[HN Gopher] What if I don't want videos of my hobby time availab...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       What if I don't want videos of my hobby time available to the
       world?
        
       Author : speckx
       Score  : 605 points
       Date   : 2025-09-29 11:28 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (neilzone.co.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (neilzone.co.uk)
        
       | maxehmookau wrote:
       | I agree and it bugs me too.
       | 
       | Sometimes I just want to enjoy a thing with other people enjoying
       | a thing without any expectation that it might end up as "content"
       | to be monetized by the algorithm.
       | 
       | I don't look forward to mass adoption of things like Meta
       | glasses, where even the mundane examples of _going outside_ are
       | all content opportunities waiting to happen.
        
         | BolexNOLA wrote:
         | >I don't look forward to mass adoption of things like Meta
         | glasses, where even the mundane examples of _going outside_ are
         | all content opportunities waiting to happen.
         | 
         | My first experience akin to this happened when I was at the
         | grocery store during Covid. This guy stood near the checkout
         | lines and just did a big arc with his phone filming all of us
         | and mocking masks. Like the author of the blog sometimes I'm
         | just like "it's not worth it" but I had one of my kids with me
         | and when I asked the guy to stop, he started ranting at me
         | about how he uses an app that blurs faces, it's a free country,
         | etc. I just moved on but it's like... dude, we're all just
         | trying to get through the day out here and I'm with my kid at
         | the grocery store. Do I really need to be putting up with this
         | crap?
         | 
         | I imagine if people actually start wearing any of these smart
         | glasses in any appreciable number these experiences will be
         | sadly pretty typical.
        
           | maxehmookau wrote:
           | Yeah, because he's right, it is a free country. He shouldn't
           | be arrested, or thrown in prison for it.
           | 
           | But I'm also free to apply societal pressure to behave like a
           | grown-up.
        
             | mapontosevenths wrote:
             | > societal pressure to behave like a grown-up.
             | 
             | I think this is the key.
             | 
             | It might be legal, but it's not polite. It's a bit like
             | blasting crappy music from your phone on the bus without
             | headphones. Grown ups should know better.
        
               | maxehmookau wrote:
               | > It might be legal, but it's not polite.
               | 
               | Too many folks forget this.
               | 
               | Do what you want, but I'll tell you if I don't like it.
               | Others might too.
               | 
               | They're not infringing on your rights, but it might make
               | you a little uncomfortable.
        
               | BolexNOLA wrote:
               | People like the guy I encountered are basically allergic
               | to discomfort of any kind. Even the slightest
               | inconvenience in their lives is seen as an incredibly
               | personal and intolerable affront to their liberty, and
               | they want to make damn sure we all know about it at every
               | possible opportunity! Hence the behavior.
               | 
               | If I were to compare it to a client relationship, it's
               | the kind of person who throws the contract in a
               | partner's/client's/vendor's face anytime there is a minor
               | disagreement or discussion about details. Reasonable
               | people know you only start pointing to the contract when
               | things escalate to a certain point as it locks everybody
               | into a defensive posture and now everybody is going to be
               | rigid moving forward.
        
               | maxehmookau wrote:
               | > Reasonable people know you only start pointing to the
               | contract when things escalate to a certain point as it
               | locks everybody into a defensive posture and now
               | everybody is going to be rigid moving forward.
               | 
               | First, and arguably most important, thing in learned in
               | tech & business. Once the contracts come out, it's game
               | over.
        
               | BolexNOLA wrote:
               | I know when I freelanced if somebody started frivolously
               | pointing to the contract I immediately determined I
               | wasn't working with them anymore afterwards. Luckily I
               | can only recall like two times that happened
        
       | octo888 wrote:
       | We Brits don't speak up enough in general. An e.g. German would
       | have no qualms about going up to the person filming and making
       | their concerns known. That's exactly why it's become normalised
       | 
       | Also many people just flip out even about the most reasonable of
       | requests.
        
         | daveoc64 wrote:
         | >We Brits don't speak up enough in general.
         | 
         | They would be wrong to, given that it's legal to take
         | photographs or videos in a public place.
         | 
         | There is no expectation of privacy in a public place in the UK.
        
           | octo888 wrote:
           | The law is not a moral compass
        
           | cr3ative wrote:
           | Airsoft fields are generally private property.
        
           | Peritract wrote:
           | How do you rationalise being pro-photography in public but
           | anti free speech?
        
         | 1gn15 wrote:
         | If someone went up to me and "made their concerns known", I
         | think I'd likely just walk away. It's the best way to defuse
         | the situation.
        
           | octo888 wrote:
           | So point blank refusal to listen to someone's concerns? Very
           | on brand for the society we live in today. As long as
           | something is legal, it's fine right.
           | 
           | Also not sure why you assumed there was any situation to be
           | "defused". Weird. I guess you may be the type I referred to
           | in my last paragraph
        
             | stronglikedan wrote:
             | > So point blank refusal to listen to someone's concerns?
             | 
             | If you know you're just going to remain in disagreement,
             | then hell yes. It's not worth the conflict. Now, if they
             | could point to a law I was breaking, then maybe I'd
             | entertain them for a minute, but this is not that.
        
       | 31337Logic wrote:
       | A very valid and timely concern, in my opinion!
        
       | tiahura wrote:
       | He acknowledges the issue in the article, but doesn't seem to
       | grasp it fully.
       | 
       | Public means not private. What you do in public is not private.
       | In presumptive free societies, when in public, one is allowed to
       | notice what others are doing in public. Secret is the opposite of
       | public.
       | 
       | The paranoia around being seen feels a lot like the other
       | reptile-brain based phobias like fear of poisoning with vaccines.
        
         | tietjens wrote:
         | I think this argument is logically flawed. When you say public
         | means not private you are glossing over the fact that public
         | never before meant "available via digital media to the world."
         | Instead it mean a public which had a localized context. Doesn't
         | mean you are wrong, but you're paving over this obvious fact.
        
           | haskellshill wrote:
           | But what practical difference does it have that it's
           | "available via digital media to the world."? Are you just
           | opposed to people not in your physical location seeing you?
           | Why?
        
             | sandblast wrote:
             | I think it's similar to the difference between "the cop
             | watching me when I'm near them and are aware of it" and
             | "the cop watching me all the time, wherever I go and I
             | can't know anything about this" (which would be impossible
             | before cameras).
        
             | tietjens wrote:
             | I feel that there is a difference between being in the
             | public sphere of the community one exists in, and being in
             | a public sphere that is global and free of any context.
             | Lots of questions pop up when I try to follow that line of
             | thought.
        
               | haskellshill wrote:
               | Questions such as?
        
             | nemomarx wrote:
             | There's a clear difference in scale between "people who
             | also go to a private airsoft meetup with me will see me"
             | and "the entire global population can see me", right?
        
               | haskellshill wrote:
               | Okay, and? There's a difference between one person seeing
               | me in public and two, but no meaningful difference
        
               | detaro wrote:
               | Depends who the second person is. And of course we are in
               | an age where companies pride themselves into hovering up
               | as much "public" data as they can find, analyze it and
               | sell it to whoever wants it, so "find every photo or
               | video this face is in" could lead to quite a detailed
               | profile depending on how often this happens. Scale
               | matters.
               | 
               | (Similarly to how "we have license plates on cars to
               | identify them if needed" is a thing and basically nobody
               | complains that I can see your license plate when I walk
               | past your car or write it down if needed, but thousands
               | or millions of cameras recording all traffic and logging
               | plates are something people are concerned about, even if
               | its completely legal in some places)
               | 
               | What was that Larry Ellison quote that came up again over
               | the weekend?
               | 
               | EDIT: or to bring a specific real-world example: A friend
               | of mine does classes at a local studio that also offers
               | martial arts courses, and some of the local right-wing
               | bubble has gotten it in their head that this has to be
               | "antifa combat training" and keeps screaming that this
               | needs to be monitored. The current local government has
               | been ignoring them, but a lot of people are probably
               | quite happy now that there isn't an easy-to-get public
               | record of who was there and "needs a visit" just because
               | some influencer needed to film her dance lessons.
        
             | tmm wrote:
             | The difference is being seen in public is ephemeral and
             | being recorded in public is eternal. In the former, your
             | actions exist in fallible human memories for a short while
             | at most; in the latter there is a permanent digital record
             | of you, geotagged and time stamped and available for
             | perfect recall forever.
        
               | haskellshill wrote:
               | And that's bad because?
        
             | pseidemann wrote:
             | There are a number of reasons, including:
             | 
             | - I see who sees me, a digital copy breaks this symmetry
             | 
             | - Recordings may be stored indefinitely, searched through,
             | used for things I can't even imagine today
             | 
             | - In a local environment a specific behavior might be
             | normal or accepted while in some other cultures it is not.
             | This conflict is bound to happen
             | 
             | etc.
        
             | t-3 wrote:
             | There's a world of difference. I know the people in my
             | local community and they know me. We speak the same
             | dialects and use the same slang. Nobody is going to take
             | some off-color idiom the wrong way or judge me for poor
             | grammar or enunciation.
             | 
             | I know who the whackjobs are and don't need to interact
             | with them or watch my speech to avoid triggering them and
             | dealing with ensuing harassment, threats, violence.
        
             | ImPostingOnHN wrote:
             | I'm not a fan of my out-of-the-home activities all being
             | stored in an online database accessible to billions of
             | people and automatically scanned by several different
             | governments (including a list of foreign countries
             | extensive enough to include at least one you wish it
             | didn't, regardless of who you are) to build a profile of
             | every person, from hobbies to schedule to gait recognition
             | to psychographic profile.
             | 
             | But of course, that ship has sailed in much of the world,
             | with the ubiquity of surveillance and the dearth of
             | opposition.
        
         | swiftcoder wrote:
         | "noticing" is not the same as "permanently documenting and
         | broadcasting to the internet". Used to be one needed to get
         | signed photo releases from passerbys who appeared in your
         | shots...
        
           | dazzawazza wrote:
           | yep, it's the permanent nature of the recording put in to the
           | public sphere that is the game changer for me.
           | 
           | I accept I am visible in public to all who share a space but
           | I do not accept that the ephemeral nature of my existence in
           | that space should be violated.
        
         | mapontosevenths wrote:
         | Any chance you're relatively young?
         | 
         | I've noticed that folks born after some point in the early
         | 2000's tend to feel this way, and they don't even realize that
         | the survellience in 1984 was meant to be problematic, or why it
         | might feel that way to others
         | 
         | It seems that the panopticon has been normalized successfully.
        
           | tiahura wrote:
           | Old. If I don't want to be seen somewhere, I either: don't go
           | there, or sneak. If I sneak and get caught, I should've snuck
           | better.
        
         | arichard123 wrote:
         | Airsoft is probably played in a private woodland.
        
         | hamjilkjr wrote:
         | I think doing a members-only activity on private grounds is the
         | opposite of public
        
       | tietjens wrote:
       | This made me chuckle remembering the time a friend photographed a
       | dog in a bicycle in Berlin and was yelled at by the owner until
       | the photo was deleted. Photographing a pet crossed a big red
       | privacy line. Seems absurd, but I think sensitivity to the
       | phenomenon the author is noting will vary by country.
        
         | Simulacra wrote:
         | https://xkcd.com/642/
        
         | op00to wrote:
         | What if the dog was on the lam?
        
         | 1gn15 wrote:
         | That does sound absurd indeed.
        
       | homeonthemtn wrote:
       | I was having a similar discussion regarding the Renn faire this
       | weekend. It's silly fun, but it used to be you could dress up as
       | your persona and escape for a while (see also: larping, SCA, or
       | really any number of similar outlets) . However now everything is
       | being recorded, and those recordings act both as unwanted
       | publicity and as a method of cultural mining and extraction
       | 
       | What once was a funny little niche character at the faire is now
       | a TikTok tourist spot.
       | 
       | Where once you could dress up as your pseudo anonymous alter ego
       | with friends and have fun, now you get recorded without consent
       | and get to enjoy all the perks that can come with
       | 
       | Ultimately it will be up to us as a society to determine what is
       | acceptable or how to communicate boundaries for this new element
       | in our culture, with the understanding (to the authors point)
       | that some of us will be against it and others will be
       | enthusiastically for it.
        
       | ofrzeta wrote:
       | Maybe off-topic and patronizing .. sorry about that.
       | 
       | "Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at
       | other people, in pursuit of a contrived-to-be-fun mission, turns
       | out to be, well, fun."
       | 
       | I was wondering if there are no biodegradable bullets for Airsoft
       | and found out that they exist. Maybe a better solution than
       | plastic in the woods.
        
         | piqufoh wrote:
         | Not patronising, this was exactly my first (and off-topic)
         | thought as well.
         | 
         | We have lived in our house for +15 years and we still regularly
         | find small fluorescent yellow ball bearings in the garden soil
         | from the previous owners family. These things are here to stay
        
         | noeltock wrote:
         | Most of them usually are.
        
         | lm28469 wrote:
         | They make PLA ones, advertised as biodegradable, but AFAIK the
         | settings for them to biodegrade never happen in nature, it's
         | ever so slightly better than the alternatives but far from
         | perfect, or even good.
         | 
         | https://www.filamentive.com/the-truth-about-the-biodegradabi...
         | 
         | > PLA is only biodegradable under industrial composting
         | conditions and anaerobic digestion - there is no evidence of
         | PLA being biodegradable in soil, home compost or landfill
         | environment.
        
           | Gigachad wrote:
           | PLA is also commonly mixed with mystery additives which
           | likely aren't biodegradable at all.
        
           | ofrzeta wrote:
           | Yeah, that's a bit of a sham. I was thinking like compressed
           | paper or something.
        
           | mcv wrote:
           | I read up on PLA when I got my 3D printer because it's
           | popular material for that. From what I understand, it's
           | biodegradable above 50deg C. Not something you'll find
           | outside Death Valley. Still better than most other options,
           | but it would be nice if we had something that was stable for
           | weeks and then degrades nicely.
        
             | latexr wrote:
             | > From what I understand, it's biodegradable above 50deg C.
             | Not something you'll find outside Death Valley.
             | 
             | We're not that far off in Europe. Give it a couple of years
             | more and climate change will make sure we get there.
             | 
             | https://jakubmarian.com/highest-recorded-temperature-by-
             | coun...
        
             | lm28469 wrote:
             | Not all PLA are created equal though. Raw PLA pellets won't
             | behave the same way a 3d printer filament choke full of
             | dyes, additives to make them more UV resistance, &c.
             | 
             | There are plenty of posts of people putting 3d prints in
             | compost piles, for months or years, and visually not much
             | happens. Even stuff advertiser as bio don't fare that well:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tavrkWrazWI
        
               | hedora wrote:
               | If you dig up a sufficiently old landfill you'll find
               | pristine newspapers.
               | 
               | The idea that you can coat much more resilient stuff in
               | PFAS and label it "biodegradable" is at least as big a
               | scam as California's $0.10 "reusable" bags, or mixed
               | stream recycling.
               | 
               | I'm for taking each use of plastic, by global volume, and
               | then banning them, in order.
               | 
               | We should probably start with fishing nets.
               | 
               | Alternatively, the industry should need to produce 200%
               | as much post-consumer recycled plastic made from the same
               | grade as they're manufacturing. This would act as a tax,
               | strongly encouraging investment in more sustainable
               | materials. Maybe drop that to 150% if the plastic in the
               | product is 100% recycled.
        
         | chamomeal wrote:
         | I haven't played with airsoft since I was a kid, but I remember
         | the biodegradable ones back then had issues. They would fall
         | apart when you shot em, sometimes deteriorate inside the gun
         | and muck it up.
         | 
         | I'm sure they're better now, but I have no idea!
        
         | LtdJorge wrote:
         | Most of the brands use PLA. Most of the fields (all the ones
         | I've been too) require the use of biodegradable (PLA). PLA _is_
         | plastic.
         | 
         | Edit: forgot to say. In every field I've been too, there's
         | millions of leftover BBs, and I've never seen one with signs of
         | degradation.
        
       | munchler wrote:
       | > I occasionally see people saying "well, if you don't want to be
       | in photos published online, don't be in public spaces".
       | 
       | > This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should
       | be able to exist in society, including going outside one's own
       | home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
       | 
       | Sorry, that's not clear to me at all. If you're going to accuse
       | other people of "nonsense", you should probably avoid circular
       | reasoning yourself.
        
         | daveidol wrote:
         | Agreed. Was going to post the same thing. It's very much a
         | debatable position.
        
