. First the other airsoft participates he seems to seem to be okay with people filming. There is clearly no expectation of privacy.
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
>
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
I don't like it that things are recorded around the clock or by anyone and be broadcast anywhere, but the ship on this has sailed long ago.
> In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby). > > But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conferences, with people saying “Of course I’m free to take photos of identifiable individuals without their consent and publish them online”.
Again is there an expectation of privacy? Are people told that they are not allowed to use their cameras?
It is whether the is a expectation of privacy. A McDonald's or a Burger King is "private property", but there is no expectation of privacy. I would not expect privacy at an airsoft, paint-balling or any other outdoor activity even if it is on private property.
A public toilet cubical is a public place with an expectation of privacy.
> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
It depends whether there was an expectation of privacy as whether it should feel wrong. If there isn't an expectation of privacy. Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".
> This isn’t about what is legal (although, in some cases, claims of legality may be poorly conceived), but around my own perceptions of a private life, and a dislike for the fact that, just because one can publish such things, that one should.
How else is this supposed to be tacked if not by what is legally permissible?
> There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany, where you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.
> Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".
The author knows what the laws are, but presumably disagrees with the reasoning behind the laws and is criticising them. If someone came to Switzerland and started complaining that they can't install a doorbell camera, then it would also be a case of them 'not liking it' - but they have a right to voice their opinion.
> Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany, where you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.
Obviously the law is different in different places.
However. The person is talking about Newbury which I used to live near, which is in the UK. So they are talking about their experience in the UK.
So the only law the is applicable here is UK law.
> The author knows what the laws are, but presumably disagrees with the reasoning behind the laws and is criticising them.
He specifically says at the end "This isn’t about what is legal". I also don't believe he understands the law, since he often conflates/misuses the use of term private throughout the entire article.
What he understands as private isn't what is understood by almost anyone (both legal and colloquially).
>There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
I had a guy at Walmart yesterday call the cops on me because I took a picture of the strip mall it was in on a small point and shoot and he assumed I was for some reason taking a picture of him, his wife, and kid. He was literally just a random car in the middle of a public parking lot. The officer talked to him and asked that I stepped away and then she came to me. The conversation went exactly like this.
Before she could even start to talk I told her I assumed that she knew that there was no expectation of privacy in public and that I could take a thousand pictures and there would be nothing that she could do about it. She agreed. She then asked if I'd like to give her my name (because she had no right to demand I do), and I said no I wouldn't like that. Then came the kicker. Would you like to just show me you don't have a picture of him. I said no I won't because I did nothing wrong and there's no reason for you to see my pictures. All of these were phrased as requests to bypass illegal search because she knew she was in the wrong even questioning me about it. People seem to really be the main character in the most boring story ever, at least in their minds. I have a healthy disregard for feigned authority anyway and was so indignant that I almost took some pictures of them while they talked. Trampling rights because Jim Bob is upset that someone dared take a picture in his direction rubs me the wrong way.
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
In the US the legal doctrine is no privacy at all in public spaces (a lot more expansive than that actually), that's probably where those comments come from.
There are plenty of US states with two-party consent for recording (audio, mostly, but in some cases video as well)
Ok but it's a UK domain talking about an activity in the UK
It’s frustrating when there’s a problem and you know any solution to it is worse than the problem itself.
For instance, in my area we’ve recently had a couple Nazi demonstrations. People with swastika flags and “Hitler was right” signs. I’d like that to go away.
But to attempt to use law to do anything about it would mean allowing someone to choose what others can and cannot say in public. That’s worse, or at least at some point it will be.
This is very much like that (though of course far less nefarious) and you just have to let people take paintball videos. Imagine if we didn’t let people video anything they want in public. How many instances of police brutality would go unpunished. That’s worse.
My advice: start a paintball league and make that the rule. And yeah, it does suck to have to suddenly become an event planner just to not end up on YouTube but welcome to the future I guess.
> vim over emacs
Hell Yes lol
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He acknowledges the issue in the article, but doesn’t seem to grasp it fully.
Public means not private. What you do in public is not private. In presumptive free societies, when in public, one is allowed to notice what others are doing in public. Secret is the opposite of public.
