We're Americans. If we practiced DBAD, pretty much everything would be different.
Of all our American flaws, "It's not illegal for me to be a dick and therefore I am going to be on" is perhaps the one we're proudest of. (Followed, perhaps, by "It's illegal for me to be a dick but you can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and that's as good as legal" and "It's illegal for me to be a dick but nobody is going to bother prosecuting therefore it's as good as legal.")
It would be great if we all practiced Don't Be A Dick. But for those who are most harmed by people being dicks, we need to figure out ways to protect them legally, because otherwise people will be a dick to them as hard as they possibly can. And every time you try, people will say "Nobody is being a dick to me therefore nobody needs to be protected."
This actually pretty accurately and succinctly describes the difference between American and Canadian culture.
As a Canadian in the US I'm often asked the difference, and I've mostly held my tongue from saying "You're all pretty damn rude, and have fragile egos" but I think I might steal your description because it makes sense.
Nonsense. As a fellow Canadian I can safely say that MANY Canadians have plenty of fragile ego problems and are plenty rude too. Let's not generalize between two whole countries. Canadian media and government policy also has an obsessive complex with "differentiating itself" from American culture, to the point of becoming tedious about it, but that's another story.
I think a lot of people (often Americans) have trouble distinguishing between illegal/legal and wrong/right. In fact, they see no right and wrong: if I can do it then I will do it, other people be damned. They’ll wave their hands right in front of your face taunting “Nyah Nyah Nyah I can legally do this and there’s nothing you can do to stop me! Ha ha ha!” People will go out of their way to be an asshole because they can and nobody can stop them.
Don’t like if I film you? Ha ha! It’s not illegal so I’m going to deliberately film you, and by the way, in other ways I’m going to also go right up to the line of what’s illegal and not cross it, because I can and because it irritates you.
The way I see it: we were very proud of our Bill of Rights, but never came up with a corresponding Bill of Responsibilities. You wouldn't expect one, of course, but the Bill of Rights gives people a thing to hold up and declare "I got mah rights!".
Pretty much any time you see somebody clamoring about their rights, and ignoring any talk about responsibility (or talking about your responsibilities but not theirs), you can tell the conversation isn't going to go well.
There are two ways to view the world, and what we do in it. Which one we adopt largely depends on the one those around us adopt.
I make no judgement about which is "better" or "worse" - they both have positives and negatives. Inevitably, and obviously, you can probably figure out which one you fall into based on which one you react to.
In the first case, you view the world around you and yours. You see events and think "how does this affect me and people like me". If taxes are going up this means I get less money.
The alternative is through the lens of "how does this affect others." - them and theirs - yes, taxes are going up, but those in need will get better medical care, and I already have enough money myself.
It's not just about money. Basically every policy discussion revolves around "us" and "them". Immigration, inflation, exploitation, environment, defense, guns and do on. How will this affect me and mine. How will it affect them and theirs.
Inevitably every policy has an impact on a continuum, but too often the extreme is presented by media to reinforce one end of the spectrum. Thus the extremes start to matter more than the nuanced middle ground.
I would argue there is a third. I'm open to taxes going up if the extra money is used effectively. Also what behavior are the funds incentivizing? If they are not used effectively or the incentivized behavior is not optimal then I am against them. For example cities like LA and SF give money to the homeless with virtually zero requirements so they are in effect incentivizing homeless people to move there and stay homeless. I am against this. I would be for spending money to clean homeless people up and get them jobs and provide shelter until they have acclimated back into society. The program would require actual proof of the participants trying to fix their circumstances. I am always for feeding and caring for homeless kids.
An additional aspect which is the reason I'm fairly left leaning is that I really dislike encounters with downtrodden people so I will gladly pay more taxes to prevent/save them from being that way.
I could not live in a place with a homelessness issue like LA.
Places like LA have high taxes and more homeless than places without high taxes. Maybe the programs in place that the high taxes pay for just incentivize homeless people to move there? Left leaning cities have a far greater number of homeless people.
It's baked into the founding of the country. A bunch of folks arrived in a place where people were living and decided those people were less than human and killed them or moved them away from their homes (often by signing contracts they had no intention of upholding). Then, we captured a bunch of people from somewhere far away and moved them here for free labor. After the war we fought to end that, many places passed a lot of unconstitutional laws to continue to make their lives miserable. It's no surprise to me that, never having reckoned with all of that, the general American attitude is entitled and thoughtless.
> Sure, it’s legal to film people in public in the US without their consent. But it’s also shitty.
I don’t think that it’s always shitty to film people in public without their consent. This is not a black and white issue.
Do you feel that consent should be obtained from everyone who is visible in any video taken outdoors, regardless of whether those people are the intended subject of the video? Do you have a consent problem with surveillance videos? How about videos captured on car dash cameras?
Let’s say you are at a tourist attraction, capturing a video of the attraction. Another visitor asks that you stop filming, because they don’t want to be in your video. Dickish to continue? I’m not so sure.
It’s easy to say “don’t be a dick,” but that statement sidesteps the reality that reasonable people can (and do) disagree about what that means.
> Do you feel that consent should be obtained from everyone who is visible in any video taken outdoors
It's a spectrum.
When someone is the subject of your video, like the AC/DC person in the article, then YES, you are a shitty person if you post that for the world to see without their permission.
… and yet there are still counter-examples: Candid photography[1] has long been recognized as art, and I wouldn't feel that the photographer is a "shitty person" for trying to capture a view of the world not affected by knowledge that the camera is trained on them. (And permission after the fact is not always possible. Nor necessary, even to avoid be "shitty".)
Photo-journalism, particularly of politicians, would be greatly harmed by a permission requirement: is a journalist a shitty person for reporting the truth, even truths that a politician might not like? (And let's say it's something public, like capturing a politician giving a public speech that would appear to be whipping a crowd into a mob, not tabloid/paparazzi type stuff.) Someone photographing or videotaping police brutality?
Intent, I think, is what matters in determining if any one photo/capture is "shitty"; there are instances where you can be a good person while creating photos or videos that might be very detrimental to the subject. Some of the examples from TFA are good examples: creators looking to find people on the street to make a fool of.
[2]: (I'd perhaps also add the last time I surreptitiously recorded someone was because the person was issuing death threats to those around him. AITA? But there are other, more artistic or journalistic cases that I think also have merit, which is why this is a footnote.)
> … and yet there are still counter-examples: Candid photography[1] has long been recognized as art, and I wouldn't feel that the photographer is a "shitty person" for trying to capture a view of the world not affected by knowledge that the camera is trained on them. (And permission after the fact is not always possible. Nor necessary, even to avoid be "shitty".)
I think if the picture/video is to be posted online or in a gallery, the person in the picture has a right to say how their likeness is being used, regardless of context. If someone's in the background of a video a I would say it's not as relevant, unless the background person becomes the subject unintentionally (as often seen in fail videos).
Surveillance is a different matter. You are notified you're entering a building with cameras, and those also aren't streamed online or displayed publicly.
As for public figures: there's usually separate laws for such things for public figures, AFAIK
I don't think the point is "family video." I think the point is "viral tik tok video." And it seems like we've been here before. Monetized entertainment is monetized entertainment.
Legally, I believe the only time you actually need a model release is if you are going to use the image in advertising. I am not a lawyer, and if you want the real answer you should probably ask one. But the answers to that quora question look wrong to me. Note that I am talking about the US, the rules may be different elsewhere.
> Do you have a consent problem with surveillance videos?
Ubiquitous CCTV cameras certainly bring issues of privacy, as well as what they should be used for.
One example is Smart Streetlights, which were initially promoted as energy saving lights that would help to measure and manage traffic and pollution, but quickly turned into dragnet police surveillance systems, initially for solving violent crimes but ultimately including property crimes such as vandalism, illegal dumping, and destruction of city property[1], and for protest surveillance [2].
License plate cameras tend to have similar mission creep - they start out for parking enforcement or for red light tickets and turn into a system for tracking citizens whenever and wherever they drive.
In Japan, it’s been common practice to blur out the faces of anyone who hasn’t given consent in a photo/video. This applies to crowds as well. This can be an easy way to always avoid being a dick.
The biggest problem I have with those tiktokers is that they will ruin filming in public for the rest of us, as people will demand some kind of radical law prohibiting it.
I am totally fine with the distinction that is enshrined in law in many places around the world: you can record everything in public, but you cannot publish what you recorded without consent.
The issue is that we have two extremes (as it often happens) that either react to the camera as if it's the devil eating their souls and freak out, or we have the tiktokers basically ignoring the second part (no publication without consent).