       | jen729w wrote:
       | I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms
       | from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video
       | camera on? Who's to say how much of you I have in the shot? Do
       | you feature? Did you flash by? Are you blurred? Recognisable?
       | 
       | I was shooting video of a car park exit last year. (I was trying
       | to prove to the shopping centre owners that it was dangerous.)
       | Mundane footage. Some lady drives out in her car and sees me.
       | Winds the window down and starts on the _you don 't have the
       | right to film me_ carry-on.
       | 
       | I politely informed her that, I'm sorry, but I do. She's in
       | public. That's the law (in Australia).
       | 
       | Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music
       | video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's
       | a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out.
       | _Sorry mate, you can 't film here_.
       | 
       | We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the
       | cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
       | 
       | "This sounded much more interesting on the radio", the cop says.
       | They left us alone to finish the shoot.
        
         | mothballed wrote:
         | ... The bank was filming the ATM the whole time.
         | 
         | There are a lot of '1A' auditors on youtube. They can be
         | nasally and annoying but it's hilarious how often people go
         | into a rage that they're being filmed despite the fact the
         | people getting angry are doing the same to everyone else.
        
         | sharperguy wrote:
         | The venues for these things are private and so they can set
         | their own rules. The author proposes a rule: A simple purple
         | lanyard indicating that you don't wish to be included in the
         | published film.
         | 
         | This doesn't necessarily need to be an article, because the
         | author could have just handled it with each venue individually,
         | but this just gets the conversation going about general
         | sentiment and wider applicability.
         | 
         | My guess is that early on this kind of youtuber was relatively
         | rare and so being captured occasionally wasn't a big deal, but
         | that now the trend is catching on, a it's happening regularly
         | and becoming a concern for some people.
        
           | pitt1980 wrote:
           | Aren't these venues small businesses that very much
           | appreciate whatever publicity someone sharing their venue on
           | social media gives them?
           | 
           | I guess they can weigh that against their customers desire
           | for privacy.
        
             | Aurornis wrote:
             | In many hobbies, recording footage and reviewing it later
             | is very valuable for improving. Think about football
             | players reviewing game footage as a team to discuss what
             | they did well and what went wrong.
             | 
             | Many hobbies are like this. The majority of footage people
             | record on their GoPros is for themself. It's rare for
             | someone to edit it into a YouTube video. Even more rare for
             | someone to go see it.
             | 
             | The AirSoft example is interesting because players where so
             | much protective gear and face masks that it would be very
             | difficult to recognize anyone's likeness anyway.
        
           | fuzzehchat wrote:
           | The author is a tech lawyer. I think the article is there to
           | start discussion. I agree with him that if private venues
           | allow people to record like this they should offer, at the
           | very least, an opt out. "Purple lanyard" seems like a good
           | way. It's also a pretty easy spot in post production where
           | you can either blur or cut as appropriate.
        
             | wang_li wrote:
             | There is a super obvious opt out that doesn't require
             | people to take special actions.
             | 
             | Don't go to places that allow recording.
        
               | et-al wrote:
               | From the article:
               | 
               |  _I occasionally see people saying "well, if you don't
               | want to be in photos published online, don't be in public
               | spaces"._
               | 
               |  _This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one
               | should be able to exist in society, including going
               | outside one's own home, without needing to accept this
               | kind of thing._
               | 
               |  _In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different,
               | since it is a private site, where people engage in
               | private activity (a hobby)._
        
         | alex77456 wrote:
         | Part of the issue is, big portion of the footage being
         | recorded, is not worth recording, let alone publishing. (Except
         | for personal value of the person recording, but that doesn't
         | require public sharing)
         | 
         | With the OP example, people getting recorded are not bystanders
         | catching stray camera focus, they are the subject of the video.
         | Without other participants, there would be little 'content'.
         | Imagine going to an indoor climbing venue, recording someone
         | else, and publishing just that.
        
           | stuartjohnson12 wrote:
           | Not to mention "auditors", whose goal is to use the ambiguous
           | nature of feels-like-a-privacy-invasion-but-legally-isnt when
           | you stick a camera in someone's face in a public place to try
           | and get a rise out of people and prance around as victim.
           | 
           | I think this is a case where the reasonable person test is
           | excellent. Is this use of a camera reasonable for
           | personal/professional purposes
           | 
           | You should be expected to take reasonable steps not to
           | victimise someone by use of a video camera, subject to public
           | interest. That means filming strangers with intent to provoke
           | them should be a crime but raging car park lady cannot
           | reasonably claim to have been victimised. Consent affects
           | what is reasonable without creating a duty-bound obligation
           | not to film without consent.
           | 
           | We already have "reasonable expectations of privacy", why not
           | flip that?
        
             | hermannj314 wrote:
             | The idea of public and private needs a similar distinction
             | like libel and defamation.
             | 
             | Ephemeral public has no expectation of ephemeral privacy,
             | but me walking down a street with a handful of people on it
             | should not lead me to expect that being recorded and having
             | it broadcast to the entire human race, permanently, for
             | eternity.
        
               | wang_li wrote:
               | >...but me walking down a street with a handful of people
               | on it should not lead me to expect...
               | 
               | You shouldn't have an expectation either way. If
               | anything, the expectation that you will not be recorded
               | is more of a violation of the social contract that the
               | reverse. It's a public space that can be used for many
               | purposes. If the effect on bystanders is minimal then
               | attempting to exclude an activity is wrong. Can we say "I
               | don't want you to see me, so look away whenever I am
               | out." "I don't want to wait in traffic so everyone else
               | has to pull over and clear the road when I am driving."
               | "I didn't consent to this smell, so this restaurant has
               | to turn off their stoves and ovens hours before I will be
               | coming by."
               | 
               | Reality is that you can't exclude others if they aren't
               | doing something that excludes you.
        
               | immibis wrote:
               | The way they do it in Germany is it's legal to have a
               | recording that incidentally includes a person but it's
               | not legal to have a recording _of_ the person.
        
               | hermannj314 wrote:
               | To be clear, I am talking about a hypothetical ought-to-
               | be and not specifically discussing the current law
               | anywhere.
               | 
               | I hear you and I agree public spaces involve us working
               | and coexisting together, not tailoring the public space
               | to what one person wants.
               | 
               | On the other hand, there is something in me that doesn't
               | like for-profit rage bait creators monetizing how I react
               | to a guy shoving a camera in my face and doing something
               | irregular. I feel like it is a type of assault we don't
               | have a name for yet but that should conceivably be
               | criminal.
               | 
               | I just realize that I'm acting like the those that first
               | saw the printed word or a camera and felt uneasy about
               | it, I am just an old man angry that video cameras and
               | globalization of content exists. I'm probably just a
               | luddite trying to stop the world from progressing.
        
           | borski wrote:
           | "How To With John Wilson" is an entire genre of precisely
           | this.
        
         | abxyz wrote:
         | Blur the people who didn't give consent. The problem is
         | cultural, not technical. Even YouTube has the native ability to
         | blur out faces at the click of a button.
        
           | renewiltord wrote:
           | Obviously isn't going to work for OP case. He's playing
           | airsoft. No faces are visible.
        
         | dandellion wrote:
         | Here in Spain if you don't get explicit consent you can get
         | sued for publishing the video (it's fine if you only showed it
         | to the shop owner and didn't publish it), but if someone tells
         | you explicitly they don't want to be recorded you have to stop
         | and delete the video (I assume if you refuse they can just call
         | the police, but I've never seen it happen).
        
           | randomtoast wrote:
           | Well, the first step is not being sued and taken to court,
           | but receiving a cease-and-desist letter. But for that to
           | happen, the person that has been videoed needs to be aware of
           | that his face is on YouTube, which in most cases you won't
           | even notice unless it's a video with a very high click count.
        
         | Hizonner wrote:
         | > I get it, but the alternative is what?
         | 
         | Stop taking video in public, or at least _of_ the public. You
         | just _assume_ you should be able to do that and the whole world
         | should adjust to your preference. Maybe it should be the other
         | way around.
        
           | shmel wrote:
           | Do you also support a blanket ban of CCTV in public spaces? I
           | am pretty sure that the bank had a camera in the ATM
           | recording a public pavement 24/7 and nobody bats an eye.
        
             | soiltype wrote:
             | Many people are actually quite uncomfortable with the
             | prevalence of video surveillance, in fact.
             | 
             | However, there are significant differences: 1. The camera
             | is in a fixed position, 2. The footage is not typically
             | shared let alone published online.
        
         | blindriver wrote:
         | You can use AI to blur anyone that doesn't give permission. You
         | can't use the excuse of "it's too much work!" It should be the
         | law that you can't indiscriminately video everyone for your own
         | financial gain.
        
           | WmWsjA6B29B4nfk wrote:
           | Blur is boring, but swapping faces or other recognizable
           | features to something similar but AI-generated sounds cool.
        
             | TehCorwiz wrote:
             | Sounds like the central idea of the "scramble suit" from A
             | Scanner Darkly.
        
         | bravura wrote:
         | As an American living in Europe, I have seen Europe do "no
         | cameras by default" quite successfully.
        
           | trelane wrote:
           | No _private_ cameras (maybe)
        
           | lotsofpulp wrote:
           | Are dash cams / bicycle cams not ubiquitous in Europe by now?
           | 
           | I would have thought they would be very useful for
           | adjudicating high cost events such as automobile collisions,
           | or even police interactions.
        
             | gambiting wrote:
             | Like most things with "Europe" - it depends, because it
             | isn't one state with universal laws or even cultural
             | expectations. Go to somewhere like Poland and everyone will
             | have a dashcam and it's almost expected at this
             | point(imho). But in neighbouring Germany you are
             | technically allowed to have a dashcam, but any recording is
             | legally inadmissable in any court case. So even if you have
             | a recording of someone crashing into you, it can't be used
             | because the other person never agreed to be recorded.
             | Meanwhile Austria and Portugal have banned them completely,
             | even for personal use.
        
               | detaro wrote:
               | Germany specifically doesn't like dashcams that record
               | continuously. Legal ones just keep a short buffer and
               | when they detect a crash or a button is pressed (or a
               | voice command in fancy ones) they'll write it to storage.
               | Because if something happens you have a valid reason to
               | have and use footage, you just can't record people
               | without a reason.
        
         | threetonesun wrote:
         | If I see someone filming me while driving I usually give them
         | the finger. I suppose that's my consent for them to do whatever
         | with it. I don't foolishly believe they can't do it, but I do
         | suggest maybe they shouldn't.
        
         | callc wrote:
         | Basic human decency.
         | 
         | Just as the author says: "Publishing someone's photo online,
         | without their consent, without another strong justification,
         | just because they happen to be in view of one's camera lens,
         | feels wrong to me."
         | 
         | It doesn't fall to the legal level, but a social rules level.
         | 
         | People who obnoxiously recording people in public, even if 100%
         | legal, and disregard the wishes and conform of others around
         | them deserve _social_ consequences.
         | 
         | Some things should only exist at the social norms level. IMO it
         | would be hunky dory if societies considered what "privacy in
         | public" looks like in the modern age, and came to the
         | conclusions like "no dragnets pls".
        
           | everdrive wrote:
           | >Basic human decency.
           | 
           | You've got a very large, diverse population without a strong
           | social identity and ever-fraying trust. So you won't
           | consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's
           | something which is extended to the in-group with which you
           | have real social ties and obligations. Most people don't have
           | this any longer.
        
             | legacynl wrote:
             | let's not make grand conclusions from singular
             | observations, especially if they align with your own
             | opinions. That's a recipe for deluding yourself.
             | 
             | Human decency still exists as it has always done. But
             | perhaps not in a form that we all agree on.
        
             | presbyterian wrote:
             | Even if what you're saying is true, and I'm skeptical that
             | it is, why is the solution to give up entirely on trying to
             | preserve or promote it?
        
               | ilikecakeandpie wrote:
               | I agree. I understand that there's no expectation of
               | privacy in a public area and this is amplified by people
               | having cameras/video recording capabilities in their
               | hands than ever before. I think it's different though
               | when it's at a private event though, like a birthday
               | party, funeral, etc and folks shouldn't default to
               | livestreaming
        
             | lurk2 wrote:
             | > So you won't consistently get basic human decency any
             | longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group
             | with which you have real social ties and obligations.
             | 
             | This is nonsense. People started taking photos of crowds
             | almost as soon as the camera was invented.
        
               | lomase wrote:
               | But back then 99.99% of those pictures did not get
               | published anywhere.
        
               | lurk2 wrote:
               | That's true, but what does publishing have to do with
               | being indecent, and how does that relate to in-groups and
               | out-groups?
        
           | pixl97 wrote:
           | >Basic human decency.
           | 
           | If this existed we'd have a lot less problems in this world.
        
             | worik wrote:
             | It exists
             | 
             | Life would be absolutely impossible without it
             | 
             | The debate is about its extent
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | I have no problem with that, but there are a _lot_ of
           | commenters here arguing that it _should_ be enforced at a
           | legal level, rather than a social rules level.
           | 
           | For a forum that tends to trend libertarian, I'm genuinely
           | surprised by the level of enthusiasm for using the government
           | to police the photos people take and share of people in
           | public spaces.
        
             | seanw444 wrote:
             | > For a forum that tends to trend libertarian
             | 
             | Seriously? This one? This place is Reddit with more words,
             | in my ever-degrading experience.
        
           | jMyles wrote:
           | > Basic human decency.
           | 
           | While I think we all agree that this is crucially important,
           | for many of us the affront to decency is not the capture of
           | photons that have previously bounced off someone's skin, but
           | the very idea that that person has a claim to those photons
           | in perpetuity.
           | 
           | I think it's indecent to suggest that someone needs to avert
           | their gaze (or in this case, their CMOS sensor) because I
           | happen to be in the area.
        
             | drewbeck wrote:
             | The post here makes it explicit that that the issue is with
             | posting that video, not capturing it.
        
             | HankStallone wrote:
             | Right. If you had a swimsuit malfunction on the beach in
             | 1995, a few people got an eyeful of your unmentionables
             | before you could grab a towel, someone might whistle or
             | laugh, you'd blush, and then the world would move on and
             | you'd forget about it.
             | 
             | If the same thing happens in 2025, there's a decent chance
             | your unmentionables will end up posted online for anyone to
             | ogle in perpetuity. If you find out about it, it could
             | really eat at you.
             | 
             | I don't have a solution to it, or even know if there should
             | be one. But I think it's undeniable that it's causing a
             | fundamental shift in what "private" and "public" mean, in
             | people's minds if not legally. We used to be more private
             | in public than we are now.
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | Who cares, your body will degrade and ultimately
               | decompose in few short decades.
               | 
               | If people aren't decent enough to wait till you are dead
               | and bother you over the footage of you they've seen, you
               | should go after them, not the person who recorded the
               | footage. They are the ones who cause you inconvenience.
        
               | ilikecakeandpie wrote:
               | Young girls are killing themselves every day over
               | something you're saying "who cares" about
        
               | jMyles wrote:
               | > Young girls are killing themselves every day over
               | something you're saying "who cares" about
               | 
               | ...I think this advances the point GP makes. We have
               | allowed obsession over body image to take on religious
               | proportions (falling off both ends of the spectrum,
               | toward tiktok swimsuit edition on one end, and the burka
               | on the other).
               | 
               | Part of this obsession is the claim of ownership of every
               | photon that bounces off one's skin until it is eventually
               | captured by someone else's eye (biological or
               | electronic).
               | 
               | A healthy internet age is one in which we find comfort in
               | our bodies, fitness in our habits, and security without
               | needing to control every depiction of us.
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | Go after the people who make young girls think it's
               | something they should do in that situation.
        
         | footy wrote:
         | The alternative is not uploading video of people doing a hobby.
         | 
         | I don't think your situations are the same as someone appearing
         | on some youtube channel without their consent every single week
         | unless they opt out of participating at all.
        
         | orangebread wrote:
         | What if there was some sort of middle layer escrow holdings
         | platform for users to sign up to that has your identity, facial
         | biometrics, and crypto wallet. The user can also specify how
         | they want their likeness used, or if they do not want to
         | appear, etc.
         | 
         | Any user uploading to a video platform has to run their video
         | through this integration user-facial detection layer at some
         | point in their editing pipeline. Payments are made accordingly.
         | 
         | Just brainstorming.
        