The paranoia around being seen feels a lot like the other reptile-brain based phobias like fear of poisoning with vaccines.
I think this argument is logically flawed. When you say public means not private you are glossing over the fact that public never before meant "available via digital media to the world." Instead it mean a public which had a localized context. Doesn't mean you are wrong, but you're paving over this obvious fact.
But what practical difference does it have that it's "available via digital media to the world."? Are you just opposed to people not in your physical location seeing you? Why?
There are a number of reasons, including:
- I see who sees me, a digital copy breaks this symmetry
- Recordings may be stored indefinitely, searched through, used for things I can't even imagine today
- In a local environment a specific behavior might be normal or accepted while in some other cultures it is not. This conflict is bound to happen
etc.
> used for things I can't even imagine today
So why worry about it? It's like worrying a camera will "capture your soul" or whatever the story about those tribesmen is.
> a local environment a specific behavior might be normal or accepted while in some other cultures it is not
Do you actually have an example of this or is this yet another hypothetical?
The difference is being seen in public is ephemeral and being recorded in public is eternal. In the former, your actions exist in fallible human memories for a short while at most; in the latter there is a permanent digital record of you, geotagged and time stamped and available for perfect recall forever.
And that's bad because?
I'm not a fan of my out-of-the-home activities all being stored in an online database accessible to billions of people and automatically scanned by several different governments (including a list of foreign countries extensive enough to include at least one you wish it didn't, regardless of who you are) to build a profile of every person, from hobbies to schedule to gait recognition to psychographic profile.
But of course, that ship has sailed in much of the world, with the ubiquity of surveillance and the dearth of opposition.
I think you imagine governments as being a lot more capable and interested in you than they really are. You haven't even told me what you think they'll actually do with that dreaded database, except keep it.
There's a clear difference in scale between "people who also go to a private airsoft meetup with me will see me" and "the entire global population can see me", right?
Okay, and? There's a difference between one person seeing me in public and two, but no meaningful difference
Depends who the second person is. And of course we are in an age where companies pride themselves into hovering up as much "public" data as they can find, analyze it and sell it to whoever wants it, so "find every photo or video this face is in" could lead to quite a detailed profile depending on how often this happens. Scale matters.
(Similarly to how "we have license plates on cars to identify them if needed" is a thing and basically nobody complains that I can see your license plate when I walk past your car or write it down if needed, but thousands or millions of cameras recording all traffic and logging plates are something people are concerned about, even if its completely legal in some places)
What was that Larry Ellison quote that came up again over the weekend?
EDIT: or to bring a specific real-world example: A friend of mine does classes at a local studio that also offers martial arts courses, and some of the local right-wing bubble has gotten it in their head that this has to be "antifa combat training" and keeps screaming that this needs to be monitored. The current local government has been ignoring them, but a lot of people are probably quite happy now that there isn't an easy-to-get public record of who was there and "needs a visit" just because some influencer needed to film her dance lessons.
So your specific real world example is that nothing happened, but IF somebody had filmed them then you IMAGINE they would have "gotten a visit". Very specific and real world.
I think it's similar to the difference between "the cop watching me when I'm near them and are aware of it" and "the cop watching me all the time, wherever I go and I can't know anything about this" (which would be impossible before cameras).
There's a world of difference. I know the people in my local community and they know me. We speak the same dialects and use the same slang. Nobody is going to take some off-color idiom the wrong way or judge me for poor grammar or enunciation.
I know who the whackjobs are and don't need to interact with them or watch my speech to avoid triggering them and dealing with ensuing harassment, threats, violence.
You're afraid of threats and violence because they judge you for poor grammar? Okay...
I feel that there is a difference between being in the public sphere of the community one exists in, and being in a public sphere that is global and free of any context. Lots of questions pop up when I try to follow that line of thought.
Questions such as?
"noticing" is not the same as "permanently documenting and broadcasting to the internet". Used to be one needed to get signed photo releases from passerbys who appeared in your shots...
yep, it's the permanent nature of the recording put in to the public sphere that is the game changer for me.
I accept I am visible in public to all who share a space but I do not accept that the ephemeral nature of my existence in that space should be violated.