I find that when people present these ethical gray areas about a given behavior, they always conclude that it's best to allow the behavior to continue, the (false) premise being that doing so is the ethically neutral position to take. It's a neat little rhetorical trick used to rationalize all kinds of things.
And yes, posting to TikTok for "clout" is "commercial purposes". There are many drone pilots who found out the expensive way that posting drone footage on YouTube resulted in fines/prosecutions under commercial drone operation regulations.
I didn't say it was a black and white issue. I said it was an ethical issue, and like all ethical issues, there is a very wide spectrum of what fits, what doesn't, and what's grey area.
I can think of reasons why one might record a stranger in public, or a stranger might end up in a recording, but I thought it was pretty clear from the article that we're not talking about that—we're talking about content creators (any person making content) filming strangers without consent so they can create content using those strangers. These other things you're talking about are irrelevant to that conversation.
I'm a little less convinced that "crowd shots" count in this discussion.
When some jerk goes up to a girl with the intent to humiliate her for TikTok lulz by asking her to name 3 ACDC songs, that video no only should never be "shared with 3rd parties", but should never even be made in the first place.
On the other hand, I wouldn't even think about asking your consent to post a crowd pan shot of a music festival with hundreds (or thousands) of people in shot. And unless you happened to be one of the people right behind me and obviously recognisable in the clip, I'd consider you insane if you objected or asked me to take it down.
I've not fully thought this through, but there's a big difference between "active engagement" with a specific person like the TikTok jerk, and passive engagement like "look at the crowd here at SXSW!" And there's a hard line in the sand about the TikTok jerk's intentions of hoping to humiliate people publicly.
If that TikTok jerk had caught me on a bad day as I was coming back to my partner while he was pulling that shit, he'd probably be buying a new microphone and camera after I'd stomped them...
If things end up online (and everything recorded by a modern cam will end up online at least at one of Google, Apple, FB, or MS) this is not OK. You can't control what those companies do with the data. If you don't like your life ending up in the cloud nobody may film you without your consent. There is not much room for discussion. (Maybe if the recordings would be done with offline devices and you would get written guaranties that the recording never gets onto an networked computer, but who could promise this in today's world?)
And yet here we are. You’re not in charge, and telling other people what they are and aren’t allowed to do just to meet some arbitrary desire of yours is being a dick. Do you really expect everyone not to take pictures and videos of games you’re at? Museums you’re in? Concerts you attend? Come on.
(This does not mean that everybody conforms to the law. But people that don't would be at least liable for damages.)
Edit, to clarify: Of course you can film in public. But you're required to cut out people who didn't give explicit consent before showing the material in public or handing it over to third parties.
No it isn’t (there are similar laws in at least France and Italy, and a much broader one in the UK).
All of this delightful nuance goes to my previous point; there’s plenty to debate and discuss here and the whole idea of an absolute right to privacy in public is comical.
No it doesn’t. That consent is gated around violating their legitimate purpose (see the other words in that second paragraph). So in general just posting stuff/uploading to TikTok/facebook/etc does not require consent and you don’t have a right to have it taken down without specific cause.
It's interesting as this is one area where Japanese law is significantly different from American law. It's really easy to sue people in Japan and win for people using your image without your permission. This is why you see so many videos from Japan when news agencies film on the streets they'll blur people's faces.
Since just before 2016 and enforced by the pandemic, it's pretty obvious if you are going through life relying on people not to take advantage of the fact that "being a dick" is a loophole while everyone else is polite or obeys the law, you are going to get run over or killed.
When I worked in film/tv production we were perpetually getting signed releases from people who were in the shot. Is this just not a thing now? Or is the downside so low that nobody cares?
The downside is proportional to pocket size. If you’re a rando Tik Toker or YouTuber, you have nothing to take (or so little, you can round down to zero). A production company has assets or capitalization at risk, hence the legal dance around releases.
With the current anti TikTok feeling in the US, I wonder how hard it would be to push for laws requiring TikTok to delete accounts of users who do this kind of content?
TikTok assholes may not have any assets to make them worth suing (or even any identities you can point your lawyer at), but one thing that they do value is their following, if we can make this sort of shitty behaviour an existential risk to their TikTok clout, perhaps the behaviour will go away. Humiliating people in public for lulz should be a bankable offence on all social media platforms, with the only defence being pre-existing model releases if you're doing it with informed and paid actors.
Different shades from a release for being in the shot versus recording someone’s conversation, but an important call out nonetheless. Interestingly, I haven’t heard of any criminal cases where social media folks have recorded and shared public conversations on platforms (TikTok, r/PublicFreakout, etc). Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, so if you’ve got case law to share, drop it here. I presume (Not a lawyer! Not legal advice!) that depending on jurisdiction, you may record anything in public assuming there is no expectation of privacy in the situation.
A Maryland case where a motorcyclist, using a helmet cam, video & audio records a cop brandishing a gun. Motorcyclist posts the video online only to be arrested and charged with a felony for having made the recording. The court threw out the charges.
In general, that's true. However there are exceptions. Things like upskirt shots, recording in courtrooms, recording full or partial nudity (ie filming sunbathers), etc.
I don't think GP said anything about intent. If you "accidentally" upskirt someone and release it on TikTok, the victim and the court isn't going to be too impressed with "I didn't mean to and didn't notice it before uploading". Of course, there is some expectation of "within reason". Like, if you have to look at the reflection in the window, it is entirely reasonable to think someone may not have noticed before uploading.
What can be a crime? If you’re in a public space (and not the legal definition of public —- a mall is considered a public space despite being privately owned) you have no legal expectation of privacy. Period. End of story. There are very good reasons for this, despite the fact in creative tiktokers are definitely exercising the bounds of the law.
Of course if the content somehow slanders or misrepresents someone, that’s another issue.
I tend to agree with your POV but as a counterpoint, in Japan it's against the law to film people in public without their permission. A shot of a crowd is unlikely to get you in trouble, and in fact, a shot taken without permission but that the person you took it of never finds out is unlikely to get you in trouble (although that's the same for shoplifting)
But, it is the law there and it is often enforced. As an example you can find public exhibitions with signs up "no photography". You'll even find these signs at trade shows at many booths where you'd expect the entire point is to show off to the public.
The point is, different cultures have different feelings about this.
IIUC, it was Japan that made Google Maps remove faces from streetview.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted, I believe it’s correct for the U.S. Reminds me of the famous “Photographer’s Rights” pamphlet http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf and there definitely are people out there making confrontation videos with security guards and police for YouTube based on knowing they can’t legally be stopped for shooting in public. It might be lame, but it is legal.
> Not sure why this is getting downvoted, I believe it’s correct for the U.S.
That's the problem: A US-centric "end of story, period" generalization. In general, you are not allowed to take pictures of other people in public without their consent in Germany and many other countries.
I didn't want to get into details, but in general: no, photographing a person in public without consent is not allowed in Germany. It's called "Recht am eigenen Bild" = rights for my own picture. Now there are many exceptions of course: crowds, prominent people, journalism, etc. Also, if someone looks into your camera and smiles, this is considered a consent. All this is about taking a picture, publishing is a separate matter.
What if you go to the roof of a building and take a photo of a crowd on the street below? Do you need to get everyone's permission to publish that? What if you can't even recognize their faces from that distance? This law seems impractical, unless there's exceptions noted in the text of the law itself.
Crowds and persons insignificant/incidental to the image composition, as well as "newsworthy events" (e.g. a politician speaking in their function) are mostly exempt, so all of these examples are not a problem, practically.
Given that the parent was claiming that you're not even allowed to take a photo of somebody in public in Germany, I think the salient point here is "you actually can, unless you publish it", and it's less relevant that you can also publish it in many of these cases.
If you’re in a public space (and not the legal definition of public [...] you have no legal expectation of privacy. Period. End of story.
Wrong (as so often with people who assert things like 'period. end of story.')
*photography is permitted in public spaces, you don't have a right to not be photographed in public. but in many jurisdictions, including California, recording other people's conversations requires consent from all participants in the conversation. Doing so covertly is treated as equivalent to wiretapping and is a crime, as well as exposing you to civil liability.
We must also distinguish between recording and publicizing. At least in Norway, it is legal to take photos of strangers (as long as you don't harass or scare anyone), but you dare not free to share them publicly without consent. There are exceptions, of course, such as noteworthy events, crowds, and things that it is in the public's benefit to see, but otherwise, you must be careful
For example, street photography is kind of a grey area, I don't think it has ever been brought to court
Try filming in a courtroom. There are also laws against filming upskirt, full or partial nudity even if in a public setting, etc in my state and in similar states. Since you brought up privately owned but open to the public spaces, owners can set their own rules and ask you to leave if you violate them.