         | dahart wrote:
         | > Do you feature?
         | 
         | Yes, this is what the author is concerned about. There's a big
         | difference between being filmed incidentally, and being filmed
         | on purpose for the activity you're engaged in. Being
         | accidentally in the background is one thing, while being the
         | subject of a video and having the camera aimed at you is
         | another. Even though public photography is also legal where I
         | live, and I believe we should keep that right, if I filmed
         | close-ups of people in the car park getting in and out of their
         | cars, I'd expect most people would object and find it
         | uncomfortable.
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | >I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms
         | from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video
         | camera on?
         | 
         | Not every thing has to be recorded.
         | 
         | It is like all those runners and cyclists who log and share all
         | their runs/rides on Strava without even taking the time to
         | figure out if it really serves a purpose other than a vain
         | attention seeking.
        
           | TehCorwiz wrote:
           | This reminds me of that time secret US military bases were
           | identified from serviceman's social fitness data?
           | 
           | https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-
           | bases-f...
           | 
           | Honestly, the older I get the more I cherish that I grew up
           | in a time before the compulsion to post literally everything.
        
         | andiareso wrote:
         | Yes? I'm not sure I understand here.
         | 
         | If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you
         | are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then
         | required to get release info? If it's for personal use, sure
         | thing, but when you are making money on it then you should
         | absolutely get releases and default to bluring non-released
         | individuals.
         | 
         | I think the bigger issue is that our laws (in the US at least)
         | haven't really caught up with this gig/creator economy. It
         | would be no different than a blockbuster film group filming a
         | war/battle sequence and having to get permission ahead of time
         | from the location and individuals.
         | 
         | My work will have signs up or ask explicitly if they are
         | filming and intend to publish. If you go to a private org with
         | the intention of filming, you should follow the same rules for
         | a full-budget production group.
        
           | Aurornis wrote:
           | > If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and
           | you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you
           | then required to get release info?
           | 
           | The model release laws are usually tied to commercial use
           | where some endorsement is implied.
           | 
           | That's why your company must secure a model release when
           | filming in your office: The material is being used in a
           | manner related to the company and as an employee in the video
           | you are implicitly part of that.
           | 
           | If the AirSoft facility was filming customers and using that
           | footage in an ad, they would probably require model release
           | forms.
           | 
           | There are freedom of speech protections covering the capture
           | of likeness for artistic display, editorial use, and so on.
           | 
           | If the YouTuber made some video in this case as an ad for
           | some AirSoft product and included other people in it without
           | model release forms in a way that implied they were part of
           | the endorsement, they could be in trouble. If they're just
           | making videos reporting on their games then I doubt there's
           | an argument that you could make requiring a model release,
           | even if the channel was monetized.
           | 
           | This is also why news channels don't need to secure model
           | release forms when reporting on public events. If we required
           | everyone to do the model release form thing to show any video
           | of them, you would never see any negative videos of
           | politicians or criminals agin.
        
         | Aurornis wrote:
         | > I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release
         | forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your
         | video camera on?
         | 
         | I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic.
         | 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN,
         | Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your
         | rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
         | 
         | I can understand some people preferring not to be filmed in
         | public or shared commercial spaces, but ultimately if you are
         | truly in public then being photographed or recorded is just
         | part of the deal.
         | 
         | I don't think some people have thought about the second-order
         | effects of things like requiring model release forms for
         | everyone who enters the frame. Imagine getting a ticket or
         | being sued by your busybody neighbor because you took a video
         | of your kids in the backyard and they walked past. Laws like
         | this are frequently abused by people who want to wield power
         | over others, not simply people who simply want to protect
         | themselves.
         | 
         | When you extend the thinking to topics like news reporting and
         | journalism it becomes obvious why you don't want laws requiring
         | everyone to give consent to have video shared of themselves in
         | public: No politician would ever allow footage of themselves to
         | be shared unless it's picture perfect and in line with what
         | they want you to see.
        
           | gameman144 wrote:
           | I don't think the author was arguing at all that these things
           | should be illegal, more just that there should be more
           | consideration of other people's preferences where possible.
           | 
           | It's also legal to play an annoying song on repeat all day on
           | a quiet hiking trail, but people (rightfully) recognize that
           | as improper socially.
        
           | jMyles wrote:
           | > I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this
           | topic.
           | 
           | My very very strong gut feeling is that this is an influx of
           | bots muddying the waters of discussion in concert with the
           | unleashing of the secret police force that is ICE.
           | 
           | It seems to me that every real person sees the crucial
           | importance of public photography in peacefully maintaining
           | accountability.
        
             | Ekaros wrote:
             | Maybe our society has failed if publishing such photos is
             | needed to maintain accountability... I really do not see
             | that step for actually functioning society.
        
               | jMyles wrote:
               | ...we have evolved eyes, brains capable of retaining
               | visual memory of what they capture, and communications
               | media capable of describing and depicting those captured
               | photons.
               | 
               | If you believe in the basic right of general purpose
               | computing - not just a political right, but the idea that
               | general purpose computing is the lifeblood of the
               | internet age - then it seems to follow logically that the
               | capture of photons and depiction thereof are part of the
               | functioning the commons.
        
             | detaro wrote:
             | And of course nobody in this discussion has said anything
             | against photographing officials and news-worthy events.
             | "You should not publish photos/videos of private
             | individuals without consent or a very good reason" and "you
             | should be able to freely document police activity" do not
             | contradict each other.
        
               | jMyles wrote:
               | ...and how does that work when we complete the
               | abolitionist struggle and no longer have a separate
               | segment of society assigned to "police activity"?
        
               | detaro wrote:
               | Then we don't need to worry about documenting ICE
               | activities anymore and still don't need to publish photos
               | of random people without a good reason.
        
               | jMyles wrote:
               | Is that true? There are many level of exercise of
               | political, social, and economic power that happen in the
               | commons. The camera is a primary tool of defense against
               | injustice in this area.
               | 
               | Restrictions (especially with the force of law, but also
               | social pressures) of the basic and deeply human capacity
               | to capture photons and vibrations, and to make depictions
               | of the results of that capture, are invariably used by
               | the more powerful against the less powerful. eg: cops
               | playing "copyrighted" material to prevent posting to
               | youtube.
               | 
               | Much safer and fairer is to just give ourselves the same
               | rights we might imagine are afforded to an alien, 4 light
               | years away, looking through an extremely powerful
               | telescope. Do you suggest that earth laws extend to this
               | alien? Is she prohibited from posting the activities she
               | can see of ours through her telescope?
        
           | Vrondi wrote:
           | But, OP was not in a public space.
        
           | o11c wrote:
           | There are at least 3 completely distinct actions at stake
           | here, and we should not pretend they are the same:
           | 
           | 1. Taking pictures/videos for personal use.
           | 
           | 2. Taking pictures/videos for internet fame/money.
           | 
           | 3. Taking pictures/videos as a check on abuse of power.
           | 
           | Most opposition now is due to #2, sometimes under the guise
           | of #3; #3 also has divisions between "is it
           | {illegal,unethical,immoral,weird}?"
        
           | MatthiasPortzel wrote:
           | Here's an article from 20 years ago on the subject, to
           | support your memory:
           | 
           | => https://web.archive.org/web/20040611150802/http://villagev
           | oi...
        
           | johnnyanmac wrote:
           | >I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this
           | topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech
           | spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about
           | preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public
           | spaces.
           | 
           | I don't know about that. Aroudn this time was the peak of
           | "Glassholes" for those who remember that phenomenon. People
           | really didn't want someone to be potentially, passively
           | recording their conversation. Would that not be a thing
           | should Google re-launch Google Glass today? That might be a
           | real factor given how Meta is trying to push AR glasses.
        
         | notatoad wrote:
         | I think the context of the original article is important: at an
         | airsoft range, you're on private property. You've signed a
         | waiver to be there, there's already rules to follow. Having
         | formal rules for filming would be a totally reasonable and
         | practical thing to do.
         | 
         | Just like some gyms are accommodating to people filming
         | TikTok's and some aren't, an airsoft range could have camera or
         | no camera days, if that was something their players wanted.
        
           | chb wrote:
           | This. People should either be banned from filming at the
           | private site, or be required to agree to some form of consent
           | seeking.
        
           | mvdtnz wrote:
           | It's always a possibility that the owners of the range have
           | already considered this and found there is virtually no
           | market for no-camera days. Excluding your most enthusiastic
           | members to include a miniscule number of camera-shy weirdos
           | is unlikely to pay off.
        
         | ibejoeb wrote:
         | Well the majority of the facilities are private land, right,
         | not public, right? Organize formal sessions during which
         | photography is prohibited. If you don't get any takers, the
         | sport might have left you behind.
        
         | philwelch wrote:
         | > Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every
         | time you turn your video camera on?
         | 
         | Either that or, if you can't get a model release, make sure to
         | blur their face in editing. This used to be standard practice.
        
         | ecshafer wrote:
         | > I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release
         | forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your
         | video camera on?
         | 
         | This seems reasonable to me. If its airsoft, how many people
         | are involved? 10? 20? Just go around and ask people if they
         | will allow you to post video of the game with them in it.
        
         | baobun wrote:
         | Shooting video for yourself is one thing, sharing it to a third
         | party like Google, MS, or Apple is another. Unfortunately many
         | people have been brainwashed to not consider or even understand
         | the difference.
         | 
         | I'm fine with being recorded as long as you keep it private.
         | Not with that video ending up on your Drive backups or OneDrive
         | etc, let alone YT.
        
           | __float wrote:
           | This is drawing a very different line from the majority of
           | conversations in this thread, I imagine.
           | 
           | "Sharing with a third party" because you have phone backups
           | enabled is very different from streaming live or uploading to
           | social media, like most are actually discussing here.
        
             | baobun wrote:
             | I'm replying to this
             | 
             | > I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release
             | forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn
             | your video camera on?
             | 
             | The offline alternative exists even if your OS employs dark
             | UX patterns to make that frustrating. GP is the one who is
             | conflating things.
        
         | immibis wrote:
         | In Germany it's generally illegal to film people apart from
         | certain exceptions (mostly public events and public spaces).
         | Even when filming something in public, you must be filming the
         | event/space and not a person or group who happens to be
         | occupying it, which is a fine distinction. Even surveillance
         | cameras have strict requirements to be legal. You don't want to
         | be the guy who goes to jail for having a surveillance camera,
         | right?
         | 
         | Tangentially, nightclubs put stickers over your phone cameras
         | and that is a great idea.
        
         | thesuitonym wrote:
         | The alternative is for the venue to have "recording time" and
         | "non recording time." If you go during non recording time,
         | you're not allowed to bring cameras into the space. And if you
         | don't want to be recorded, you go then. And if you want to
         | record, go during recording time.
         | 
         | Think of it like a public pool. It is unreasonable to say that
         | there should be public pools that children aren't allowed into,
         | but it's also unreasonable to expect all adults to want to swim
         | with children. This is why we have the concept of adult swim
         | time.
        
         | andrewla wrote:
         | I think there is at least something of a middle ground for
         | almost-but-not-quite-public spaces and events. In this case the
         | author is talking about airsoft games; it seems totally
         | reasonable for the venue or organizer to enact policies,
         | whether "no cameras allowed" or "purple helmet means don't show
         | / blur this person".
         | 
         | In fully public spaces I think we're pretty much out of luck,
         | though I do think that laser/lidar-based countermeasures should
         | be legal.
        
         | deepsun wrote:
         | Filming and publishing is different things though legally.
         | 
         | E.g. you can film public spaces as much as you want, but be
         | careful of what you post to YouTube.
        
         | tonymet wrote:
         | OP offers a reasonable idea of wearing a lanyard or badge to
         | indicate you'd like to be censored out of the final video.
         | that's practical and provides community enforcement -- for
         | example if someone publishes a video with a subject like that,
         | the community can shame them for it.
        
           | SkyBelow wrote:
           | Shouldn't it be opt in, not opt out? Wear a badge if you are
           | okay being in it. People who aren't wearing it are blurred
           | out or otherwise removed.
        
             | tonymet wrote:
             | that's how I would do it. but we have to start somewhere
             | and maybe zoomers really do enjoy being recorded? who
             | knows?
        
         | collinstevens wrote:
         | > I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release
         | forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your
         | video camera on?
         | 
         | i think i would prefer this. i'd rather live in the world where
         | no one can record or photograph you in public than the world
         | where you're streamed or entombed in a vod for life.
        
         | lynx97 wrote:
         | Good to know you reside on the other side of the planet. I
         | wouldnt want to meet you in public under any circumstances. So
         | much entitlement and disregard for other people is sickening.
        
         | dfxm12 wrote:
         | The author suggests this was not a public space. Legal or not,
         | it's more about not being a jerk. I think this is especially
         | important in the context of a hobby, and the local community
         | around that hobby. There are _easy_ ways for everyone to get
         | what they want in these situations.
         | 
         | So, why not get a release? Why not perform some light video
         | editing to cut/blur out people who don't want to be there?
         | These are not high bars to clear. I've done similar things, you
         | have every opportunity to talk to the group and sort this out,
         | and explain why you're filming and where you're publishing.
         | Then people can come to an informed decision...
        
         | Vrondi wrote:
         | The the author of the article wasn't in a public area, but in a
         | private area at a private event, perhaps model release forms
         | are a really good idea for participants.
        
         | ShakataGaNai wrote:
         | > Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a
         | music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement.
         | There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come
         | out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
         | 
         | > We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the
         | cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
         | 
         | Heh. As a photog I've have plenty of similar run ins with
         | people...but only when wielding an SLR (or similar). Was once
         | standing on a sidewalk, saw a building that looked cool, took a
         | picture. I'm more into architecture than people. Security comes
         | out from the lobby to accost me. I very politely told them
         | "Dude, I'm on the sidewalk, you can't do shit"
         | 
         | I also had the local transit agency threaten to call the cops
         | on me for taking photos. Literally of just the platform and
         | rails (without people) when I was trying to document the system
         | for Wikipedia. Even though on their website it EXPLICITLY
         | states that what I was doing was within their rules. Ignoring
         | the fact that it was totally legal regardless.
         | 
         | That time I just (metaphorically) ran away rather than dealing
         | with a belligerent station agent. Was what I was doing wrong?
         | No. Was it legal? Yes. But did I want to deal with the transit
         | police? Nope.
         | 
         | The thing that drives me batshit nuts is no one seems to care
         | if you're taking a picture with a phone. The latest iPhone have
         | megapixel counts in excess of many DSLR and mirrorless cameras.
         | I can be _way_ more sneaky with my phone. By using a DSLR type
         | camera I 'm being very public that "Hey, I'm taking a picture
         | here" that should assure people, rather than scare them.
        
         | eikenberry wrote:
         | > I get it, but the alternative is what?
         | 
         | If AI photo/video generation continues to improve then it
         | shouldn't be a problem as the photo/video taking culture will
         | most likely die off once people assume any photos/videos they
         | see are generated.
        
         | onion2k wrote:
         | _I get it, but the alternative is what?_
         | 
         | Don't publish the videos unless you have a good reason to.
         | There is no upside to just throwing everything you record on
         | the internet. People don't watch the videos, your channel is
         | degraded by having tons of garbage on it, and people in the
         | videos don't want to be online like that.
         | 
         | If you stop pretending that a random video is somehow going to
         | 'go viral' or make you famous, the entire problem just
         | evaporates.
         | 
         | If you want to publish videos put the effort into making good
         | ones that people will actually watch, which means raising the
         | bar by (in part) finding people who want to be in them. Videos
         | of random people doing pretty mundane things like their hobbies
         | won't turn you into the next YouTube star.
        
         | NedF wrote:
         | > I get it, but the alternative is what?
         | 
         | Airsoft sites ban/allow videos in certain matches.
         | 
         | Not rocket science. We manage in public spaces like toilets ok.
         | 
         | They also point to purple lanyards in conferences and suggest
         | an equivalent in Airsoft.
         | 
         | Why is this comment going back to zero? Does Hacker News not
         | have the ability to move forward? Is this a central tenant to
         | the nihilism worship that is Hacker News?
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | The answer seems pretty simple.
       | 
       | Ask your teammates not to take videos, or find a different group
       | or a different hobby. But since they genuinely enjoy posting the
       | videos, and there's nothing wrong with that, you're probably the
       | one who's going to have move on.
       | 
       | You're entitled to not _want_ videos of you taken in public
       | places showing up online. But you 're not entitled to _getting_
       | that outcome.
        
         | brna-2 wrote:
         | Think bigger - public spaces, streets, in general. Would be
         | nice to solve this.
        
           | paulcole wrote:
           | It is solved. Videos and photos are allowed in public spaces.
           | You just don't like the solution.
        