Any chance you're relatively young?
I've noticed that folks born after some point in the early 2000's tend to feel this way, and they don't even realize that the survellience in 1984 was meant to be problematic, or why it might feel that way to others
It seems that the panopticon has been normalized successfully.
Old. If I don't want to be seen somewhere, I either: don't go there, or sneak. If I sneak and get caught, I should've snuck better.
I think doing a members-only activity on private grounds is the opposite of public
Airsoft is probably played in a private woodland.
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
Sorry, that's not clear to me at all. If you're going to accuse other people of "nonsense", you should probably avoid circular reasoning yourself.
Agreed. Was going to post the same thing. It’s very much a debatable position.
What's even funnier is that this dude demands privacy while he cosplays murdering people with guns in a context where he could easily anonymize himself by wearing a face mask and using a pseudonym which are normal things those people do anyways.
It's clear that "privacy " in public spaces requires a fair bit of entitlement, why can't we all just love one another and let it go? What harm comes from being in someone's cool AirSoft video? Is it just a matter of principle that bothers you or something deeper?
For one thing, the video might have objectionable content edited into it.
For instance, one video could be filmed by a genocidal maga nutjob, and a second could be a documentary about how PLA doesn’t biodegrade, made by a woke LGBTQ+ immigrant with a working understanding of chemistry, physics and biology.
Almost 100% of the US would be upset to know they supported the production of at least one of those videos.
That they're upset does not mean that the world should bend to their feelings. I think you would agree that getting upset does not necessarily mean something is wrong externally, oftentimes things are wrong internally. Thank you for taking the time to reply
This. Im a dick and straight up demand people exclude me or stop filming. Consumers are ravenous for money making content and have no clue what a media business privacy, consent, and compensation legal framework even remotely look like. As someone who produced a few short documentaries in the early 2000s related to "hobbies", I would have never done so without full consent and compensation...
I don’t think you’re a “dick” for politely asking people not to film you, unless you’re unnecessarily aggressive about it.
I disagree. Filming Airsoft is no more intrusive than filming football matches or paintball. It’s a public-facing hobby where documenting the experience is part of the culture, and that’s a big reason the sport grows and attracts new players.
UK law already strikes the right balance: you’re free to record in public or semi-public spaces unless there’s a specific ban, while also having protections against harassment or misuse. That’s a sensible framework we should never dilute with “consent-by-default” rules, which would only stifle creativity and community sharing. If you join a hobby where cameras are standard, it’s fair to expect that presence, not to restrict others’ enjoyment because of hypothetical discomfort.
If you don’t like that, nothing stops you from setting up your own private games with different rules
> well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces
That's the correct answer. End of the story.
It is our consensus of what "public space" means and one can do with it (which varies depending on where you are) that forms a lot of our social norms and society. It is why hang drying clothes is acceptable/normal in many parts of the world but not in the US. It is why people are expected to wear at least some clothes. It is why you can take photos of random people, including kids, without their/their parents' consent in the US in public space.
If you think you are so special to never show up in a photo, don't be in the public in the first, or wear a mask, a hat plus sunglasses or something else. Celebrities have been doing this for forever.
> In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby)
Not the end of the story. Photographing where people do not expect strong assurances of privacy is complex to enforce. Try photographing inside a stadium, at the Olympics, etc. Others around you might be photographing, but security might ask you to stop or leave.
Stadiums are private spaces. That should have been very obvious.
In case that's still not clear, you need a ticket to enter a stadium, unlike your local public parks or public library, or, like, streets.
Strong disagree.
The right to take photos of random people without consent in public spaces, is NOT the same as the right to publish those photos online for the world to see and as a theoretically permanent discoverable archive.
You must be extraordinarily naive to think that people take photos in public places without ever posting them online, by default.
And let me know one single instance where someone gets sued for posting a photo of someone appearing in public space in the US.
I’m not naive, I’m just saying they are two separate issues. The laws that allowed public photos predate social media.
People sue over much less in the US.
Huh? Hanging clothes is absolutely accepted in the US. I have a clothesline.
Including hanging underwears on the balcony in an apartment building? Try harder.