The point is, circumstances matter. This isn't an absolute right and has some restrictions to it (as do pretty much all rights it seems).
How about some respect for the strangers that also have a right to use the shared public space. Is it really too much to get consent before they start recording?
Signing the releases isn't in the videos you make right? Institutional knowledge isn't transferred to people on tiktok. They replicate what they see, which is the walking up to people part. All the stuff behind the scenes is only known by people working in the industry.
The legal situation is different if the intended use of the footage is commercial (film/tv in your case) or not. Getting releases is still very much a thing in all the shoots I've been on recently.
The US national parks service considers recording and then uploading the recording to youtube to be commercial. It requires permits to do so for many national parks.
Did the release signing come after the intrusiveness? Or do all the “man on the street” segments feature people who were asked off-camera for permission?
in my experience growing up in LA in the 90s, hanging around where "reality" tv was being shot on the street, you usually get approached with a release by producers after they've already gotten you in a shot.
In documentaries I worked on we would tell people what we were doing and ask them if we could talk to them and then get a release afterwards. Not sure about other types of shows.
It's my understanding that tv and film people do the signed releases because they don't want to be sued, not because they necessarily wouldn't eventually win an expensive legal battle if they were sued.
I've watched some Japanese video creators on YouTube and so often when they film streets they frame their shot so as to cut off the faces of those in public (whether by tilting the camera, or shooting a crowd where everyone is walking away). It's so polite, so considerate <3
> “It isn’t a criminal offense to photograph people’s faces in public, but it can be a civil offense if the person who has been photographed finds their likeness published anywhere. They can make a case against the photographer on the grounds of breach of privacy,” says Tia. “The threat of being identified in a creative’s work and suffering consequences for it is all the victim needs to prove in court.”
> That’s why on most Japanese blogs, YouTube videos, and television programs, the faces of bystanders are blurred, an arduous and artistically painful process for any passionate creative. Tia says it best: “As an artist, mosaics and bars over the face can be such an ugly mark on one’s work.”
"A connoisseur is a collector and/or art lover who is knowledgeable about works of art, in the sense of being able to recognise characteristic individual or regional styles.
This skill is based on familiarity with a large number of pictures, and the ability to retain a visual memory of them."
That actually sounds like a totally valid use for those AI face generators. Gotta be hella better'n a big ol' blur or giant pixels where a face should be.
So, I love japanese photography and their street photography is very lively and rooted in decades of tradition. A couple of years ago a famous photographer got some backlash for being "inconsiderate" but only lost his partnership with a famous camera manufacturer.
How does this law fit with the very alive and active community of publishing street photographers?
I wonder how this works in the case of identical twins, in which a person could independently contract to distribute a likeness that was indistinguishable from that of the other person.
There are quite a few east Asian students in the city where I live, and especially the girls like to do photo shoots around town. They go to lengths to get shots without other people in, but I always got the impression they're doing it for aesthetics primarily above consideration for others
I'm not sure what it's called, but I've seen a product which is a database of the time/location of US car license plate sightings. As I understand it, these are OCR'd from a combination of private, and public footage. I wonder if something similar exists for faces, and if some company is performing facial recognition on publicly uploaded footage. It sounds quite paranoid, however we know for a fact that such technology exists, and that there's a motivation for it.
I don't _think_ yet, publicly -- as far as time/location of sighting records. I would assume that national security police forces have it though... perhaps still secretly in the US? It is known that Chinese security police have it.
But facial recognition on public data, yes, there are commercial facial recognition databases, but i dont' think they (yet?) have timestamped geocoded sightings.
> Australia and U.S.-based face biometrics provider VerifyFaces has unveiled its consumer-facing facial recognition service which can be used for background checks. Unlike image-only searches such as PimEyes, VerifyFaces combines facial recognition and text searches.
> From $11, individual users can conduct a search on the company’s website in four ways: by photo or video, name and birthday, phone number, and home address.
Here is a Vice article [1] on how the repo industry leverages a private database from ALPR [2] cameras mounted on cars, businesses, etc. It tracks everyone, not just those delinquent on their payments.
Here in Norway filming or photographing in public space is in most cases perfectly legal. It's publishing it that's restricted. You walking randomly in the background of a wide street shot you have to accept, but if you're the main focus of the video it can't be published without your approval.
Unless it has some kind of "allmenn interesse", aka "general interest", where it's better for society that it's published vs your right for privacy. For instance if you're a public figure doing something bad in public and getting video taped, you can't stop that from getting out by not "approving" it.
At least here in Austria it is also legal to publish (without consent) if the people appear in a crowd (many individuals) or if the person (so even just one) acts as a prop in the image/video szene. Another exception is when the created image/szene is considered as "art". In all three cases you loose your rights on your own picture.
By civil law only. A criminal act it is not. That means unless the person takes it into their own hands to sue, nothing will happen. Still, you take on quite a legal risk if you publish footage that shows strangers, because you’ll never know when they will turn up and sue you for damages. It could happen 10 years down the line, and the amount of damages they can claim will be even higher the longer the footage has been published.
It is not criminal to _shoot/film_, however it is a criminal act to _publish_ videos/photos with people when they have not consented. There are many exceptions though (famous persons, people accidentally in the picture not being the focus, public demonstrations and other events — maybe not the best translations, just to give some ideas)
Yet how many millions of Europeans in countries with laws of this sort have appeared on Instagram, Flickr, TikTok, etc.? It may be technically the case but essentially no one worries about it--especially those who aren't going to shove a camera in someone's face.
Entities, i.e. companies, are pretty careful everywhere about publishing photos of people for marketing purposes (which any website is) without permission of some sort. Whether it's in the terms of attending an event or it's a stock photo which presumably has a release form. I doubt individuals in Germany are much less indiscriminate about sharing on Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, and elsewhere than they are most places. And German law has very little teeth if the people doing the sharing aren't German.
As explained in the topmost comment, this is a simplification but mostly true (thank god). Lines get fuzzy when you are in the background of some personal video or on surveillance camera footage.
I happen to know a few German street photographers, like Siegfried Hansen[1], for example. Now, I wonder, how do they publish their works and organize exhibitions then? Is it possible that there are some exceptions in the law?
Security cameras: You are only allowed to use them to film private land.
Dash cam: The footage can not be published with faces and/or license plates legible (anything that can be linked to a person really). You are allowed to keep the footage for private purposes unedited.
I learned that you have to request a permit from the local authorities stating purpose, duration, retention/processing... Not doing so might incur some pretty hefty fines if reported.
> It is also not forbidden to film out of my doorway, is it?
It is if you're looking at the public road out of your door. Cameras need to be angled so that they do not film public spaces. There was a case a few years back about police stations in Baden-Württemberg needing to shut down their cameras because one complaint found them to surveil too much of the sidewalk.
Very interesting. This would inhibit an enormous number of private security cameras if implemented in the US, particularly in cities without much of a setback from the building to the sidewalk.
Is there an exception for ATMs?
[edit] just to clarify, I said "certainly" because the idea of public space being unsurveilled is such a foreign concept to me these days. I do think there are valid safety use cases for private cameras on the street - cash machines being high on my list. Government cameras (or those accessible by government without a warrant) I think should require a much higher standard to be met. But for private use, for instance, my front door camera covers the area of sidewalk directly in front of my house. Where I live, I am liable for accidents that occur on that piece of sidewalk and the curb, should I not shovel my snow or someone slips on autumn leaves or if a tree limb falls on someone's car. I don't like the idea of the police accessing that camera, but I do like the idea of having a record of what takes place in a public area I'm personally liable for maintaining.
I'm not sure about ATMs, many banks in Germany have them inside a foyer you access with your cards. I assume outside ATMs a) angle cameras upwards so they film the person in front of it but will hardly capture someone that's walking by half a meter behind them, b) only film during a transaction, and aren't "surveilling" the area by being always-on.
I don't know though.
In Germany, you're also partially liable for accidents that happen due to side-walk maintenance (which is a stupid idea imho because many people just don't care, so you end up with lots of icy sidewalks in winter). But Germany is generally cheap on damages, so if someone falls in front of your house and breaks their wrist and cannot work fully, you'd pay a few thousand Euros at most. Since you'd need to actually prove damages in court, and would need to actually break your bones etc, I haven't heard of scams in that regard. Might happen occasionally, but it's not a common thing.
In some countries they don't. In Portugal for example they are not allowed and you can get fined for having one. You also cannot have a camera filming the street without specific authorization from a public entity for data protection, and you most likely will get denied unless you are a business and are filming only inside your premises, if you point your camera to the street you likely are getting denied. Ring cameras would be illegal there too.