             | brna-2 wrote:
             | Heh, you could be right on this one. But on the other hand,
             | if I was the one filming and I knew a person in the frame
             | wanted more privacy if possible I would be glad to omit
             | them or cut them out.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | But you can already do that.
               | 
               | This discussion isn't about what's polite.
               | 
               | It's about what you think ought to be against the law.
               | And being fined or thrown in jail if you break the law.
        
               | brna-2 wrote:
               | I was really thinking of imposing a framework where
               | people know someones preference even when looking at the
               | videos later. I would be fine even if there is no fine,
               | if someone found me on one of your photos and say - look
               | a lanyard, what a jerk for putting that online, without
               | any additional consequence. EU came into my mind because
               | of the existing GDPR and as a platform where this could
               | be propagated. No I would generally not want anyone to go
               | to jail even it the footage wracks my life somehow, but I
               | would want a mechanism to broadcast my preference to the
               | recording world.
        
               | op00to wrote:
               | Sure. They could simply ask you nicely and accept
               | whatever the result is. This is the case now.
        
               | paulcole wrote:
               | But what if you weren't glad to omit them or cut them
               | out?
               | 
               | What happens then?
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | I disagree. It _wouldn 't_ be nice to solve it, because it
           | would mean nobody could ever take a picture of anything where
           | there might be anyone recognizable in the background, without
           | getting them to sign some kind of model release first.
           | 
           | Is that what you want? For innocent photography in public to
           | be essentially outlawed?
        
             | ixsploit wrote:
             | Or you know, not making it public.
             | 
             | And if you might need to make the photo public, you could
             | blur the faces.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | And your want to make that the law, so you get fined or
               | go to jail if you don't blur everyone's face on every
               | photo you post if you haven't gotten a signed consent
               | from them?
        
               | andersa wrote:
               | Yes.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | Well, thanks for being honest.
               | 
               | That's not a world I would want to live in, and I guess
               | I'm thankful most other people don't either.
               | 
               | The ability to photograph is important for accountability
               | and truth in a democracy, it's important to families
               | wanting to document and share their trips easily, and
               | it's important for art, among many other things.
               | Fundamentally, it feels like a kind of freedom to me.
               | 
               | But it's interesting to see there are people who
               | disagree.
        
               | andersa wrote:
               | You can do all of those things without creating a public
               | record of me.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | What if I can't?
               | 
               | What if you're in the photo? What if you're doing
               | something newsworthy? Or what if you're right behind the
               | person doing something newsworthy?
        
               | andersa wrote:
               | > What if you're in the photo?
               | 
               | Blur that region before posting it with an algorithm that
               | can't be reversed. The camera app could even do this
               | automatically.
               | 
               | > What if you're doing something newsworthy?
               | 
               | Every good rule has some exceptions.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | Sorry. I just don't think parents at the park who take
               | photos of their kids and share them on a public site with
               | friends should be legally required to blur any passerby's
               | face or go to jail.
               | 
               | If they want to do it voluntarily then great. But making
               | it criminal if you don't -- I don't understand that.
        
               | zmgsabst wrote:
               | Why shouldn't they be fined for invading someone else's
               | privacy because they're too lazy to touch up the photos
               | on their phone? -- why should their laziness negatively
               | impact others use of public space?
               | 
               | You're just making an argument for inconveniencing others
               | out of laziness -- but trying to dress it up in
               | principles.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | Because it's a right to be lazy. And thank goodness it
               | is.
               | 
               | You can inconvenience other people in a thousand
               | different ways every day. And should be allowed to.
               | 
               | The idea that laziness or inconvenience ought to be
               | outlawed... do you realize what you're saying? The kind
               | of police state you're envisioning?
               | 
               | This _is_ a principled thing. What 's next, I get fined
               | for walking slowly on the sidewalk? For holding up the
               | line at the supermarket for a price check? For paying in
               | dimes instead of dollar bills? Think about the legal
               | principle you seem to be suggesting.
        
               | zmgsabst wrote:
               | We have numerous laws that ban those things in shared
               | public spaces:
               | 
               | - littering
               | 
               | - jaywalking
               | 
               | - excessive noise
               | 
               | Etc.
               | 
               | And we impose fines for all of those -- under the
               | consistent logic that you can't infringe on others use of
               | public space with your own.
               | 
               | I'm glad that you can admit this is not about your usage
               | of public spaces though -- it's just about you wanting to
               | be a nuisance to others without consequence.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | No, it's _not_ about _wanting_ to be a nuisance. Please
               | don 't claim I said things I didn't.
               | 
               | It's about not wanting to outlaw every possible nuisance.
               | And you're right -- we do outlaw plenty of things. But we
               | also have to draw the line somewhere.
               | 
               | Jaywalking is a great example. It was finally repealed in
               | NYC. Since it's fundamentally a pedestrian-first city.
               | 
               | And public photography is one of those things where it's
               | such a tiny nuisance, and the cost of regulating it would
               | be so onerous, that we wisely choose not to.
        
               | zmgsabst wrote:
               | What part of those requires posting my unblurred face
               | online?
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | Why should I legally be required to do that, and go to
               | jail if I don't? What makes it so important you think it
               | should be criminal not to?
        
               | zmgsabst wrote:
               | I think you should be fined for posting pictures of
               | people publicly without their consent.
               | 
               | None of those things require you to invade their privacy
               | and enjoyment of public space -- you're just negatively
               | impacting them because you're lazy and antisocial.
               | 
               | Fines are how we handle such nuisances in other cases.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | Nothing requires you to get upset about showing up in the
               | background of someone's photo either. As far as I can
               | tell, you're the one being antisocial because you're
               | trying to make demands on what people do with their
               | photos just because you happened to be in the frame. And
               | it's not like they're trying to _sell_ the photos or
               | anything.
               | 
               | And fines aren't some kind of innocent thing. If you
               | don't pay the fines, the police come to seize your
               | property. If you resist, you go to jail. That's what you
               | want?
               | 
               | Again, that's just not the world I want to live in.
        
               | zmgsabst wrote:
               | You're the one trying to include people in your photos
               | without their consent.
               | 
               | Everyone should be allowed to enjoy public spaces without
               | you imposing on them for your activities -- and that
               | includes you taking photos.
               | 
               | Nothing about their desire not to be photographed
               | requires that you not take photographs -- just that if
               | you do, without their permission and with identifiable
               | features showing, you'll have to take a few seconds to
               | blur that before you upload it publicly.
               | 
               | Yes -- that's absolutely an antisocial imposition on
               | their enjoyment.
               | 
               | And yes -- you should be fined for doing that.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | > _You're the one trying to include people in your photos
               | without their consent._
               | 
               | You don't think people just happen to be in the
               | background?
               | 
               | > _Everyone should be allowed to enjoy public spaces
               | without you imposing on them for your activities -- and
               | that includes you taking photos._
               | 
               | No, they shouldn't. It's a balance. When people play
               | frisbee, that's "imposing" on me too, because it's not
               | easy for me to put a blanket down in the middle of their
               | game. Should they be fined too? I don't think so. I think
               | I can just live with the inconvenience of walking 30 more
               | seconds.
               | 
               | And I don't even know what you're talking about with
               | blurring people's faces being so easy. My camera app
               | doesn't do that. And even if it did, manually clicking on
               | every single face in all 40 photos from the park that
               | don't belong to my friends and family? No thanks. People
               | can live with their faces in the background online, just
               | like I can live with people playing frisbee where I'd
               | rather be sitting.
               | 
               | I mean, what's next -- I'm not allowed to quote things
               | people say in public and attribute it to them? I'm not
               | allowed to say so-and-so was in this public park in a
               | blog post? _You don 't have privacy in public places,
               | because they're public._
        
               | brna-2 wrote:
               | For me not necessarily, I would like a mechanism for
               | distinction and a culture where you respect people you
               | record.
        
               | op00to wrote:
               | OP didn't respect his fellow hobbyists by asking them to
               | not film him. Why should OP expect respect in return?
        
             | andersa wrote:
             | > Is that what you want?
             | 
             | Yes. I would like to go back to a time before everyone had
             | 3 different cameras with them and the ability to share
             | those photos to a global network so third parties can use
             | that data to track what I am doing literally everywhere.
             | 
             | I no longer leave my house except for strictly necessary
             | obligations.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | Genuine question, what are you worried about that this is
               | affecting how often you leave your house?
               | 
               | What is making that the best cost-benefit analysis for
               | you?
        
               | brna-2 wrote:
               | I would also want to know. Did the game of being
               | incognito grow into the logic that leaving your house is
               | not viable anymore or something else?
        
               | op00to wrote:
               | You sound like you may need some sort of mental health
               | assistance if you no longer leave your house, especially
               | because of fear of some sort of global dragnet using
               | Facebook videos that you may be present in. I hope you
               | can get some peace.
        
             | Ekaros wrote:
             | Absolutely at least publishing it. If you want to publish
             | it on say social media. Censor in some way everyone you do
             | not have explicit written consent from for that specific
             | image.
        
             | OtherShrezzing wrote:
             | The article is discussing a private rather than public
             | space. We've got loads of private places where photography
             | is restricted - usually when that space involves physical
             | exercise (gyms, pools, etc).
             | 
             | I don't think it's unreasonable to have a level-headed
             | discussion about how society and technology have evolved
             | since those norms came into practice, and if they should be
             | expanded now that photography is ubiquitous.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | > _usually when that space involves physical exercise
               | (gyms, pools, etc)._
               | 
               | You might have that wrong. It's when that space involves
               | people wearing revealing clothing. And Airsoft kit is...
               | not that.
               | 
               | It's not about exercise.
        
           | op00to wrote:
           | It's solved. You can take pictures in public in the US.
           | That's part of our fundamental freedoms.
        
         | ljm wrote:
         | I expect an airsoft venue is actually a private space, not a
         | public one. Airsoft but-actually-in-public would have people
         | concerned about a terrorist attack, not being recorded for
         | insta.
         | 
         | To that extent, the hobbyists who like to create content for
         | the internet should be asking for consent since their footage,
         | and arguably their clout, depends on the participation of
         | everybody else in the group. Otherwise they're just traipsing
         | around a private plot of land all kitted up but with nobody to
         | shoot. If they're monetising that content then they are
         | profiting from the OP's likeness.
         | 
         | This is not far removed from the (fully understandable)
         | blowback on influencers recording themselves (and often other
         | people for rage-induced clout) inside gyms. These are also not
         | public places.
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | If it's private then it's up to the owner.
           | 
           | And they may very well have decided that more customers want
           | to take and share videos, than there are customers who are
           | bothered by it.
           | 
           | And nobody is talking about monetizing content here. There's
           | no profit. If there were, that would be a different
           | conversation obviously. But the post did not bring that up.
        
             | pavel_lishin wrote:
             | > _There is no profit._
             | 
             | We don't know that.
        
               | hedora wrote:
               | Also, the bar of "you have no privacy if you can't figure
               | out how the entity stealing your data is profiting off
               | it" isn't great.
               | 
               | At the very least, these videos are being used to train
               | models. That's a good way to bypass the union contracts
               | that prevent Hollywood from digitally cloning film
               | extras.
        
           | insertchatbot wrote:
           | And also, some people could suffer real damages. Imagine if
           | someone is lying to their wife about what they do on the
           | weekend or about who they've gone to a conference with. Or
           | imagine if someone has found themselves with dangerous
           | enemies who discover where they go, what they do and with
           | whom.
           | 
           | At the moment, these things are not the problem of the person
           | taking the video
        
             | footy wrote:
             | right. My younger sister was stalked by a crazy ex for
             | years.
             | 
             | According to some of the people here that would mean she
             | had no right to participate in a regular activity.
        
               | crazygringo wrote:
               | No. It means you get a restraining order if there's a
               | threat and contact the police the moment they violate it.
               | We already have laws for that type of thing.
               | 
               | Preventing anyone ever possibly taking pictures where you
               | could be in the background is not the answer.
        
               | footy wrote:
               | there's a difference between
               | 
               | > Preventing anyone ever possibly taking pictures where
               | you could be in the background is not the answer.
               | 
               | and asking not to be recorded at a recurring event.
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | Since you're allergic to peanuts that means everybody
               | should be banned from eating peanuts and we should stop
               | growing them, right?
               | 
               | While directly providing said stalker with information
               | seems like a harmful, and likely prosecutable behavior,
               | the indirect providing of information is not a burden the
               | general public should bear for another parties already
               | illegal actions.
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | > Since you're allergic to peanuts that means everybody
               | should be banned from eating peanuts and we should stop
               | growing them, right?
               | 
               | My kid's school strictly bans peanut products due to at
               | least one kid having a severe and potentially deadly
               | allergy. It seems like a reasonable and necessary
               | precautions to avoid harm or injury.
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | Which likely increases the risk of more people getting
               | peanut allergies.
               | 
               | https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-
               | releases/introducing-pe...
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | That link has nothing to do with the effects of
               | withholding peanuts from children above 5 years old
               | (school age children).
        
               | ljm wrote:
               | Peanuts aren't served on a plane just in case someone
               | with a peanut allergy has a bad time as result. Peanuts
               | (and other things people are deathly allergic to) are
               | also not served or used as ingredients in restaurants
               | where there is a risk of cross contamination.
               | 
               | What you've done is bring back the equivalence to a
               | public place so that an absurd argument can be made about
               | banning peanuts wholesale.
               | 
               | As far as any non-public situation goes, it's a simple
               | discussion of consent and it's easy: just ask for it
               | instead of feeling entitled to it.
        
           | komali2 wrote:
           | > Airsoft but-actually-in-public would have people concerned
           | about a terrorist attack, not being recorded for insta.
           | 
           | I live in Taiwan. My friend and I were drinking beers by the
           | river one night and decided to go on a late night bike ride,
           | maybe 1am. We grabbed citybikes and tooled along the river,
           | which in Taipei in many places is a nice bit of pavement next
           | to massive mangroves and then the river itself. We were
           | coming up on a brushy bit when a squad of completely kitted
           | out soldiers came out of the bush with massive rifles, night
           | vision goggles, full camo, geared to the nines. My buddy and
           | I both nearly fell off our bikes and were immediately
           | thinking the same thing: Oh fuck the PLA is here. Common
           | knowledge is they'd come up that exact river and make
           | straight for the presidential palace if they were gonna do
           | their thing.
           | 
           | Turns out it was just _very enthusiastic_ airsoft players.
           | Apparently you can just play it wherever in Taipei, there 's
           | not really rules about it? So people play in the riversides
           | at night.
           | 
           | Their kit was ridiculous. One guy had tracer pellets. They
           | let us wear their night vision goggles and shoot trees. Great
           | time.
        
         | hamjilkjr wrote:
         | They could also blur the requester's face for the second or two
         | it's likely in frame in the process they're very likely already
         | editing the video before posting
        
         | andersa wrote:
         | We should be entitled to that.
        
         | LtdJorge wrote:
         | You can also ask for your face to be blurred.
        
         | Tade0 wrote:
         | There's also the option of having a detailed image of a penis
         | on your clothing so that any sort of social media app will
         | R-rate a video featuring you.
        
           | hedora wrote:
           | I wonder if this works if you use pictures of Disney
           | characters instead (to generate copyright strikes, or
           | mandatory relicensing fees).
           | 
           | If the two tactics don't work separately, would they work
           | when combined?
        
             | Tade0 wrote:
             | I'm embarrassed I didn't think of Disney characters first.
             | 
             | I would suggest Pokemon (fighting monsters after all), but
             | apparently Nintendo lost its edge, considering that recent
             | ICE debacle.
        
             | crazygringo wrote:
             | Of course it doesn't.
             | 
             | There aren't any social media sites that take down images
             | of people wearing a Disney character on a shirt. That's not
             | a thing.
             | 
             | You have to upload actual extended direct footage of a
             | Disney _movie_.
        
           | discomrobertul8 wrote:
           | Disney characters work too, from what I hear.
        
         | HotHotLava wrote:
         | If the problem starts to become big enough, I'd expect airsoft
         | venues to offer special streaming or non-streaming times,
         | depending on which group is bigger. Similar to how Saunas offer
         | special clothed or women-only days.
        
       | brna-2 wrote:
       | Wow, such a nice idea with the purple lanyard it would be great
       | to have something like this in general, walking down the streets
       | someone films you and them or even YT or viewers to scan/flag the
       | videos in question. I guess EU could put forth such regulation -
       | no biggie. Maybe we could also create a framework on existing
       | legislation - design a lanyard, put a QR on it leading to a "I do
       | not consent" site. Advertise it a bit and I'm sure it would be
       | newsworthy, at-least in EU, not sure about the rest of the world.
        
         | paulcole wrote:
         | > I guess EU could put forth such regulation - no biggie
         | 
         | Yes! Another EU regulation will solve this right quick.
        
           | brna-2 wrote:
           | Well, actually this could be just a means of letting people
           | know your preference without direct communication. Maybe it
           | could fall under existing GDPR regulation, as an extended
           | part about a public "non consent" marker.
           | 
           | How would you solve the problem in large scale, low effort
           | way?
        
             | paulcole wrote:
             | > How would you solve the problem in large scale, low
             | effort way?
             | 
             | The problem is solved in a large scale low effort way (in
             | many places)! If you are in public you can be legally
             | filmed.
        
               | jve wrote:
               | - I was at public park. There was an event. I remember
               | there was a warning/poster/whatever - this place features
               | XYZ and is being photographed. If you do not like, do not
               | participate or stand here or something along the lines.
               | 
               | - When kids came to my workplace as part of educational
               | program to show how people work - we gave them out
               | papers, adults had to give approval that their child will
               | be photographed and photo shared on social network. If
               | any would opt out, we would just photograph without him.
               | I think the sole purpose of that event was to photograph
               | on some background with national flag or something and
               | just publish it online.
               | 
               | Sometimes it is ridiculous, but still this thing works
               | like this: the school or kindergarten wants class photo:
               | please sign here that you consent. Basically this photo
               | is not public but limited to families for all the
               | children that attend that class. So seems kind of too
               | much, but ok, can live with that.
               | 
               | I live in EU
        
               | paulcole wrote:
               | Yes that all does seem like too much.
        
         | Ekaros wrote:
         | I think even better option is some type of public opt-in. Maybe
         | purple or green screen lanyard. Publishing material of anyone
         | without one would not be allowed.
         | 
         | Doesn't seem too big ask to edit out anyone who has not opted-
         | in. Especially in age of AI that should make it trivial.
        
           | haskellshill wrote:
           | Sorry, but why even care about this? Is it an invasion of
           | your privacy if strangers see you walking down the street? If
           | no, how is strangers seeing you walking down the street in
           | the background of some youtube video a privacy violation??
        
         | haskellshill wrote:
         | Great idea, and soon there will be a "I accept to be recorded
         | in public" button you need to press before you're let out of
         | your house.
        
         | philipwhiuk wrote:
         | Ah yes, identifying people with special items has always worked
         | extremely well to protect freedoms.
        
       | paulcole wrote:
       | > Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including
       | going outside one's own home, without needing to accept this kind
       | of thing.
       | 
       | This is not clear at all to me.
       | 
       | When you go into public you're accepting that you might be
       | filmed. The reality is that you _are_ being filmed constantly.
       | It's just that it bothers you sometimes.
       | 
       | It reminds me of The Light of Other Days (a book about a society
       | where technology makes any privacy impossible). Nearly everybody
       | gets over it really quick and the world moves on.
       | 
       | The good news about this is that hardly any normal person would
       | ever watch these Airsoft videos for more than 5 or 10 seconds.
        
         | cowpig wrote:
         | > Nearly everybody gets over it really quick and the world
         | moves on.
         | 
         | Perhaps this article being #1 on HN right now is evidence that
         | your perspective is not the same as "nearly everybody" else
        
           | op00to wrote:
           | The evidence I present is that I have never seen someone
           | complain about someone else filming in public. I'm not sure
           | that the articles position on HN says anything about the
           | majority opinion on a topic, only that it's of interest.
        
             | cthor wrote:
             | You must not have looked very far. Here's one example from
             | circa 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN9E3vJzxk0
             | 
             | People respond to a camera shoved in their face. It's not
             | felt the same as simply being looked at.
        
               | op00to wrote:
               | I have practiced "street photography" for years, where I
               | purposefully take pictures of people on the street.
               | Sometimes people ask what I'm doing, I tell them, and
               | they say "cool can I see the pictures"? Sometimes I send
               | them a file or whatever. No one's gotten all out of sorts
               | over it.
        
           | paulcole wrote:
           | To be fair the sentence prior I thought made clear I was
           | referencing the plot of the book.
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | So you only have to worry about consequences from not-normal
         | people, and that's the good news?
         | 
         | EDIT: to bring a specific real-world example: A friend of mine
         | does classes at a local studio that also offers martial arts
         | courses, and some of the local right-wing bubble has gotten it
         | in their head that this has to be "antifa combat training" and
         | keeps screaming that this needs to be monitored. The current
         | local government has been ignoring them, but a lot of people
         | are probably quite happy now that there isn't an easy-to-get
         | public record of who was there and "needs a visit".
        
           | paulcole wrote:
           | No, you only have to worry about the consequences from
           | everyone.
           | 
           | You certainly dont want the government defining "not normal"
           | people. Or maybe you do!
        
       | spacecadet wrote:
       | This. Im a dick and straight up demand people exclude me or stop
       | filming. Consumers are ravenous for money making content and have
       | no clue what a media business privacy, consent, and compensation
       | legal framework even remotely look like. As someone who produced
       | a few short documentaries in the early 2000s related to
       | "hobbies", I would have never done so without full consent and
       | compensation...
        
         | op00to wrote:
         | I don't think you're a "dick" for politely asking people not to
         | film you, unless you're unnecessarily aggressive about it.
        
       | eterm wrote:
       | I wonder if it's a generational or cultural difference present in
       | the comments here.
       | 
       | I am sympathetic to the author, and I also find video a bit
       | invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.
       | 
       | I therefore find the (obviously common) attitude that videos are
       | just "something you need to accept" quite alien, but I wonder how
       | much of that attitude is just comments coming from a younger
       | generation that have grown up with the idea that they're recorded
       | all the time.
       | 
       | I'm old enough thankfully to have grown up without video being
       | present, that's probably not true for someone 10 years younger
       | than me.
       | 
       | There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be
       | filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube
       | every single week".
       | 
       | With the former you can still reasonably anonymous, with the
       | latter you risk becoming a side character in someone elses'
       | parasocial relationship.
        
         | muzani wrote:
         | Yeah, I feel like the new generation are recorded and published
         | to the world literally on their first breath, right up until
         | their funeral.
         | 
         | We had this idea that privacy violation is like pollution. But
         | now it's like how our generation is used to plastic in the
         | ocean and never seeing all the stars. It's just life.
        
         | spicyusername wrote:
         | My kids are in elementary and middle school and there was an
         | occasion where they were at a birthday party where an older
         | sibling was live streaming the event.
         | 
         | Both my kids (and me) found it very off-putting, so there's
         | some anecdata that at least some young kids still feel it's an
         | invasion of privacy.
         | 
         | Maybe not all is lost.
        
           | siva7 wrote:
           | There are lots of young people who have some conception and
           | respect of privacy and there are people who haven't. That's
           | not a generational thing.. It's just that those without
           | awareness of boundaries have now all the tech that screams in
           | their face to stream everything to the world without consent.
           | I can assure you that still lots of young folks are annoyed
           | by those people.
        
             | RajT88 wrote:
             | Agree. I went to a family gathering recently, and my wife's
             | cousin was walking around live streaming. People were
             | pissed once they figured out that private conversations
             | were uploading live to the internet.
             | 
             | The same guy did similar when his mom was on her death bed.
             | Jesus Christ.
        
               | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
               | > People were pissed once they figured out that private
               | conversations were uploading love to the internet.
               | 
               | Audio is different from video. This is technically
               | illegal, as consent is explicitly required in the law for
               | audio recording.
        
               | greenavocado wrote:
               | Most states in the United States allow one one-party
               | consent for audio recordings.
        
               | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
               | They're not party to others' conversations.
        
               | lotsofpulp wrote:
               | As long as someone is not hidden, or trying to be
               | deceptive, then they would be considered party to the
               | conversation.
               | 
               | Someone walking around live streaming would become party
               | to all the conversations.
        
               | jon-wood wrote:
               | And most states also allow you to leave a bar thirty
               | seconds after your friend you arranged to meet there
               | arrives, it would still be considered rude to do so and
               | probably you wouldn't be welcome in the future if you
               | kept doing it.
        
               | blackoil wrote:
               | You are free to quit the party, but host won't be
               | arrested for recording and sharing video.
        
               | serial_dev wrote:
               | I get that for whistleblowers, journalists,
               | investigators, ... I don't think it's relevant for a
               | birthday party with children.
               | 
               | If it's me, I'm leaving the party. If it's my children
               | attending, I'm strongly recommending them to leave the
               | party (or just leave with them, depending on their age).
               | Live-streaming a birthday party of children is obnoxious
               | behavior that should not be tolerated.
        
               | sdoering wrote:
               | If it's me, in Germany, I would instantly tell this
               | person to stop filming and to delete any recordings. And
               | if they streamed live to expect a letter from the (German
               | equivalent of the) DA soon, as I would - as soon as back
               | home - I would press charges and search damages.
               | 
               | Because in German publishing images/recordings of an
               | individual without consent violates basic constitutional
               | rights. And that's nothing to f** with.
               | 
               | If minors were involved you'd be in a whole different can
               | of soup even.
               | 
               | So while I don't advocate for violence - as others have
               | hinted in this thread - a black eye could actually be the
               | lesser negative outcome for such a person.
        
               | f1shy wrote:
               | This is the case where I find law in Europe better than
               | USA. In germany you need consent to film or record other
               | people.
               | 
               | The downside is the misuse of the law, what happens
               | constantly, to basically prohibit (at least in practice)
               | ANY recording activity. Is not unheard of, I have seen
               | and experienced myself quite a few times, for example, a
               | tourist being stopped and asked to delete a video of a
               | simple recording in a park (police called immediately),
               | because a random stupid person was around and wants to
               | show how good he knows his rights... (see sister comment)
        
               | webstrand wrote:
               | Under US federal law one-party consent requires that you
               | actually be a party to the conversation. This is why most
               | security cameras do not record audio.
               | 
               | If you're wandering around livestreaming and picking up
               | conversations you're not a participant in, it's a
               | violation of federal wiretapping laws.
        
               | lotsofpulp wrote:
               | Presumably, a person holding up a phone live-streaming
               | would be party to the conversation.
               | 
               | If two people are talking at a party, and a third person
               | obviously comes by within earshot, then the two people
               | can either stop talking, or they can continue, but the
               | third person is now party to the conversation.
        
               | kjksf wrote:
               | You're so obviously wrong.
               | 
               | I watched multiple videos from Portland ICE protest,
               | multiple videos of ICE arresting people, all with audio.
               | Half the people at protests are recording.
               | 
               | If you were right all that would be illegal.
               | 
               | The magic word is: "reasonable expectation of privacy".
               | 
               | If you're in public, like in streets, in the mall etc.
               | you don't have reasonable expectation of privacy. You can
               | be recorded, with audio, and it's legal.
               | 
               | The two party consent rules only apply to private conduct
               | e.g. you have a phone conversation. In states with two
               | party consent the other person can't record the
               | conversation without notifying you.
               | 
               | What you describe as "US federal law" sound more like
               | anti-wiretapping law i.e. I can't plant a bug in your
               | house and record your conversations. Which is duh, but
               | not relevant to being recorded while in public.
        
               | webstrand wrote:
               | I figured that "reasonable expectation of privacy" was a
               | given in the scenario. It's a family gathering, the
               | livestreamer is not being obvious about their recording,
               | there's a "reasonable expectation of privacy".
               | 
               | Your ICE protest example is performed in public, its a
               | protest, its not meant to be private, thus fails the test
               | of "reasonable expectation of privacy". Action taken by
               | agents of the state are also public actions, this has
               | been tried many times in court.
               | 
               | Two-party consent is not federal law and varies state-by-
               | state. But again it requires that you actually be a party
               | to consent.
               | 
               | And yes by "US Federal Law" I am referencing the anti-
               | wiretapping laws which prohibit, among other things,
               | interception of oral communication via electronic means
               | unless at least one party consents.
        
               | hunter2_ wrote:
               | I'm not so sure that the family gathering scenario is
               | well-defined, though. If I'm at a gathering in someone's
               | house, and I'm in a room with only the person/people that
               | I'm actively talking to, then I feel reasonably private
               | in the sense that my words are falling only on the ears
               | of intended recipients. But if I'm in a room with the
               | people I'm talking to and also people I'm not talking to,
               | then I acknowledge that ears beyond those involved in the
               | conversation can catch wind of what I'm saying, which
               | roughly equates to the absense of expectations of
               | privacy.
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | It's important to remember that you're making this up.
               | You're just sort of spontaneously interpreting
               | "reasonable expectation of privacy" off the top of your
               | head.
               | 
               | It's usually simpler than that: if you see them recording
               | you, and if they aren't trespassing (i.e. breaking the
               | law otherwise); or you are on their property or on public
               | property that they are legally permitted to use, which
               | carries a posted sign telling you that you may be
               | recorded, you don't have a reasonable expectation of
               | privacy. Otherwise you do.*
               | 
               | Somebody could possibly hear something has nothing to do
               | with it. Consenting to being heard is not consenting to
               | being recorded. But maintaining your presence in a place
               | where people are allowed to record is. If it's your
               | party, tell them to put it away or leave. If it's their
               | party, you leave. If you are recording surreptitiously
               | and you are not working with law enforcement, it's
               | probably not going to be admissible in court and if you
               | publish it, you're going to get sued. Depending on your
               | state and local laws, you are likely to lose badly.
               | 
               | -----
               | 
               | [*] All of this depending specifically on how the term is
               | defined in your state and local laws. For example, video
               | has often been separated from audio for pragmatic
               | reasons; security cameras are meant to record physical
               | acts, not conversations. For a second example, many
               | states have decided that sending your voice over a wire
               | to a designated recipient as an electronic signal is
               | already consenting for the person receiving that signal
               | to be able to record it and use it as they please; others
               | have not. For a rationale in the second case, imagine
               | that you didn't have the right to reveal a letter that
               | was sent to you.
        
               | greenavocado wrote:
               | If everyone is inside a private home, the host has not
               | given permission to stream, and the streamer is
               | deliberately keeping the camera/phone hidden, then no-one
               | has waived their expectation of privacy, and the streamer
               | is intercepting a conversation they are not a party to
        
               | nerdsniper wrote:
               | > If you're in public, like in streets, in the mall etc.
               | you don't have reasonable expectation of privacy. You can
               | be recorded, with audio, and it's legal.
               | 
               | Just a note because I myself made the same argument very
               | loudly 1-3 weeks ago...and was informed some states have
               | different laws than I expected. Massachusetts, in
               | particular.
               | 
               | (Note that MA limits clandestine recording, not the
               | obvious recording in TFA blog about airsoft -- and it has
               | been neither upheld nor overturned by SCOTUS)
               | 
               | https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/massachusetts-recording-
               | law
               | 
               | >>> Massachusetts makes it a crime to secretly record a
               | conversation, whether the conversation is in-person or
               | taking place by telephone or another medium. See Mass.
               | Gen. Laws ch. 272, SS 99. Accordingly, if you are
               | operating in Massachusetts, you should always inform all
               | parties to a telephone call or conversation that you are
               | recording, unless it is absolutely clear to everyone
               | involved that you are recording (i.e., the recording is
               | not "secret"). Under Massachusetts's wiretapping law, if
               | a party to a conversation is aware that you are recording
               | and does not want to be recorded, it is up to that person
               | to leave the conversation.
               | 
               | >>> This law applies to secret video recording when sound
               | is captured. In a 2007 case, a political activist was
               | convicted of violating the wiretapping statute by
               | secretly recording video of a Boston University police
               | sergeant during a political protest in 2006. The activist
               | was shooting footage of the protest when police ordered
               | him to stop and then arrested him for continuing to
               | operate the camera while hiding it in his coat. As part
               | of the sentencing, the court ordered the defendant to
               | remove the footage from the Internet. From this case, it
               | appears that you can violate the statute by secretly
               | recording, even when you are in a public place.
        
               | DrewADesign wrote:
               | Wiretapping laws are set by states, and different states
               | have different criteria. For example, the two-party
               | consent in MA involves 'intercepting' the conversation so
               | even listening on a microphone and not recording it is
               | considered wiretapping, but not all states use that
               | criteria. Some people, like public officials performing
               | their duty in public-- e.g. cops and politicians-- can't
               | have any expectation of privacy.
               | 
               | Expectation of privacy is
        
               | buildsjets wrote:
               | Most parents will punch you in the face if you try to
               | record audio of thier children without two party consent.
        