Image rights and rights for privacy are up there just below right to life, so for example in a court case, video evidence is only accepted if it's a murder or attempted murder case. If you film me stealing your stuff it's not admissible.
Main reason being that the constitution considers your right to go about your business in any place with whoever you want to not be disclosed without your consent.
They're regulated. Not German nor a lawyer but my understanding is that security cameras should only film private property (or as much as possible) and constantly running dashcams aren't allowed. It seems you're only allowed to record when something is happening but a dashcam which deletes the records unless you save them seem to be fair game
Switzerland for example forbids private cameras from filming public areas like the street. You either have to block those areas in camera or put the camera somewhere else. Door cameras are difficult because they sometimes point towards the street.
Public cameras must adhear to strict data retention rules and signs must be posted. Additionally in cities like Zürich doing face recognition on public ground is forbidden and will most likely be nationwide soon.
Dashcams are a gray zone. What is for sure is that the footage can not be used in court unless it's a very serious case and you can not publish footage without anonymiezing it. What Tesla does with storing footage in a Dutch DC is probably illegal but so far the authorities have not done anything against it.
I think so. I'm less familiar with TikTok but livestreamers in Germany do tend to respect it and you'll find relatively few prank or "stranger filmed in subway/gym" style German content on the internet. People will also usually turn cameras off/down when going into businesses, facing windows, etc.
Culturally it definitely still works which is arguably the function of the law to begin with.
Unless laws are passed to make filming others in public, this is unlikely to ever stop. Chances are, such laws will not get passed as it will intrude on civil liberties and free expression of many. I also recommend against swatting away, as the author in the Verge concludes he/she will do, at someone's phone if they don't consent to being recorded. You run the risk of breaking someone's phone that way, giving potential rise to increased conflict or a small claims suit. Best response is to walk away or ignore.
Absolutely not. People who take advantage of social mores to force interactions for commercial purposes are not entitled to the same grace and kindness you'd extend to a normal person.
This is why it's entirely okay to just shut the door on salesmen, or just hang up on cold callers. Indeed, that is actually the BEST way, because anything you say or do besides that will be used, by a skilled salesperson, to try and pry open a longer interaction.
These people are operating in bad faith, and should be treated accordingly.
If the cost is too high for you to treat strangers like human beings for a brief moment before brutally judging them, then you can follow the ignore/walk away advice.
The cost is too high. And there’s nothing brutal about quickly stopping an unwanted, unsolicited, bad-faith interaction. Every person on the planet isn’t automatically entitled to my time.
The cost is too high to say "no thanks" instead of completely ignoring someone? And why assume they are acting in "bad faith" before you even know what they have to say? If you want to hide from the world, go for it, but don't pretend the people engaging with the world are the problem.
> but don't pretend the people engaging with the world are the problem.
They are not the problem, in my opinion, but they are also entitled to nothing that I do not choose to give of my own volition. Expecting a response, particularly a polite one, to an unsolicited interaction is on the same level of telling someone that "you'd look better if you smiled."
People are free to be in public but must also be aware of the consequences of their actions. One of those consequences may be that they are brusquely ignored.
If they want to be out in the world, go for it, but don't pretend the people engaging in their own activities are the problem.
This is a bait-and-switch; you're saying that the person intruded upon has a responsibility to conform their behavior to suit the person who intruded upon them. The poster above said nothing about wanting to hide from the world, you just made that up and ascribed it to them. You might want to review your approach to discourse.
"Engaging with the world" is an extremely euphemistic way to frame "invading others' privacy". Not all forms of "engaging with the world" are positive ones, and holding boundaries about who has your consent to interact with you is not shameful.
If someone unilaterally sticks a camera in my face and forces their company on me, I feel no obligation to passively refrain from judging those actions. They initiated the situation, so they've waived their right to be be left alone.
If the film goes viral and that person has that is being filmed has to endure doxing, swatting and other forms of online abuse, then yes the cost could be too high... Frankly the person doing the filming should be asking permission before even filming... They are not treating the other person with any respect.
Encouraging rudeness is not polite, no matter what words you use. You've made yourself feel better, and made it easier for the intrusive human being to continue to rudely intrude on others.
Ignoring them is best, responding with swear words is second best, and pretending it's a normal human interaction is far, far down the list.
Politeness is not a supreme virtue. These people have already proactively disrespected others by invading their privacy - they simultaneously sacrificed the right to be treated politely. Would you respond to a home invader with a polite request? If not, then we've established that there are situations in which politeness is not required or justified, and now we're just quibbling about which actions justify which responses.
> You've[...] made it easier for the intrusive human being to continue to rudely intrude on others
If you have made them feel uncomfortable - perhaps forced them to stop and confront the discomfort that they are selfishly causing - then this is not, in fact, true. And if this happens repeatedly, they will stop.
The correct response is "fuck off cunt" because then they're going to have to spend a bunch of time bleeping you before any advertising-friendly platform will let you become a meme for their own profit.
Then you can proceed to ignore them and/or walk away. Obviously.
And yes, I live in Manhattan and before that downtown SF, so I'd wager I've been confronted by strangers far more often than the average person.
One time I was in some sort of "soap opera" student project where I had to read some lines on tape. Another time a partner and I were confronted coming out of the Museum of Sex to be interviewed about our sex life. A video I was in at a park after Biden was announced the winner went semi-viral. One time at the corner of Polk x Post a man in a car tried to pick me up for sex work! I could go on.
Given " civil liberties and free expression of many", OP is likely speaking in a United States context, where photography in public is always allowed and only some states have 'wiretap' laws that prohibit recording conversations without the consent of all parties. Speaking in a US context and not a global context is a fairly common theme on HN~
That's a First Amendment issue in the US. What California does is to prohibit commercialization of the result without payment, which is constitutionally OK.
They're sticking objects into your personal space without consent, possibly constituting harassment or invasion of privacy/eavesdropping in some jurisdictions. I highly doubt the court costs for 99% of their sweatshop-made electronics are worth the hassle, including convincing a jury. I'm not saying you should grab their stuff and stomp it into the dirt, but a swat isn't gonna hurt these clowns.
> They're sticking objects into your personal space without consent, possibly constituting harassment or invasion of privacy/eavesdropping in some jurisdictions
You don’t watch the news much do you? This is the MO of reporters at every news agency chasing a soundbyte. Nothing illegal in the slightest.
Generally true. But if you decline to engage and they force their company upon you, their behavior becomes unwelcome, and the longer they persist in it the more aggressive their unwillingness to leave you alone becomes.
Assault, camera or no, is deserving of a self-defense response. What if was a knife or gun, not a camera? They look similar. I'm not going to wait until I'm bleeding out to find out.
They don't need to. While it's unlikely to happen to you, people have in fact been assassinated by others who they believed to be a regular camera crew:
If it’s brought by someone who makes a living by being obnoxious harassing private citizens in public, how much sympathy would that get from the judge?
> Unless laws are passed to make filming others in public, this is unlikely to ever stop.
Assuming you mean the USA, the problem is you need people to enforce those laws or succeed with lawsuits (and dodge endless appeals or ascension to the SCOTUS). We can't even begin address gun violence in this country, I highly doubt we'll get consent-to-be-filmed-in-public-laws passed.
The point is that overt interference (sticking a microphone and camera in someones face) is very different to being incidentally captured by peoples security cameras, doorbells, dashcams, bodycams - that is, equipment which exists specifically to minimise interference in ones life.
We live in the world of free video hosting, image recognition and AI. We already scrape public profiles, and can use AI to guess if the author of some text are the same person or not. And we are spending more money on this and deploying it more widely.
I don't know what your point is meant to be? Everything I just listed is surveillance technology, that's its purpose. It's surveillance technology people deploy to minimize interference by others in their own lives: ensuring interactions are recorded and cataloged is what keeps people honest and keeps the legal system out of my life because it provides a record that's very hard to dispute.
I'm at a loss as to how you can read that link and think it applies to filming people on the street. It states extremely clearly that you are only owed damaged if your likeness is used for the purpose of advertising or selling products.
"Any person who knowingly uses another’s.., photograph, or likeness, in any manner, on or in products, merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods or services, without such person’s prior consent"
I guess it hinges on what is a product, or whether these videos are for the purpose of advertising or selling.
Sounds complicated. TikTok gets the advertising revenue? (I'm not familiar with how any potential profit sharing works.) Their lawyers / state sponsors probably have the bases covered.