               | greenavocado wrote:
               | Do that in a public place and you will catch an assault
               | and/or battery charge
        
               | RajT88 wrote:
               | Eve if legal, the guy was in the wrong.
        
               | bee_rider wrote:
               | Laws almost always vary by jurisdiction.
        
               | hdgvhicv wrote:
               | Which jurisdiction are you taking? Japan? Christmas
               | Island? Cuba?
        
               | Izkata wrote:
               | 11 states in the US have two-party-consent laws. IIRC GP
               | is correct about recordings of private conversations in
               | these states.
        
               | i_am_jl wrote:
               | Really?
               | 
               | What jurisdiction has that rule? Are you sure you're not
               | conflating simple audio recording with a recording of
               | audio telecommunications?
        
               | GJim wrote:
               | What in gods name does the law have to do with it?
        
               | serallak wrote:
               | A friend that was going to deliver a child told us about
               | a dad-to-be that was going around the maternity ward
               | making videos ...
        
               | Freak_NL wrote:
               | That's a good recipe for getting a black eye. The mother-
               | to-be tends to be pretty much confined to her immediate
               | affairs, but the partner...
               | 
               | (I'm sure everyone is different, but I've been there as
               | the father-to-be, and I would have made a good effort of
               | turning that live-stream into a live-colonoscopy.)
        
               | lsaferite wrote:
               | [delayed]
        
               | Imustaskforhelp wrote:
               | >The same guy did similar when his mom was on her death
               | bed. Jesus Christ.
               | 
               | I am so sorry for your loss and I am out of words. Just,
               | I just want to be with ya in silence for a while. I am
               | sorry that you had to go through this. I am really
               | speechless
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | Are you expressing overdramatic sympathy for the loss of
               | a stranger's wife's cousin's mother? No wonder that
               | cousin films and streams everything.
        
               | Imustaskforhelp wrote:
               | I was definitely feeling something as I didn't think of
               | the stranger's wife's cousin's mother? as dying but
               | rather the stranger's wife dying and that cousin
               | recording it.
               | 
               | But even now, yes you may have proved your point but
               | death is so fucking weird and not talked about and
               | sometimes I just get speechless, like someone just left
               | the earth, let that sink in...
               | 
               | Honestly, I can somewhat both understand why he was live
               | streaming now wanting more comments/everyone's final
               | messages to go to her mother but at the same time, its
               | definitely privacy invasive and might show their last
               | moments and something of a behaviour I don't condone but
               | I just don't know, now my opinion is mixed.
        
               | RajT88 wrote:
               | Yep - was my wife's cousin's mother who died.
               | 
               | I didn't know the lady at all. I didn't even end up
               | meeting the cousin, I heard about all this after the
               | fact. My wife isn't broken up either - kind of distant
               | family.
        
             | igor47 wrote:
             | We need content for ML! If you don't upload every moment of
             | your life, you're not doing your part for humanity.
        
           | AlecSchueler wrote:
           | My own anecdotal experience is that the generational gap is
           | actually the inverse of what was described above. Younger
           | people seem to be very much moree acutely aware of the
           | dangers of publicity and much more guarded about what they do
           | in public if it could potentially end up online.
        
             | Gigachad wrote:
             | Everything has moved to private spaces now. Friend discord
             | groups, private social media accounts, etc.
             | 
             | The age of posting on Facebook under your real name with
             | privacy settings public is long gone because of the
             | numerous obvious risks.
             | 
             | But just being seen in a small segment of a YouTube video
             | with no name is a pretty minor risk.
        
               | angiolillo wrote:
               | > just being seen in a small segment of a YouTube video
               | with no name is a pretty minor risk
               | 
               | It might become a slightly larger risk when image
               | processing and face recognition get cheap enough that
               | anyone can search to find every video/livestream/photo
               | containing your face.
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | Yeah, it just happened to a woman I know recently. She
               | took part in some naked protests like 20 years ago and
               | photographs of them went up on various sites like Flickr
               | from a host of different photographers and no one ever
               | thought about it. Recently she was targeted in a revenge
               | porn incident by someone who had used facial recognition
               | search engines to gather dozens of nude photographs of
               | her before distributing them by name on porn sites.
        
               | scarface_74 wrote:
               | You don't need to find nude photos of anyone anymore if
               | you want to do revenge porn. If you have any picture of
               | someone there are "nudity sites" for years and years ago
               | wasn't there an open source one that was on GitHub?
               | (please no one reply with the name - seriously - no need
               | to give it any publicity on HN).
        
               | wongarsu wrote:
               | Actual nudes are even worse than AI nudes. With AI nudes
               | 
               | - the victim knows they are fake, which provides _some_
               | emotional distance (similar to when actors choose to use
               | prostetics or doubles for a nude scene: the viewer doesn
               | 't know but the actor still feels more comfortable)
               | 
               | - most of them are bad enough that the discerning eye can
               | spot it as an AI image (many chronically online people
               | are scarily good at that)
               | 
               | - they can be proven to be fake because they are just an
               | imagined version of your body ('look, I have a
               | tatoo/mole/scar/blemish here that isn't in the nude, it's
               | obviously fake')
               | 
               | AI nudes are still pretty bad, but services that turn up
               | nude images of you by indexing the internet with face-
               | detection are way worse
        
               | scarface_74 wrote:
               | But most people don't have a discerning eye. I've never
               | used a nudify site. But uploading a picture of me and my
               | wife to Grok and letting it make a 6 second video is
               | already pretty good. On one, the only thing I noticed was
               | that the reflection in a window wasn't following the
               | movement.
               | 
               | Also, if you down sample the quality of the video, it
               | would be even harder to tell it was a fake.
               | 
               | That's neither here nor there. Would you want even a fake
               | nude of you online?
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | > Would you want even a fake nude of you online?
               | 
               | That's neither here nor there, the claim was that
               | deepfakes were a replacement for actual nudes, but you're
               | maybe overlooking that the actual invasiveness is an
               | important part of what the abuser finds appealing about
               | the real thing.
               | 
               | Both are of course terrible, they're both abusive and
               | both are becoming illegal in more and more places, but
               | one is more invasive than the other.
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | I'm not sure your comment is completely necessary. I'm
               | well aware there are such apps--I volunteered for years
               | with a women's charity so I've seen it all--but they are
               | two completely different attack vectors. I "wish" that
               | one could stand in for the other but the reality is
               | abusers just have two new ways to harass women in top of
               | ash the other age old techniques.
               | 
               | I'm also aware there are probably a number of guys on
               | this site who work in that space so just as a message to
               | you if you're reading: You suck.
        
               | everdrive wrote:
               | The private spaces are still at risk. Just one kid needs
               | to claim he was offended and bring a screenshot to a
               | teacher and it's game over for the kids' privacy.
        
               | lukan wrote:
               | "The age of posting on Facebook under your real name with
               | privacy settings public is long gone"
               | 
               | According to my 18 year old niece, FB is just for old
               | people anyway. (Thank god I never really used it). They
               | still use Instagram, though.
               | 
               | Privacy concerns .. are little in general. Hard to be
               | popular, when you avoid the mainstream plattforms. And
               | yes, private groups are on the rise everywhere.
        
               | Izkata wrote:
               | Yeah, kinda happened like a decade-plus ago, when
               | facebook opened up to everyone. I know I stopped using it
               | when my parents (baby boomers) got on there.
        
             | elxr wrote:
             | The entire reason tiktok got so popular is the younger
             | generation (born in the mid 90s to early 2000s) normalizing
             | sharing so much of their lives publicly.
             | 
             | It's given rise to a much richer form of social media and
             | "personal brand" building when done well, IMO. Although I
             | have noticed the tide starting to turn, with the amount of
             | us-vs-them sentiment all over the internet lately.
             | 
             | Honestly, if I was a kid just discovering social media
             | today, I'd be extremely guarded too.
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | I don't think its so much an age thing. Plenty in the younger
         | generations are more careful what they put online than older
         | people, _because_ they have grown up /are growing up in an
         | environment where it's a thing actually happening and they see
         | the problems, and "I (believe I) can legally do this, so I will
         | do it and don't care what you think" is a common attitude in
         | older generations too, combined with lack of belief in the
         | harms.
        
         | Gigachad wrote:
         | I'm Gen Z and I get how someone could be annoyed by this, but
         | it's also just part of life. I get annoyed when people smoke in
         | public or pointlessly honk horns at night. But you have to
         | accept that being around other people means some people do
         | things you aren't a fan of.
        
           | andersa wrote:
           | That's a completely ridiculous comparison. Pointlessly
           | honking or smoking does not create a public record of your
           | activities shared globally without your consent.
        
             | Gigachad wrote:
             | No, it just smells like shit, subjects you to a small risk
             | of cancer, and the other disturbs your sleep resulting in a
             | number of mental and physical health issues.
             | 
             | I'd much rather be shown on YouTube playing a sport.
        
               | ljlolel wrote:
               | Smoking also disturbs sleep
        
               | card_zero wrote:
               | Difficult to do both at once, certainly.
        
           | aeve890 wrote:
           | >but it's also just part of life.
           | 
           | Yeah? Who said that? Any selfish person can say the same
           | about anything. "Yeah my dog shat your lawn but that's just
           | part of life. Deal with it". What's part of life is different
           | for everyone.
           | 
           | >I get annoyed when people smoke in public or pointlessly
           | honk horns at night.
           | 
           | Yeah that's annoying, but neither the smoke or the honk are
           | records of your private life published without consent on the
           | internet, forever. So apples and oranges.
        
             | Gigachad wrote:
             | I personally don't believe that filming airsoft is
             | unreasonable. It's not unreasonable for OP to not like it,
             | but the majority are either fine with it or filming
             | themselves. So it's a situation of either dealing with it,
             | or finding a new group to hang out with.
        
               | delichon wrote:
               | Agree. This isn't about consent when he knows he'll be
               | recorded and participates anyway. Putting it on a consent
               | form wouldn't make it any clearer.
        
               | humanfromearth9 wrote:
               | The problem is not being filmed, when the recording is
               | used in small circles. The problem is when it's published
               | for the world to see.
               | 
               | As a rule of thumb, for my children at school, I refuse
               | any use of their image if it's not for something that was
               | already possible in the eighties.
               | 
               | Publishing school party pictures and videos for the whole
               | world to see was impossible in the 80s, I thus don't
               | allow it and if it happens, it's an invasion of their
               | private life (as per Belgian law at least).
               | 
               | Hanging on the school walls some pictures of the classes,
               | or children, doing some activities: that's OK, it could
               | already be done in the 80s and might be useful for the
               | school community. Publishing these in a printed yearbook:
               | I accept. Publishing it on the Internet in electronic
               | format: this was not possible in the 80s, thus I refuse.
               | 
               | I think this time strikes a nice balance for everyone
               | involved.
               | 
               | By the way, in Belgium, you are allowed to film in public
               | places, but not to misuse the image of others if it's
               | disrespecting their private life, unless for legal
               | requirements.
        
             | op00to wrote:
             | Dog shit is a part of life. Shitty people are a part of
             | life.
        
           | coffeefirst wrote:
           | Smoking in restaurants and bars used to be a part of life,
           | until it wasn't. It took about 5 years for that shift to roll
           | out pretty much everywhere. And it's so much nicer without
           | it.
           | 
           | There's nothing stopping us from saying this sucks, it's
           | socially toxic, and we're not going to put up with it
           | anymore.
        
             | juliangmp wrote:
             | I think that topic worked because a lot of people directly
             | noticed a difference. With the filming it's honestly part
             | of internet culture now. Considering its been illegal in
             | Germany for as long as I remember, it still happens
             | extensively. Especially when you dont know your being
             | filmed.
        
             | reaperducer wrote:
             | _Smoking in restaurants and bars used to be a part of life,
             | until it wasn't._
             | 
             | A couple of years ago I went to a restaurant and for some
             | reason automatically told the hostess, "Two, non-smoking."
             | 
             | She looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my
             | ears.
        
           | Larrikin wrote:
           | Smoking in public has been banned in a number of large cities
           | around the world and so has honking your horn when there is
           | no threat to life.
        
             | xxs wrote:
             | >number of large cities
             | 
             | States usually, most of EU/Europe is banned (but not
             | everywhere).
        
             | lan321 wrote:
             | No threat to life sounds kinda wild.
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | > but it's also just part of life.
           | 
           | It's not, and your two examples are perfect proof of it.
           | 
           | Indoor smoking bans have been implemented in several
           | countries.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans
           | 
           | https://health.ec.europa.eu/tobacco/smoke-free-
           | environments_...
           | 
           | Countries applying the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic only
           | allow honking in two specific situations. In addition, it's
           | culturally dependent.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_horn#Regulation
           | 
           | https://e.vnexpress.net/news/perspectives/readers-
           | views/the-...
           | 
           | Don't assume something is an immutable part of life just
           | because it was in place when you were already born. Change
           | can and does happen.
        
           | _kidlike wrote:
           | your way of thinking shows clearly your lack of comprehension
           | on the subject... you didn't experience the world before the
           | internet, so you think that the internet is "part of life".
           | Let me tell you as someone that helped build it, that it
           | isn't part of life. It's something that we made up, like our
           | ancestors build the railways. Those were neither part of
           | life. Unike the addiction to social media that was carefully
           | engineered by top class psychologists, without anyone
           | realizing. That shouldn't be part of life, but here we are :(
        
         | mothballed wrote:
         | Every airsoft event I've been to has been on private property.
         | 
         | Solution here is to use a private airsoft field then make no
         | filming a condition of entry. If they violate the rule,
         | trespass.
        
           | scotty79 wrote:
           | That's the solution. You don't want to be recorded? Attend
           | "no-recording" event. If there are no such events, tough
           | luck. Market is not obligated to serve your particular needs.
           | If you thing enough people care, organize it yourself.
        
             | soiltype wrote:
             | This comment doesn't engage with the topic at all - you've
             | just used "the free market" as a pass to avoid any
             | meaningful discussion of privacy, consent, and social
             | contracts in the digital age. If your "solution" is
             | literally "tough luck" (we both know "no-recording" airsoft
             | events are extremely unlikely to exist) - what has this
             | added to the conversation?
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | > we both know "no-recording" airsoft events are
               | extremely unlikely to exist
               | 
               | Let's assume it's true. What does it mean? That
               | pretending to ruthlessly murder people while not being
               | recorded is a niche kink and society doesn't owe this guy
               | any special accomodations.
               | 
               | Thanks to the internet, which publishing prowess he
               | abhors, I'm sure, this guy will still be able to find
               | group of fellow degenerates so he can have fun with his
               | exact perversion down to a T.
               | 
               | Or he can relax his requirements and perhaps attend
               | swingers club instead of airsoft, because they don't
               | usually record their hobby. Or keep doing pretend murders
               | but relax his stance about recording it towards more
               | mainstream sensibilities.
               | 
               | Is this sufficient engagement with the topic for you?
               | 
               | Or do I have to spell out that privacy is not special.
               | You aren't organically owed anything when you are with
               | other people, except for what current societal
               | sensibilities dictate.
        
               | fourseventy wrote:
               | Your comment doesn't engage with the topic at all either
               | bro
        
           | mrWiz wrote:
           | It sounds like your solution is to /own/ the private airsoft
           | field, not just use it.
        
         | 2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote:
         | Sounds about right.
         | 
         | These kids have been on camera since they were in the womb. The
         | delivery had a pro videographer. Parents had baby monitors with
         | a video feed, later a nanny cam. Schools had cameras in the
         | classrooms and busses from before first grade. Higher grades
         | onwards all their peers had smartphones and social media
         | accounts.
         | 
         | Some middle aged dude who doesn't want to be on video makes no
         | sense to them, like that weird uncle of yours who in 2010 had
         | no phone or email address.
        
         | squigz wrote:
         | > There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might
         | be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on
         | youtube every single week".
         | 
         | And there's such a focus on the law and expectation of privacy
         | in public places in these comments. There's a huge difference
         | between someone complaining about being recorded in a small
         | hobby community and complaining about being filmed on a public
         | street.
        
         | gms7777 wrote:
         | I'm currently wedding planning and regularly visit a wedding
         | planning forum. I was left flabbergasted the other day when
         | someone posted if it would be ok to ask guests to not post
         | pictures of the couple on social media. They're ok with guests
         | posting pictures of themselves or of the venue and decor, they
         | just don't really want pictures of the bride and groom.
         | 
         | The response ranged from "you can ask but you can't prevent
         | people from posting" to "it'd be rude and inconsiderate to even
         | ask". One person even argued that it would be rude and other
         | people would judge them if they went to a wedding and didn't
         | have a picture of the bride and groom.
         | 
         | I don't think I ever felt the generational divide as acutely as
         | in reading those responses, and I'm not even that old, I had
         | social media when I was in high school.
        