If you don't have my consent then at the very least blur my features. I remember wearing Google Glass in Germany and I was looked at in fear. Since, they have enacted stricter privacy laws. We should look at it them as an example much like the world looks at the US for freedom related issues. One example in Germany is that suspects of a crime are not identified and the "perp walk" may be filmed and shown on the media but it is with blurred features. Freedom and privacy must be balanced.
It's also time to take down the satellites. The planned low orbit constellations leave no space on earth for people to hide or be free. National security or not, i truly hope there is a space war that will render the orbital space a dangerous zone for any army to operate. I'm fine with communication through terrestial cables only.
This is a really interesting take that I've started thinking more about recently. On one hand, the data collected by new satellites has been groundbreaking for many industries, but on the other it feels a bit intrusive.
I've worked on mapping projects that benefitted from ~3in resolution aerial imagery. When you study images with that level of detail, it's amazing what you can learn about an area. But having that amount of data collected on a regular basis would surely raise privacy concerns among citizens and governments alike.
Is it legal to use a hypothetical device to point a low powered laser at those cameras to wash out the images? I don't think so, but I'm curious as to what laws this would break.
Big fine from the FAA for blinding airline pilots. The FAA regulates American space flight, so expect them to use the same regulations to punish you. When China blinds US surveillance satellites, it ends up on the news.
I remember a Scientific American "Amateur Scientist" article back in 1969 or 1970 that should have been titled "high school kids build death ray" (our high school had them bound by the year). It was a CO2 laser that involved blowing glass. Several watts. Infrared, which makes it rather dangerous as you might notice it from your hand burning (Danger! Do not look into laser with remaining eye!). For infrared, regular mirrors won't work. I seem to remember the article said that glass shatters immediately when placed in the beam.
To track the satellites, you need to check their orbital elements:
some explosion with a lot of debris will be enough to begin a chain reaction.
But hopefully also terrestial lasers that can zap them out. Sabotage any attempt to build constellations like starlink
> TikTok’s For You page has probably served you up a version of this kind of thing — the world first met Corn Kid
The world didn't meet 'Corn Kid', whatever that is, the Venn diagram circle that is TikTok users may have.
The intersection with the circle that is 'people who think this behaviour is bizarre and vile' is small, but those in it should take comfort in the fact that that second circle is very large, and the first probably a lot smaller, perhaps a lot more ephemeral, than they may think.
I fear public sentiment against filming will result in average people being unable to film while government and big business continue to quietly film en masse.
When I think of the near future, masses of 'average people' scare me as much or more as do government and big business. There are many more of them, for starters.
We should normalize wearing small, flashing led diodes to break camera shots, and adversarial clothing to defeat facial recognition and similar technologies.
> In the case of random TikTok creators, it’s clear the level of consent and notice runs the gamut.
I am reading this like this: When Verge is doing this, it is obviously legit and obviously not when it’s Tiktokers. Without backing this with any data.
That's a bigger issue isn't it? We have a generation of people (we can label em kids, but they are just people) that will grow up thinking it's normal to be an exhibitionist at all times. And they are the next people that will run the world.
The quirks and preferences of the next generation that are different from my quirks and preferences are just different, not necessarily better or worse.
People have been complaining about the terrible thing the new generation does since there has been people. It's a bug / feature of our relatively short lifespan - on one hand our souls calcify a bit as we age and we start to see new as scary at the same time we are getting more powerful in society. On the other hand the reaction to the calcification of the soul that the newer generation has helps to push things into new and different directions, but at a time when those people are not very powerful in society.
It's an interesting balance, and its fun to think about how culture and society would change if that balance was tipped one way or the other.
I see people filming themselves at the gym a lot for tiktok videos I assume. Both men and women alike. I've seen them set up tripods or have camera assistants who circle around them filming. It makes me extremely uncomfortable being in the background of a sexualized gym video. Let's not kid ourselves, that's what a lot of these videos are, give me a break. They aren't just filming their abs or biceps or squat video from behind just purely for fitness' sake and they are well aware that their followers are not just really into fitness.
I wouldn't really care if they did it by themselves. For one thing I just don't want to be identified in the background of what is essentially softcore erotica and for another I don't want to be identifiable by Chinese AI or have some sort of weird profile set up that matches my features on their end (or anywhere).
These are real actual harms in my opinion and not just gripes about the next generation.
It’s annoying that this is something you even have to worry about. Gyms are kind of a sacred/vulnerable space, in that they are somewhere you go to better yourself … so someone filming in them and capturing people feels especially perverse.
Not unlike filming in a church, and capturing in the background normal people going in for confession.
If you haven’t said something to the management, you should. I can’t imagine they’d be thrilled: they should be scared of people wielding cameras within their walls for many reasons.
I hate this. I'm sitting on a bench in the gym and some girl is taking snapshots of her ass for Instagram or something and I'm in the background. Who knows what is going to be said about me on her page. It's the gym I just want to work out I don't want to be on guard about getting filmed.
That sounds really frustrating. What I’ve found is that kind of behavior really depends on what gym you go to — in my experience, a gym is kinda like a bar in that you have to like the mood or else it’s time to move on, and sometimes the mood can shift from under you. It sucks to be dislodged from your routine, but it’s a thing you can recognize and adapt to.
I see this as well, but in my gym it doesn’t seem to be sexual in any way, so I think it depends on the gym and the type of patrons that attend it. Or maybe I’m just naive and didn’t think of it in that way. I will admit it makes me a bit irritated because I never know if I’m accidentally gonna end up in someone’s shot.
I stopped going to the gym for exercise after I realised it was just making me more depressed. Why? Because the gym would be filled with scantily clad, disgustingly beautiful, sweaty women and men, and I suddenly feel like I'm watching a mainstream porno being fed unrealistic body ideals and that turns to more self loathing. So I started restricting all my exercise to nature trails, preferly with lots of incline and decline in alternation for an interval effect, and preferably an uneven path filled with roots, to get sort of a parkour thing going. Nature is so peaceful and soothing in contrast to suburbia, and it's fantastic exercise.
I drop by the store for a protein bar before heading home and suddenly I'm the alpha in the room, dousing these poor shoppers in my manly musk and showing off how active I am, flirting a little with the cashier maybe, brain swimming in adrenaline. And then it's actually building confidence moment by moment instead of tearing it down.
Food for thought for anyone like me who loathes the gym and still is looking for good exercise.
There's flirting and then there's flirting. There's a smile and some harmless smalltalk/jokes in an interaction that lasts under a minute, then there's making compliments out of left field, suggestive jokes and innuendo.
One is completely within the realm of normal everyday interactions, and the other can come off as creepy in those situations.
Everyday interactions can feel flirty if you're high from adrenaline and the person happens to be attract(ive|ed) to you. The key is not to try, just be yourself, and interpret it as real flirting that could lead anywhere; they have a lot of these interactions on a daily basis so they usually forget them within a few days.
But the fact that's these interactions are so ephemeral doesn't mean you can't derive a little confidence from it. Small moments like this can make a substantial difference over time, just like even short regular walks with little to no incline have been proven to make a substantial difference to health, even if it won't turn you into an athlete.
A dude doing deadlifts is cool. A woman it’s pretty much always sexual. That’s why they get so many viewers. It’s pervos on YouTube or TikTok wanting to see their spandex clad fannies doing squats. There’s no other reason for lululemon than flagrant sexual exhibitionism. It’s easier to work out with loose fitting clothes.
Women I’ve known and talked to have told me that baggy sweats and flannel pajamas bottoms are “comfy.”
Nobody comes home after a hard day and puts on lululemon to go to bed, or sit on the couch and watch movies. Baggy sweats are the opposite of lululemon; cheap, loose fitting, comfortable.
Women want to look good. There’s nothing wrong with that. Men do too. It’s ok to admit it.
I’ve seen women who could deadlift impressive amounts of weight (more than I was able to when I first started), and it definitely wasn’t sexual. But they had professional trainers that were actually giving them correct advice on how to properly lift without hurting themselves. As I mentioned in my original comment, it really depends on the gym and the type of patrons it attracts. In my experience, an LA Fitness (or something like it) might attract that hookup/tiktok/softporn crowd, but a private gym with a dedicated purpose wouldn’t tolerate that kind of thing.
You're worried about fake profiles being setup in your name or being in the background of someone else's videos? That's last generarion's concerns. Facebook was opened to the world in 2006. You gotta keep up. Today's fears are deepfake videos from "you".
ya, the kids are into being tracked with facial recognition AI by various intelligence agencies and giant, amoral corporations these days so that psychological "profiles" can be set up about them. Also being in the background of videos that countless simps view who obsessively analyze every detail of to defend m'lady's honor and sometimes the video ends up on third party porn sites is really cool these days.