           | siva7 wrote:
           | It could be more that those hanging around on wedding
           | planning forums aren't really representative of the younger
           | generation. If it's a wish of the couple, they should clearly
           | communicate this on the invitation.
        
           | squigz wrote:
           | If someone asks you not to record them _at their own event_ ,
           | and you do, you're an asshole.
        
             | literalAardvark wrote:
             | Not even to not record. Just to treat the pictures as
             | private, which is an entirely reasonable request.
        
             | carlosjobim wrote:
             | A wedding is one of the most fundamentally public events
             | that have ever existed. The purpose is so that as many
             | people as possible should know that these people are taken.
             | 
             | Asking guests to not take photos is such a faux pass that
             | the couple has destroyed their reputation completely.
             | 
             | They can have a quiet and private ceremony instead if they
             | have stage fright.
        
               | watwut wrote:
               | The traditional purpose of the wedding was meeting and
               | joining of families. The "as many people as possible"
               | knowing about it was not a consideration all that much.
               | 
               | > They can have a quiet and private ceremony instead if
               | they have stage fright.
               | 
               | That would be called "a wedding".
        
               | carlosjobim wrote:
               | Of course it was a huge consideration, as adultery was
               | taken very seriously. And still is in some parts of the
               | world.
               | 
               | > That would be called "a wedding".
               | 
               | That would be called a secret wedding, a very popular
               | trope in old romance novels.
        
               | ThrownOffGame wrote:
               | Clandestine weddings have presented a huge problem for
               | Church and State authorities at various points in space
               | and time.
               | 
               | A clandestine wedding would often leave significant doubt
               | about the facts of the ritual, the participants, and
               | their actual state of mind. In most places it really is
               | not legal to conduct a clandestine wedding without strict
               | regulation and some sort of documentation, before and
               | after the fact.
               | 
               | No officiant: invalid. No witnesses: invalid. Prior bond:
               | invalid. Duress or coercion: invalid. These are all
               | really, really important reasons for public ceremonies
               | attended by, essentially, randos off the street.
        
               | t-3 wrote:
               | There's definitely very huge cultural differences that
               | might be getting in the way here. _Many_ wedding
               | traditions explicitly invite all and sundry to attend and
               | witness. Most historical traditions around weddings that
               | I 'm aware of treat them as a community event at the very
               | least, not a private affair involving only two families.
        
               | justinclift wrote:
               | > A wedding is one of the most fundamentally public
               | events that have ever existed.
               | 
               | Not sure why you think that?
               | 
               | Although weddings _can_ be in public places, they don 't
               | have to be and it's quite common for only invited guests
               | (ie not the public) to be present.
        
               | carlosjobim wrote:
               | It's still a public event even if everyone is not
               | invited. English lacks the word to differentiate between
               | "public" as "no secret, out in the open" and "public" as
               | in "free for all and gratis".
               | 
               | In this case we're talking about a public wedding as
               | opposed to a secret wedding.
               | 
               | Thus: A normal wedding with a normal amount of invited
               | guests is one of the most non-secret events to exist.
               | 
               | Asking for no photos is like participating in a big
               | sports event as an athlete and demanding nobody takes
               | photos.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | > Thus: A normal wedding with a normal amount of invited
               | guests is one of the most non-secret events to exist
               | 
               | private !== secret
               | 
               | You seem to have this concept crossed in your thinking.
               | Just because people know about it doesn't make it not
               | private. Try getting into an event at Davos. Try getting
               | into any well known event without an invitation. You'll
               | see just how not public they are.
               | 
               | The fact that people think it is acceptable to post
               | pictures of other people on their social sites says it
               | all. This couple's request is not egregious. Just because
               | you can't imagine not posting something doesn't mean
               | everyone else thinks the same way. This is just another
               | example to me of how few people think of others first,
               | and only ever think about "me me me"
        
               | carlosjobim wrote:
               | > Just because people know about it doesn't make it not
               | private.
               | 
               | That's exactly what I adressed in my comment above.
               | You're explaining to me exactly what I've explained to
               | you.
               | 
               | Public can mean something which has been publicized =
               | made known to the general public. In this case it doesn't
               | mean that everybody is invited.
               | 
               | You have a very hostile tone, for no apparent reason.
               | Feel free to blow off steam if you need to, but try at
               | least to understand the argument I'm making.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | "It's still a public event even if everyone is not
               | invited."
               | 
               | You are not stating the same thing. You are saying that
               | an invite only is not a private event. You've apparently
               | misread the bit you quoted as it is a double negative; ">
               | Just because people know about it doesn't make it not
               | private". Just because people know about a private event
               | does not mean the event is public. Knowledge of the event
               | is not what makes it private. What makes it private is
               | the host's restriction of who can attend.
               | 
               | Also, I'm not hostile. You're being defensive on an
               | indefensible position and not liking the fact you are
               | being called out for that position. There's a difference.
        
               | sdoering wrote:
               | If you only had made the argument you thought you made,
               | but didn't. And then not even made the effort to
               | understand that the point your discussion partner made
               | was actually in stark contrast to your point in the
               | result they were arguing for.
               | 
               | You ended with:
               | 
               | > Asking for no photos is like participating in a big
               | sports event as an athlete and demanding nobody takes
               | photos.
               | 
               | A private, invite only, wedding isn't comparable to a
               | sports event that you described. Because this is by
               | definition public. Why? Because anyone can buy a ticket
               | to that event. That makes it open to the public. Yes, you
               | need a ticket to enter. But it's not invite only.
               | 
               | Imagine a big baseball/football/soccer event. The stadium
               | is packed. Anybody can film to their liking. This is the
               | public part. Now imagine the owners box way at the top.
               | Not one of these humans down in the regular seats will be
               | able to get up there. It's invite only. That makes it
               | private. Even if there are many people in that box.
               | 
               | But the owner (or in case of the wedding the couple
               | getting married) chose who Would be allowed to partake in
               | that event. And so, they also get to make the rules.
               | 
               | If you, with your attitude would be at a private event I
               | was hosting, you wouldn't be there long. Because you
               | still need to learn the difference between public (in
               | theory anybody can attend and the host doesn't get to
               | choose) and private (only the host chooses who can
               | attend).
        
               | taylorius wrote:
               | English lacks the word to differentiate between "public"
               | as "no secret, out in the open" and "public" as in "free
               | for all and gratis".
               | 
               | Try using a pair of words. Publicly announced vs publicly
               | accessible.
        
               | ThrownOffGame wrote:
               | Weddings held in churches have been public with nobody
               | turned away at the door. Perhaps you are thinking of
               | receptions, where invitations are checked, and
               | accountants are eyeing the attendees accordingly.
               | 
               | An impending wedding is usually one of the most
               | publicized events in any city. The banns must be
               | published, typically in a special section of the
               | newspaper. In order to give notice for anyone who may
               | object or know about a prior bond. Also any hint of
               | duress or urgency that may impede free consent. The banns
               | are the actual execution of the ceremonial "callout" you
               | see in films.
               | 
               | The witnesses of a wedding are not optional. The
               | witnesses serve as representatives of the general public.
               | Typically a clandestine wedding would be invalid without
               | witnesses to verify and vouch for the identity, presence,
               | and consent of bride and groom.
               | 
               | Taking photos for verification is sort of after-the-fact,
               | and it would be most unfortunate for the banns to miss
               | the mark until after the ceremony, or the consummation.
               | 
               | But only crazy people would consider a wedding ceremony
               | "private" or "closed to the public" other than "renting
               | an officiant" and flying off to a Caribbean elopement
               | that only your billionaire girlboss bridesmaids can
               | afford.
        
               | GJim wrote:
               | > Weddings held in churches have been public with nobody
               | turned away at the door.
               | 
               | Most ordinary weddings *are* invitation only in Blighty.
               | Both church weddings and secular weddings held at
               | registry offices, town halls and the like.
        
               | ThrownOffGame wrote:
               | You may need to define your terms more precisely.
               | 
               | By "Blighty" are you referring to Great Britain, or a
               | town in NSW, population 326? That seems to be a vast
               | difference!
               | 
               | And I am at a loss to imagine security guards checking
               | invitations at a church door and giving heave-ho to the
               | unworthy. What particular denominations have you polled
               | on this? How many different types of ceremonies have you
               | crashed?
        
               | lostlogin wrote:
               | It's a 326 to 60,000,000 chance they are referring to
               | NSW.
        
               | ThrownOffGame wrote:
               | Do Englishmen frequently refer to "Blighty" in ordinary
               | conversation?
               | 
               | I refer to my homeland as "The States" out of courtesy to
               | those from Canada, UK, Australia, but I had to rack my
               | brains, and Wikipedia, about "Blighty" because it seems
               | archaic, stilted, and arcane in a tech forum.
               | 
               | I've heard England called a lot of things by its
               | citizens, but I was under the impression that "Ol'
               | Blighty" died out with Queen Victoria.
        
               | knorker wrote:
               | I've touristed in several countries where the church was
               | closed because of a wedding.
               | 
               | You are at a loss to imagine something that is extremely
               | common worldwide. Though not "security guards". You don't
               | need security guards, because when a little lady tells
               | you to please come back in an hour and a half, people
               | don't push her aside and scream "freedom!".
        
               | johannes1234321 wrote:
               | > And I am at a loss to imagine security guards checking
               | invitations at a church door and giving heave-ho to the
               | unworthy.
               | 
               | Especially with churches in most cases nobody will be
               | shown the door especially as in (Christian) church
               | tradition the wedding is before God and the community,
               | which traditionally is the village. Nonetheless many
               | cultures will see it as somewhat private. Especially the
               | reception or a non-church ceremony.
        
               | gms7777 wrote:
               | In the US this is generally true as well. It's not that
               | there will be security at the door checking invitations,
               | but it's be very rude to show up to a wedding ceremony
               | you weren't invited to.
        
               | Braxton1980 wrote:
               | I think he was talking about weddings from historical
               | perspective. Like, everyone needs to know the couple are
               | married (taken) and through this public knowledge the
               | marriage is confirmed.
        
               | patmcc wrote:
               | Historically at least, it's not that weddings are in
               | public places, but that they're inherently a performance
               | for the community. Like the reason for having a wedding
               | is to make a commitment publicly in front of your friends
               | and family. That doesn't mean it needs to be open to all
               | who want to wander in, but it's strange to think of it as
               | a _secret_ event.
               | 
               | I feel like it's pretty strange (and mildly rude) to
               | insist no one take/post photos of a wedding, and also
               | _very_ rude to take /post photos when asked not to.
        
               | triceratops wrote:
               | > Asking guests to not take photos
               | 
               | I think they asked guests not to _post_ photos of the
               | couple.
        
               | bluecheese452 wrote:
               | This is one of the weirdest takes I have ever heard.
        
               | hamdingers wrote:
               | > A wedding is one of the most fundamentally public
               | events that have ever existed.
               | 
               | Important context since it seems you have never been to a
               | wedding: they are almost all invite-only.
        
               | hahn-kev wrote:
               | So if you have a quiet and private ceremony is it ok to
               | ask people who come to that not to take pictures?
        
               | seb1204 wrote:
               | Yes, why not?
        
               | basisword wrote:
               | >> Asking guests to not take photos is such a faux pass
               | that the couple has destroyed their reputation
               | completely.
               | 
               | The day is not about you. Just like people are free to
               | exclude children from weddings, if they ask you not to
               | take photos and you take umbrage at that, you need to
               | take a hard look at yourself. It's. Not. About. You.
        
               | carlosjobim wrote:
               | Almost every couple manage to arrange their wedding
               | without any unusual rules and demands. So most people
               | seem to have taken your advice at heart. My advice to you
               | is trying to make your argument without tired and boring
               | insults such as "take a hard look at yourself". People
               | have different opinions and perspectives, you can only
               | accept that.
               | 
               | I've never made any strange rules for guests when I host,
               | and I've politely declined the very rare cases when I've
               | received such an invite. Because I know it's not about
               | me.
        
               | basisword wrote:
               | You're free to dislike the request of the couple. I have
               | no argument with that. People can be over the top. But I
               | can't imagine skipping the wedding of someone I care
               | about because I don't want to adhere to a simple request
               | like not taking photos.
        
               | patmcc wrote:
               | I think this is a strange and very modern conception of
               | weddings. Weddings are not just about the bride and
               | groom; they're about the bride and groom and the
               | community of their friends and family. That third part is
               | a key component! It's why we invite people to weddings,
               | so they can witness and help the couple in making and
               | keeping the commitment of marriage.
        
               | basisword wrote:
               | True, of course, but they're the ones spending a fortune
               | on it. Not only so they can have a memorable day but so
               | their guests enjoy it too. Seems fair that if they ask
               | you to do something really really easy like not take
               | photos, you do that.
        
             | blitzar wrote:
             | Anyone breaking the rules would be banned from my next
             | wedding.
        
             | patmcc wrote:
             | Yes, that's an asshole move.
             | 
             | I think it's also pretty weird to ask people not to take
             | photos though.
             | 
             | edit: "no photos during the ceremony" is different than "no
             | photos the entire event", obviously
        
               | seb1204 wrote:
               | I think the request was to not post them to social media.
        
           | physicsguy wrote:
           | This gets asked at basically every wedding I've been to in
           | the UK i.e. there is a professional photographer, please
           | don't take photos of the bride and groom in the church and it
           | still gets ignored. At my own wedding, one of the guests (not
           | even someone invited to the whole day, just a neighbour of my
           | wife's parents who knew her growing up) is leaning out of the
           | aisle with their phone taking photos ruining a load of
           | photos.
           | 
           | It's incredibly frustrating. I also think it's really strange
           | that when something happens in public, the default isn't to
           | look to see if the person isn't OK anymore, it's to pull out
           | a camera phone and start filming.
        
             | GJim wrote:
             | > please don't take photos of the bride and groom in the
             | church and it still gets ignored
             | 
             | Counterpoint
             | 
             | I've never known such requests be ignored here in Blighty.
             | Ditto requests not to upload photos to social media.
        
             | Kye wrote:
             | I've seen posts from wedding photographers who would pass
             | around cheap/older cameras to guests. This lets people
             | scratch the shutterbug itch while avoiding all the problems
             | that come with a room full of people trying to get a shot.
        
             | gms7777 wrote:
             | The thing I've seen at a few weddings recently is that
             | right after the processional, they have a period of like 30
             | seconds where they allow everyone to take a picture of the
             | couple, then phones away for the rest of the ceremony. I'm
             | sure it's not 100% effective, but it does seem to scratch
             | the itch for most people. I think also by calling such
             | explicit attention to the rule at the beginning of the
             | ceremony, it makes it seem ever more rude to violate it
             | later.
        
             | Braxton1980 wrote:
             | Unrelated to this post but what does it mean when a person
             | isn't invited to the whole day?
        
               | gms7777 wrote:
               | I've been to weddings that had an "open" ceremony and a
               | closed reception. This has generally been at a church,
               | where the wedding itself is announced to the whole church
               | community, but then the reception is a more limited
               | number of family and friends.
               | 
               | More commonly though, I've been to weddings where they
               | had a small private ceremony (just the couple, officiant,
               | and a handful of family), and then a large reception for
               | everyone in the evening.
        
               | aerostable_slug wrote:
               | They're not invited to the ceremony & wedding breakfast
               | (which often isn't actually breakfast), just the evening
               | reception. Unlike US weddings, the evening event is
               | generally not the most expensive part of the affair.
        
               | physicsguy wrote:
               | In weddings in the U.K. (or at least in England) anyone
               | can attend a wedding - legally they have to be open.
               | 
               | It's therefore not uncommon if it's local for more
               | distant friends of family, neighbours, etc. to pop along
               | to the ceremony at invitation of the couple or their
               | parents as a result, but not to be invited to the party
               | part. Sometimes older guests will just come to ceremony
               | too.
        
             | sarchertech wrote:
             | I noticed you said "the whole day" I went a wedding once
             | where the bride was from the UK. They said it was a
             | "British style" wedding. It was almost exactly like an
             | American wedding except that everything lasted twice as
             | long (cocktail hour was 2 hours etc...).
             | 
             | I could never find out if this was a common thing in the UK
             | or not.
        