I'll film my wife sometimes so that she can spot check her form. She's a better/more trained lifter than me, so I can't exactly offer corrections myself.
And I know at the more serious/smaller gym that we train at, since covid, quite a lot of people do remote training with a coach. This seems to be especially common among the powerlifting and olympic lifting sports. Remote coaching means the coach designs programs, and if you want to pay for more than the programming, you buy a tripod, and send the coach videos so that they can critique and correct your form.
That being said, I'm sure it's probably obvious when someone is doing what I'm describing, versus what you are seeing.
Yeah, honestly, even as an old, I think the kids are generally amazing. I am very optimistic. I have my grumbles, but the amount of old bullshit they are rejecting outright is heartening. Better new mistakes than old ones.
It's not as generational as you think (and I realize this makes my previous post hypocritical, but whatever). I can tell you many Gen Z and Millenials notice something is a little off with the trends even amongst ourselves. We're turning weird, and not in a healthy way. Maybe others closer to these trends can chime in.
This is a rabbit hole if we go back and forth. Yes, there was always a get-off-my-lawn element in previous generations. But I am trying to hone in on certain critiques that are valid for certain generations. I'll give in you an example:
It was (whether the generation was self aware or not) mostly acceptably for people in America in the 1950s to be mildly racist towards black people (it's just, how they grew up, it was the status quo). That's not a get-off-my-lawn observation of that demographic. This was not a simple generational "quirk", it was a notable flaw.
Socially, I think somethings a little up with whatever is going on now days. But that's just me and history will sort this. Things are very hard to sort out as it's actually happening.
Reported hate crimes passed onto and recorded by the FBI.
These details matter in Understanding Data 101 .. consult your history for lynchings made public on newspaper front pages and sold as postcards yet not reported as hate crimes.
2) It is factually correct that an increase in reporting of hate crime doesn't logically correlate with an increase (or decrease) in actual hate crime numbers.
In recent decades in the US it is a sign that hate crime is being taken more seriously and being reported more often by local LEO's to the central FBI stats page.
As you yourself acknowledge the US has known past issues with the reporting of hate crime and there's good reason to suspect that a high proportion of past sch crimes have gone unreported, to either local LEO's or to federal tally sheets.
Note that from a crime stats PoV the US FBI database is barely adequate compared to crime logging in other G20 countries, it's riddled with issues and the FBI meta commentary acknowledges the shortcomings.
Another way of looking at it is that there have always been profit or power seeking activities that cause massive harm to entire generations, until the culture finally learns how to rise up and counteract it.
Usually the pattern is that something genuinely new comes along that we don't have a plan for, millions of people are terribly harmed, and then we sort of figure it out.
Industrialization brought great progress, but it blackened lungs and enslaved children until the progressive labor movement restored some balance. Mechanized warfare and the desire to dominate Europe laid waste to two entire generations, globally, before modern international cooperation brought it somewhat to heel. We poured toxic waste into all the rivers, we applied different laws to people who had different colored skin, we incinerated people who were unlucky enough to be born above oil deposits, all to make a few bucks.
And we've let tech media companies relentlessly commercialize and sexualize us, drive us to anger in search of "engagement" and disassociate us from each other and from our work and things that give us meaning, for at least two generations.
Hopefully we'll figure out how to move past this era too.
It's not a "kids are alright" kind of moment, it's just one of generations of examples of greed leading to people getting harmed.
The group we are talking about, mostly kids, is beeing targeted by the industriy to consume. They are targeted by ads and even whole campagnes where a lifestyle is sold.
So with that in mind maybe the kids where never allright and we have to be suspect of some trends today.
Personaly as someone who grew up in the dawn of social media, I am very against this trend of making everything to content.
It cant be good for the brain to be focused that hard on what other people are thinking
It is funny that I kinda see it exactly the other way.. we live in a world that is much less about the local community so these people are both /choosing/ to care what other people think and /choosing/ what they present to those other people.
Most normie kids don't make any content.. they just don't.. you can still live a super-normal life and that is what most people do.
I guess if the next generation decides to all become homicidal maniacs and kill every previous generation then that's not better or worse?
I know that is extreme but I hate the attitude that the quirks and preferences are neither better nor worse. Some quirks could be worse if it becomes society-disrupting.
Did the next generation decide that? Has there ever been an example of such a thing?
Somehow, when you look at those "younguns are bad" rants from 50 or 100 years ago, pretty much every time it's over some issue that can only elicit laughter today. Especially when it comes to predictions.
Correct. The current thing is just a thing after all. Let's try to stop judging people who don't hold the same values we do, just let them do them. (Obviously if they are killing people, such other people might be mildly inconvenienced, not sure what to do about that. One problem at a time?)
Dude, I could care less about the newer generations quirks. I'm concerned about aggregate behavior altering sensibilities in society. This stuff is happening at scale and globally. It's not "oh western people do this", it's everyone and it's not even limited to the youth age group. It has permeated into the adult lives of millinials/gen x. They do the same shit, so the age range is literally from 7 years old (when do these little shitheads get phones now days?) all the way to fucking 50+.
Like I said man, it's a rabbit hole. The need for attention, coupled with virtualized existences on display for status/adulation at a constant rate, all lead to implications of vanity issues at best, and at worse, pathological personality disorders (narcissism). And they are starting young, and there is very limited feedback from their peer group that it's not the best thing to be going down that slope.
But who am I to label a vast swath of the 2023 global population pathologically fucked going forward. How far would I get explaining to people in the 1950s that they might be immoral racists?
I hope I'm wrong, but from what I'm seeing, things ain't slowing down.
I can see where you're coming from. Try coming from the opposite perspective, from the viewpoint of the countless millions who have had to hide themselves away from the world because society was so needlessly rigid, and too much deviation from the norm got them beat up or fired or otherwise ostracized. And then we get the fallout from that ostracization: anti-social behavior, drug abuse, suicide.
I'd rather live in a world where people can be complete fucking weirdos without any consequence, except when their weirdness directly harms other people.
I would never argue for curtailing self expression. A drug analogy might actually work here. I would say, it's fine, smoke the weed. But be careful little ones, because lately I've been seeing you smoking weed and alcohol together and the latter will take a hold of you. I hope that makes sense, and it's the best middle ground I can find in this exchange.
It's not even a generational thing. Boomers have some of the worst etiquette.
When I grew up it was rude to call people at dinner time. If you called someone while they were eating it was either ignored, sent to answering machine, or it was answered with a curt "we're eating" before hanging up. This was the 1990s.
When I got my first cellphone, I made a point of excusing myself and leaving a room if it rang because that's how I was raised.
These days boomers seem to have forgotten this etiquette they impressed upon Gen X and Millennials. They answer their phones on speakerphone whenever without excusing themselves and and are completely unapologetic.
People in general today have no concern for walking around in public while having a phone call and get offended if you mistake their conversation and acknowledge them. As rude as it might seem to keep Airpods in all of the time, they have at least saved us from having to listen to other people carrying on and give a visual queue to ignore someone speaking around you.
> I'm just not optimistic about the future at all.
Couldn't you have made this comment in any generation though? I could imagine someone making it while listening to a news story about Woodstock on the radio.
Yeah but not everybody at Woodstock was recording everything that they and everyone around them did.
Almost every single citizen is now equipped with a surveillance device at all hours of their life, and they have incentive to use them and share the data they collect. This is little to no recourse for you if you don't want to be recorded. At least in the 60s it was a handful of news casters with huge equipment you could steer clear of.
The difference with radio is that the content you were creating generally had to be good. Bad content would get bad ratings, few listeners, and would fizzle out. It didn’t last. Radio is a hard business. Good content was hard to monetize, bad content was impossible to monetize.
The magic it Facebook, TikTok, et. al is that they figured out how to generate revenue from content that is just fractionally better than nothing at all. The algorithms can monetize content with a value that is just fractions of a cent less than zero and they do all this without having to pay real money for most of it.
An entire generation now aspires to make a living creating what is effectively content spam. Filler. Junk for the algorithm to promote. And what’s incredible is that they aren’t wrong. You can make a living doing this. The payouts and sponsorships are insane.
It won’t last forever though. Eventually we’ll just have AI created content. You’ll have an infinite stream of “Sick car, what do you do for a living” videos at no cost.
The TikTok of tomorrow is one where you just type in a few words about your interests and it generates an infinite stream of fake videos.
It's not so much good vs bad as long-tail vs median.
A lot of content that wouldn't have flown in the mainstream during the traditional radio era because it didn't capture the median demographic that the players were competing for can fly online because it captures the long tail and satisfies enough the interests or desires of a single content creator or small team to justify their efforts (where a studio organization can't survive without the kind of advertising revenue you get by being median popular).
A combination of lower costs and wider reach (allowing you to find more of the long tail) changes the mathematics on what is worth someone's time to publish.
And that's without getting off in the US-specific weeds regarding the fact that there was content that categorically could not be on the radio because the otherwise
-assumed First Amendment right to freedom of speech / the press was curtailed in the United States by the FCC acting as arbiter on parceling up a finite national resource (whereas the internet is not considered such a resource and therefore there's no central US governing authority telling you what you can and cannot put online in the same way).
Jesus, a kid walked up to him and then apologized after seeing annoyed face. There is no bigger issue. I personally know kids who tried something similar playing at journalists almost 30 years ago. This literally sounds like a normal healthy development where a kid tries a thing he/she seen on TV, recognizes negative social feedback and backs off.
It's a good thing that so many young people feel free to be themselves, in public and on the record, instead of constantly stifling themselves and hiding away. Just think about how much previous generations had to hide and play-act and deny who they were. It led to nothing but pain and suffering and death.
Every generation has had their asshole exhibitionists. Technology has just been pushing said assholes towards making TikTube content lately.
Boomers did the radio shock-jockey routine, X did deeply weird television and lately podcasts, Y did 1st gen/text+photo social media, and Z is doing 2nd gen/video+photo social media.
This isn't Gen Y/Z being somehow inferior, "we" (the readers of this community) did this.
How different was 1970 to 1995? Socially people were under the same framework. There's a huge difference between 2005 at 2020 for example. I don't think we can chalk this up to get-off-my-lawn syndrome that simply.
The music, games and movies are very much similar from times of old (you might like it, you might not, you might just be getting old, that's the part that never changes or causes alarm). It's social behavior that's peculiar - in a bad way.
"content creator" - ha! Pretty sad that you chewing food is considered "content."
I like the awkward silence non-response. I might have ended up grabbing a handful of gadgets and smashing them on the ground. You have much more patience than I.
And seems guaranteed to turn into really successful content. Staring is the right approach; starve the trolls, make them acutely aware of your humanity and the violation of your dignity, and let them come to their own conclusions about their behavior.
Content isn't zero sum. Just because you make good content for someone else it doesn't mean that it deprives you from making good content yourself. Why not take that chance to make good content so that there is more good content in the world instead of making something boring?
I don't follow. I was talking about responding to rude people sticking cameras in your face. I don't disagree with engaging content on principle but I do take issue with trolls.
Weird, but even weirder is the absolute lack of reality based thinking of the person doing the filming. I'd be scared out of my mind to point my camera at anyone, because in the real world someone might just flip their shit and punch you in the face. That happens in the real world.
> I might have ended up grabbing a handful of gadgets and smashing them on the ground
I call bs in your internet confidence/advise you not to do that. And not because it would be illegal, but because you don't know what the person on the other side is like. They might snap and give you life changing injuries.
If someone is in your face with a camera and pushing the limits of personal boundaries, I think it's safe to assume that just about anything could happen. The subject might snap, the "content creator" might snap, a whole host of things could go down. I get your point, but this interaction would have definitely ended up with not just "internet confidence" - I can imagine that, given any sort of directions this plays out, a few scenarios would have not ended so pretty for either party.
There's a big difference between being filmed more generally - security cameras, being in the background of some shot, a festival recording - than being the subject of the recording, mainly being harassed by people making stupid TikTok videos.
The article is primarily about the latter. So this is like telling people to stay home if they don't want TikTokers harassing them in public.
How about just stop bothering people you don't know for 'content'?
Asking someone in public a question isn't harassment. Doing the same with a video camera is also not harassment. If they make the polite request to stop and you don't, it would start to be harassment.
The ones filming aren't courteously approaching people to ask a question; they are provoking a reaction.
This trend isn't new. I've seen people swarmed by TikTokers on the street once or twice, then asked questions to make them look stupid and laughed at. I too was mobbed by a hardbass crowd when that was a meme on social media about ten years ago. I was on a second or third date with someone at a restaurant, and it wholly ruined the mood when my date and I were made fools on some video that luckily never went viral.
It's not strictly dangerous or harmful, but it's definitely not a social interaction most people want. When you are the subject, it feels like you've been taken advantage of against your will, and publicly humiliated. And if the video goes viral, that's exactly what you will be.
> The ones filming aren't courteously approaching people to ask a question; they are provoking a reaction
And you're making this claims about all videos in this format or what? The "Man on the street" format isn't anything new. I don't think you have any evidence to state this as an absolute.
I'm sorry you had a bad experience with a video camera in public but you can be publicly humiliated and harassed without a camera too.
My disagreement is that there is no law requiring consent to film in public and there shouldn't be. We should clearly define what kind of behavior is considered harassment and create more avenues to reduce it but that is irrespective of recording. Something that was harassment without recording is still harassment with recording and vice-versa.
It feels like you're trying to strawman this. I will reiterate just in case your questioning is sincere - I was talking about the typical TikTok trend videos where a person in the street is ambushed for content. Not all "TikTok format" videos.
I carry around a very bright flashlight, which should be enough to dazzle cameras even in the day for several seconds. Never encountered those before though.
Did you see the video in the article? Pushing a microphone like that in someone's face strikes me as an unreasonable invasion of personal space. It's not "asking a question" like you or I would: "excuse me, [...]?", "sorry, could I ask you if [...]?", or something along those lines. It's an aggressive invasion of personal space.
Is it "harassment"? I don't know, I'd say probably not quite. It's certainly is rude and annoying beyond what I would consider reasonable.
This isn't the same as "if you don't like the movie, don't watch it". It's more like "if you don't like traffic cops, don't be on roads".
Yes, it is technically achievable by some measure, but nobody living anything resembling a reasonable life is going to avoid ever going in public.
It's also fine for people to want different things to be acceptable or not in different circumstances; I am fine with adults wearing swimsuits at the beach, but would be uncomfortable if they went to my child's kindergarten class in them.
Figuring out the trade-offs and coming up with compromises is the whole value proposition of society.
As I get it, there are two ways to look at the problem:
1. One is if we say that a person has a right to remain private and retains right to their image under any or some circumstances.
2. Another is if we say that a person has a right to observe and record their observations freely, always or under some circumstances.
Both are highly subjective, especially when it comes to particular conditions - that's for sure. Both could be true (or not, some may argue), and in practice they're kind of balanced - but with different places valuing one thing over another, creating a different balance.
Whatever an individual may like or dislike doesn't actually matter, except for being a data point - those in power (be it a power of democracy or authoritarianism) define the rules. If someone doesn't like the rules of the place they live in - well, there's no definite answer to that. Sometimes the ridiculous "live somewhere else" is the only practical answer (no jokes or sacrasm intended).
It is completely valid. It is also completely infeasible.
Consider the statement "if you don't like being bullied, completely isolate yourself from all humans forever." This is a valid way to avoid being bullied. It is also, however, not at all practical.
It is also completely valid and reasonable, and much more tenable in reality, to propose alternative solutions (e.g. punitive action against bullies, teaching good coping mechanisms to victims, making people not want to bully, etc.)
Similarly, one valid approach to Celiac is to not eat any food at all ever. An equally valid approach is to not eat gluten. The latter requires some more social buy-in (e.g. ingredient lists), but that effort makes it wildly more achievable in practice.
Being valid doesn't mean that something is the best, or even a good, recommendation.
> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." -- Eric Schmidt
"History"
"An early instance of this argument was referenced by Henry James in his 1888 novel, The Reverberator:
If these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn’t pity them, and if they hadn’t done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing.
"Upton Sinclair also referenced a similar argument in his book The Profits of Religion, published in 1917 :
Not merely was my own mail opened, but the mail of all my relatives and friends — people residing in places as far apart as California and Florida. I recall the bland smile of a government official to whom I complained about this matter: "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear." My answer was that a study of many labor cases had taught me the methods of the agent provocateur. He is quite willing to take real evidence if he can find it; but if not, he has familiarized himself with the affairs of his victim, and can make evidence which will be convincing when exploited by the yellow press.
"The motto
`If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear'
has been used in defense of the closed-circuit television program practiced in the United Kingdom."
"This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead — all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism."
That is only really applicable in few places such as the US. France, Germany and Japan (to name a few) extends the right of privacy even when outside of residence.
Already beyond editing time, but I also have to point out that even if there's no privacy component, there are "personality rights" which restricts showing their likeness without consent (which is also widespread except in few places such as the US).
Do you have a source for that? For example, can I take upskirt shots because they're in public? Public restrooms also have an expection of privacy, even though they are public. There are many different laws that are privacy related that deal with public spaces.
> When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police. Such photography is a form of public oversight over the government and is important in a free society[1].
However, this does not apply to areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. Public restrooms and (I'd assume) skirts included [2].
I’ve shot street photography and photojournalistic/documentary work for over a decade now and this seems to be the recurring discussion: “It’s legal to just take pictures of people in public?” And yes, it is. It’s literally how photojournalism works and why child labor (Lewis Hine), civil rights (Gordon Parks), war abuses (Don McCullin), and so much more made it to the forefront of National discussions. Not saying TikTok content is that quality but the laws protecting public recording are an essential component of freedom of expression. Once you start choosing which content gets to be recorded due to some subjective quality rating you fall into censorship.
Why would we just assume that a skirt would be included if the wearer is in a public space and it blows up or somwthing? These sorts or unexplained inclusions/exceptions are could very well be applied to "I assume sticking a mic/camera in someone's face is an invasion of privacy".
Apparently it also doesn't apply to court rooms. Nor does it apply to nudity or partial nudity even if publicly photographed.
Of course there is. Privacy isn't a binary condition. It is more invasive to be seen than not seen, it is more invasive to be closely watched than to merely be seen incidentally, it is more invasive to be recorded than watched, it is more invasive for a recording to be published than held privately.
Somewhere, not all that far along the range, these cross a threshold into harassment, stalking, or other things that people generally recognise as unacceptable. In "public places" the threshold is slightly further along the range but not very much.
The discussion about being filmed is really secondary in this discussion. This discussion is primarily about the widespread distribution of those films.
This guy was downvoted into oblivion for summarizing current case law in the US. I haven't been here in probably a year, and that's a little concerning to me.
The poster did not claim to be summarizing current case law. One can, and many people likely have, just as easily interpret the statement as their opinion. Just because a statement happens to currently align with current case law, doesn't mean it's a summary of current case law.
It's hardly as absolute as you make it sound. For example, I wonder how they come down on upskirt shots?
It'd be nice if that link had information related to the current discussion of Tik Tok videos. It's mostly about filming police with very little about the art side, especially the type of "art" these Tik Tok videos can include.
Can you cite legal examples of exceptions? I know the police tried real hard to ban people filming them and failed. As annoying as these people are, public photography as a freedom of the press right a large net positive IMO.
I did in the prior comment - upskirt photos. You can also see how recording in court rooms is prohibited. Or how recording nudity or partial nudity is prohibited. These are in statute and code (at least in PA, but other states are similar).
Also, your police recording example isn't absolute either. I believe circuits are split on that. Even the ones that protect recording have set limits, like being at least 8 feet ways, or not interfering.
Public recording may be a net positive, but it's also subject to restrictions (at least as the laws stand now).
If it were an absolute right, you wouldn't need to maintain 8 feet of distance, the police would need to maintain 8 feet. Don't forget, even if you are in a courtroom and aren't interfering, you can't record there either. So there are limits, it's not absolute.
> For example, I wonder how they come down on upskirt shots?
“Upskirt shots”, as the term is generally used, are very much not targeting subject matter in plain view in public spaces, as the linked article describes.
But what you probably want to look into, and which the ACLU piece does not address (since it is mainly addressing public art and government officials) is the “right of publicity” (which, however, only a slight majority of US states recognize and protect, with somewhat different parameters in each.)
Most states have laws that prevent specific plain view recording. That includes if the wind blew up a skirt, if you were sitting on the floor and could see, etc. They also prevent taking nude or partial nude photos in public as well.
But how does the right of publicity apply to these videos? Because they fall in the entertainment or reporting category, it doesn't really apply here. Same with paparazzi taking pictures of celebrities.
Yes, otherwise mothers could be arrested for taking a picture of their kids and publishing it on Facebook because some guy was walking in the background.
I don't know about Japan but in Germany that assumption is not incorrect.
Rape IS illegal in Germany. And filming in public IS legal. What you cannot do is to publish what you recorded without getting permission from those you recorded.
The comment you linked is talking about how much they value finding community through TikTok, not how much they value ubiquitous surveillance. Transporting that comment to a different context to misconstrue it & then sneer at that person behind their back is terrible faith. Please don't do that on HN or anywhere.
> The comment you linked is talking about how much they value finding community through TikTok, not how much they value ubiquitous surveillance.
Nonsense. So the surveillance on TikTok is somehow 'abstract' and 'fear-mongering' as the comment said? [0][1] I'm assuming you have read the entire comment and it turns out that the concerns of the parent comment has become true.
Also with the entire point being that it has turned into the opposite of what the linked comment is describing, just like the initial utopian promises and expectations of social media a decade ago.
It is naive for anyone to expect any better or different after the spyware reports on individuals in the US [0] and access to US data from overseas [1] after TikTok lied and continue denying it, making it more worse than Facebook. For his comment to be put in contrast against reality and calling it 'abstract' and 'fear-mongering' is not only laughable, it has aged absolutely terribly.
I would say that people are being introduced to patterns of behavior at very early ages where it is near impossible for the parent or local community to correct because it's happening at such a scale where it's hard to mitigate. That's the ugly truth about "normal", normal is never objective. Normal is always a function of how many people are doing it. If most of the world is dysfunctional, it will never be assessed as a dysfunction. It will be seen as normal.
These are mostly teenagers and young adults doing these things in a let’s say not so appropriate manner.
One thing I have to say about (generalization) that group is that they don’t have much emotional intelligence - it does not have anything to do with technology. They are young and still learning life.
Don’t post articles like this. You’re feeding the beast. Hear me out:
This shit doesn’t matter. We’re all very unlikely to be interviewed on the street like this by some influencer. Even if we are, tough shit, we’re in public, people are allowed to approach us and even film us. It happens. Be polite and decline and that’s it, story’s over. Nobody cares.
But no, the story is isn’t over! The Verge wrote a big long article about this stupid thing you and I have never heard of, and now here it is on HN.
Manufactured controversy: annoyingly, it’s controversy that feeds into the negative feelings that media and social media tend to propagate.
By reading and sharing this article, the original influencers get more publicity and follows, so they’re more likely to do this stuff more.
It's not mentioned in the article, but an Apple exec recently lost his job over this quote:
> “I race cars, play golf and fondle big-breasted women. But I take weekends and major holidays off,” Blevins replied. “Also, if you’re interested, I’ve got a hell of a dental plan.”
Which, although being a very dated Dudley Moore reference, was said while the man was in good spirits on his day off.
You could argue he's paid to know better as an Apple executive, and you'd be right, and Apple was within their rights to fire him, but it's still an unfortunate circumstance of the times.
There's a definite power imbalance when someone with a camera and a plan uses unsuspecting pedestrians as content.
I’m not sure how you can watch that video and think it was an example of a power imbalance.
The dude wasn’t under any pretense of not being filmed. He was being directly interviewed not just being overheard or surveilled casually cracking jokes with friends.
The cherry on top is that he was likely filmed by his company’s own product, no less.
Dude can’t feign ignorance, he’s just another rich asshole who thought he could get away with anything. People like that aren’t used to being told no or having their words result in consequences.
There is some major irony in calling the act of a wealthy person being held accountable for the things he says as a power imbalance, especially because the only reason the dude was interviewed was because he was conspicuously displaying his wealth on purpose to get attention.
Come on, the guy was wearing a turquoise suit driving an SLR McClaren ($750,000+ car)
Some of us don't think it is healthy for people to be consuming that media either. Doesn't matter if you're personally going to be in the video its the consumption that bothers me. People hanging out on r/PublicFreakout getting very angry at other people probably does a lot more harm than good to society.
It's a form of voyeurism (exhibitionism and voyeurism are porn categories, they are fetishes). I do catch a few of those /r/PublicFreakouts, and they are often intense breakdowns of flawed people. Most of them are of the entitled/racist bunch. We know who the antagonists are immediately in those videos, but the principle of filming a breakdown always felt dirty to me.
At least in the realm of sexuality, a fetish is acknowledged as a fetish (and fetishes are usually very private and should always require consent by all parties). I wonder how open people would be to the reality that they are indulging in a fetish by watching voyeuristic videos on /r/PublicFreakouts (sexual or not, and certainly without consent), or exhibitionism by constantly making videos of themselves.
Usually it is a bunch of entitled/racist/etc people watching a public breakdown of an entitled/racist/etc person. Watch enough of them and you might get angry enough to wind up in one of them.
Sure, it’s legal to film people in public in the US without their consent. But it’s also shitty. Those two things can both be true.
Maybe we might all be better off practicing DBAD: Don’t Be A Dick.