               | TRiG_Ireland wrote:
               | I believe that it's uncommon in the USA to invite people
               | to part of a wedding, but it's common in the UK. "Not
               | someone invited to the whole day" implies a second-tier
               | guest, who's been invited to the ceremony and the after-
               | party, but not to the meal.
               | 
               | The ceremony is technically open to the public in any
               | case, usually.
        
           | insane_dreamer wrote:
           | I attended my first GenZ wedding a couple of months ago and
           | they (someone on behalf of the couple) announced this
           | request. It applied specifically to the wedding itself, not
           | the post-wedding party (at the same venue).
           | 
           | Certainly the first time it had ever come up, but it made
           | sense to me. If you're invited to someone's wedding, it's
           | only natural to respect their wishes.
           | 
           | Not everything needs to be documented online!
        
           | theyknowitsxmas wrote:
           | Good luck with that. People like the spectacle, do it in
           | court with a casual dinner, nobody takes pictures.
        
           | sdoering wrote:
           | Anyone finding it rude would find themselves not only on the
           | "formerly invited and definitely not welcome" list. But also
           | on the "good riddance, it was nice having known you once"
           | list.
           | 
           | People with such little respect for boundaries are just not
           | welcome in my life.
        
             | aerostable_slug wrote:
             | That person might be close family, and many folks aren't as
             | ready to go full no-contact with their mother's sister or
             | whomever it might be.
        
           | abe94 wrote:
           | I went to a middle eastern wedding recently and they gave
           | everyone these phone pouches to keep their phones in that
           | were locked for the event's duration.
           | 
           | Honestly made the whole event better
        
         | latexr wrote:
         | > I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that
         | photos aren't.
         | 
         | I'd argue photos can be _more_ invasive. If someone makes a 10
         | minute video and you're somewhere in the background for 5
         | seconds, no one may ever notice. Furthermore, with compression
         | artefacts for motion you may become difficult to recognise.
         | 
         | But if you're in a photo, people will be looking at it for
         | longer and are thus most likely to notice you and possibly zoom
         | in on you with all the quality the static sensor provides.
         | 
         | Furthermore, photographs have greater potential to create false
         | narratives. A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can
         | easily make you look like a creep or weirdo when a video
         | would've made it clear you were just turning your head or
         | starting a yawn.
        
           | filoeleven wrote:
           | > A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can easily make
           | you look like a creep or weirdo when a video would've made it
           | clear you were just turning your head or starting a yawn.
           | 
           | Taking a screenshot from a video for exactly this reason is
           | incredibly common. Look at any photograph accompanying a
           | political story about a figure from "the other party".
           | 
           | See for example this Reddit post about the "triggered" meme
           | origin: > Ironically, if you ever get a chance to see the
           | video of this incident, this woman and the man she's speaking
           | with are actually having a polite discussion. But... She has
           | very animated facial expressions and the photographer just
           | happened to catch this frame at an inopportune moment.
           | 
           | So it seems to me that since a video is simply thousands of
           | photographs with a soundtrack, video is strictly more
           | invasive than photography.
           | 
           | https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/adyt1d/comment/hvp04.
           | ..
        
             | latexr wrote:
             | It is precisely because the video exists that you have the
             | opportunity to correct the misconception, which is exactly
             | what happened with the discussion in your example. Had it
             | been a photograph, that context would have been lost and no
             | one could refute it.
             | 
             | The compression artefacts help there, because they make it
             | very clear this was taken from a video, meaning one should
             | look up the source because it probably exists.
             | 
             | That is a perfect example of how a photograph could be
             | worse than a video.
        
         | agedclock wrote:
         | It is not a generational thing at all.
         | 
         | There were plenty of TV shows centred around candid camera /
         | security camera / home video footage back in the 1980s/1990s
         | well before digital cameras or the internet was ubiquitous.
        
           | card_zero wrote:
           | Or look at newsreels, or news reports from ... any time up to
           | the 2010s. Obviously people's faces weren't blurred before we
           | had the tech to do it. It's some entirely new, modern
           | prissiness. It screws up the documenting of social history
           | when you can't see any faces. There's been an internet fad
           | for restored film of street scenes from 1915 or so: imagine
           | if all the faces were blurred to protect the privacy of
           | people who no longer care, that would suck.
        
           | mrguyorama wrote:
           | Watch any home VHS video from the 80s. Half the people the
           | person holding the camera points it at say "stop filming me"
           | 
           | There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.
        
             | agedclock wrote:
             | > Watch any home VHS video from the 80s. Half the people
             | the person holding the camera points it at say "stop
             | filming me"
             | 
             | I suspect a lot of that is more to do with them being
             | worried about their how they look on the film than actually
             | being on the film itself.
             | 
             | > There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.
             | 
             | Of course there are going to be people uncomfortable with
             | it. I am. The issue is that it isn't ever going to go
             | backwards and being video recorded in public by amateurs
             | has been around for almost 40 years. The ship has sailed a
             | long time ago.
        
           | mminer237 wrote:
           | I mean, I feel like the mindset of privacy and no one can
           | have photos of me is a fairly recent phenomenon. Parents or
           | grandparents definitely had books photos of everyone
           | important to them and probably would have found it weird for
           | someone to ask not to be photographed.
        
             | Telaneo wrote:
             | Those photos would have been taken with the understanding
             | that they woupd have ended up in Grandma's album, maybe
             | flipped through a few times, but never spread far and wide.
             | The stakes change quite a lot if those photos can be
             | published.
        
         | lenors wrote:
         | I'm from Gen Z and the idea of being filmed and published
         | online without my consent sounds like a nightmare. It is my
         | belief that it's an invasion of privacy (even in a public
         | space) and questionable from a (cyber)security perspective. In
         | France we got the Droit a l'image (Right to the image) which
         | makes it illegal to post images or videos of people online
         | without their consent, so that may be why that feels very
         | strange to me.
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | And yet it happens thousands (or more) times a day. Even in
           | the US there is the idea of publicity rights--I can't use an
           | easily identifiable photo of you in an ad or other marketing
           | materials. But posting on Flickr or wherever where someone
           | hasn't shoved a camera in your face but you're easily
           | identifiable?
           | 
           | Happens all the time.
        
           | hdgvhicv wrote:
           | Aside from the Eiffel Tower what actually benefits from that
           | right?
           | 
           | In many ways an unenforced right is worse than no right at
           | all.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | The Eiffel Tower situation is a somewhat complicated
             | matter. You can (of course) publish a photo of the tower on
             | your social media account. But the nighttime illumination
             | is apparently copyrighted and it's not clear to me if the
             | prohibition about publishing extends beyond commercial
             | purposes anyway.
             | 
             | I agree with your broader point. Recognizable people get
             | their photos published on social media every second of
             | every day and, while someone can probably find an outlier
             | example where someone got prosecuted for doing so, it's
             | incredibly rare at the least--even in countries where it's
             | technically a violation of some law.
        
               | sdoering wrote:
               | In German, we also have a "Right to the image". It is
               | based on our constitutional rights.
               | 
               | But, if you are a public figure, as in you are a media
               | person, a celebrity or politician. As in you are actually
               | searching for publicity, the situation changes. Here the
               | beauty of shades of grey and work for lawyers begins.
               | 
               | Because while you have lost the clear cut black or white,
               | there are still things that will get the person
               | publishing into trouble.
               | 
               | When I started my career in online journalism this was a
               | very long discussed topic while we had our course at the
               | Academy for Journalism in Hamburg.
               | 
               | But for ordinary people, the right to your image is a
               | quite strong protection.
        
           | Theodores wrote:
           | France - where the 'Society of the Spectacle' was written by
           | Guy Debord in the 1960s, where he predicted late stage
           | capitalism as being mediated by images, so rather than
           | reality, human existence and relationships between people are
           | 'mediated by images'.
           | 
           | This is at the heart of what is going on. Society of the
           | Spectacle is not an easy read, but it most definitely is
           | pertinent to what is going on. Instagram is the final boss!
        
         | weinzierl wrote:
         | It is primarily a cultural one. You won't find many countries
         | with the _" well, if you don't want to be in photos published
         | online, don't be in public spaces"_ opinion outside the anglo-
         | saxon world.
         | 
         | The UK is a special place because culturally it belongs to the
         | anglo-saxon sphere but legally it inherited the strict EU
         | personality rights.
        
           | OJFord wrote:
           | > The UK is a special place because culturally it belongs to
           | the anglo-saxon sphere
           | 
           | I hear US culture is fairly dominant in the USA, too?
        
             | detaro wrote:
             | you should read the entire sentence before replying
        
               | OJFord wrote:
               | I did, have again, and still have no idea what you mean.
        
               | detaro wrote:
               | It's special because both parts apply to the UK, not just
               | the one you quoted.
        
               | OJFord wrote:
               | And I said nothing to the contrary? I just thought it was
               | funny to describe the UK as 'part of the Anglo-Saxon
               | sphere', like Rome is 'among the cities with Roman
               | influence'.
        
               | kgwgk wrote:
               | >> The platypus is a special animal because it lays eggs
               | but nurses its young with milk.
               | 
               | > I hear chickens lay eggs, too?
        
               | OJFord wrote:
               | No. I just thought it was amusing/redundant to describe
               | the UK as among the Anglo-Saxon sphere; your mock example
               | is irrelevant - the point of mine was that 'US culture
               | dominates the USA' is obvious, I wasn't just... I don't
               | even understand what you think I was doing, just stating
               | some random other fact?
        
         | ____mr____ wrote:
         | I don't even understand how photos are less invasive of
         | privacy. I try not to be too weird about it, but overall I
         | dislike getting photos taken of me. Why should I put up with
         | that if I want to participate in a hobby?
        
         | Applejinx wrote:
         | I'm a youtuber to support my programming project, and I see
         | many people in my situation being a lot more shy about doing
         | that. It's a lot of work to do it properly and takes dedicated
         | attention to not have your parasocial community turn sour or
         | vicious on you: it's no joke.
         | 
         | I wonder how much of this is people expecting that ANY media
         | presence will throw them into the troubles people experience
         | when they have all the media presence. I know if I blow up big
         | enough (not much of a threat right now) that someone will come
         | to hurt me, no matter how I am. That's not about me, it's about
         | statistics. If I blew up that big I could probably afford
         | security...
         | 
         | I think some people assume you'll be confronted with that sort
         | of problem right away just by appearing on youtube etc. Sure
         | you will... eventually. Or if you're staggeringly unlucky.
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | From a professional perspective, I never worried much and I'm
           | pretty sure it helped me. But I totally understand if there
           | were/are people who are very concerned about putting
           | themselves "out there" when there is at least a remote
           | possibility of some offhand remark or paragraph costing them
           | their job.
        
         | jmuguy wrote:
         | I'm also old enough to remember not having to worry about this
         | and what irritates me more is - I don't want to be part of
         | someone else's "content".
        
         | eloisant wrote:
         | It is very much cultural. In the 2000's I moved from Japan
         | where they're very strict about public filming/taking pictures
         | (it's something you don't do, period) to the US where people
         | were uploading photos to Flickr and tagging people there.
         | Completely different worlds, and we're not even talking about
         | Gen Z because none of them were old enough to be even
         | teenagers.
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | That seems weird to me. I remember in the pre-smartphone days
           | when Japanese were the nationality whose tourists were
           | snapping pictures everywhere and group photos in business
           | settings was the norm when Americans at least were sort of
           | thinking weird but whatever.
        
         | ryandrake wrote:
         | I think there is an _age range_ where all this  "posting" has
         | been normalized, but outside of that generation it's not
         | appreciated. I'm old enough that this kind of shit is still
         | taboo to me, and I know my young kid and her friends are all
         | deeply aware of who's being photographed, and what to share
         | online and what not to. All the kids seem to deliberately
         | distinguish between photo/video of objects and of people around
         | them, when they go to post things. They're definitely aware and
         | careful. It's this middle age range of maybe 25-45 year olds
         | (?) where a sizable number of people are just careless or even
         | accept casual posting of other people's photos and video.
        
         | lynx97 wrote:
         | My theory is that those "you just have to accept it" people are
         | unwilling or unable to confront their own wrongdoing. Out of
         | principle, and also triggered by the recent "AI uses all data
         | available" situation I've tried to voice my disagreement when
         | someone was talking a foto of me. The reactions were all around
         | the same: Nobody was willing to just say "Sorry, of course
         | thats your choice". _everyone_ had some lame excuse or was
         | trying to pressure me socially.  "But my brother is deaf and
         | just wanted to show it to his friends". As if I care if someone
         | has a disability or not, especially since I am blind myself.
         | 
         | To sum it up, in my experience, people are just not willing to
         | respect your boundaries if you make them aware they overstepped
         | yours. They will always go for some excuse, instead of just
         | accepting they erred.
        
         | tiahura wrote:
         | I think the generational fracture may cut the other way. My
         | impression, consistent with the polls, is that the younger
         | generations are much more willing to embrace authoritarianism
         | when it advances their personal values and interests. They
         | think that the threat of violence from the state to prevent
         | others from forming an opinion of them based on information
         | they don't control is perfectly acceptable. Laissez-faire is
         | passe.
        
         | suyash wrote:
         | Sadly the problem is only going to become bigger with upcoming
         | smart glasses once masses adopt it, everyone will be recording
         | each other without consent.
        
           | lotsofpulp wrote:
           | In the event of litigation (in court or in the public
           | sphere), one would be at a disadvantage if they don't have
           | video of their side.
           | 
           | Like how you should have a dash cam for your side in a
           | vehicle collision. Although, maybe sufficiently convincing
           | fake videos will make it a moot point in the future.
        
           | scotty79 wrote:
           | I think it'll just desensitize people. Long time ago a kiss
           | on a movie theatre screen was enough to make people protest
           | and leave in indignation. Now everybody is few taps away from
           | hardcore porn all the time and not many people care.
        
         | brudgers wrote:
         | _you risk becoming a side character in someone elses '
         | parasocial relationship_
         | 
         | Your perception of this as a risk probably suggests cultural
         | and/or generational differences.
         | 
         | But for the actual circumstances of the fine article's author,
         | video is a norm of the community the author seeks to join.
         | Within the community, video is an established practice and
         | making a video rig signifies a higher degree of commitment to
         | the community.
         | 
         | Not accepting the use of video, is at least a partial rejection
         | of the community values. Accepting video is a tradeoff for
         | participating in community practices. The _practical_
         | alternative is usually to find or build an alternative
         | community. [0]
         | 
         | To put it another way, joining the bird watching community
         | means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds
         | for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core
         | community activity.
         | 
         | [0] sure logically it is possible to change a community, but
         | marginal members (e.g. new, casual, low status) are rarely in
         | position to overturn established practice and run the risk of
         | being set up for the agendas of established members.
        
           | brailsafe wrote:
           | > To put it another way, joining the bird watching community
           | means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds
           | for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core
           | community activity.
           | 
           | How do you define community? Seems like a bit rigid of a
           | implied requirement.
           | 
           | The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some
           | documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me, and it's
           | definitely not rare, but an individual is perfectly within
           | their right to go about engagement in their hobby with other
           | people who have similar interests on whichever terms they
           | like, which seems like community to me, as long as some form
           | of commonly understood communication is present.
           | 
           | Likewise the people who do want to establish certain
           | requirements, gates if you will, have the right to do so, but
           | not as a whole. Country clubs don't and shouldn't have
           | exclusive domain over golf, and I don't give the slightest
           | fuck about recording myself at the bouldering gym or
           | skateboarding, but that shouldn't prevent me from being part
           | of either culture or community unless a specific club within
           | those forms around publication.
           | 
           | I'd concede that it's possible that a community could exist
           | in such a way that the act of documenting is the exclusive
           | basis for which people are able to communicate at all, in
           | which case perhaps that defines the boundary, but again it
           | seems like it would be rare for that to be so pervasive as to
           | encapsulate the entirety of a hobby.
        
             | brudgers wrote:
             | The birdwatching community is similar to a collecting
             | community insofar as seeing a bird is like having it in
             | your collection and going out to birdwatch is like hunting
             | items to add to your collection.
             | 
             | Lists and records fill the role a physical collection plays
             | in collecting hobbies.
             | 
             |  _The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or
             | some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me_
             | 
             | Usually that simply means a community is not for you and
             | the birdwatching hobby is not for me either...though I have
             | driven a few hundred miles out of my way to see the
             | California Condors at Vermillion Cliffs (I didn't write it
             | down).
             | 
             | On the other hand, not-for-me just means not for me to me.
             | I can see why people do it and it is pleasant to ask them
             | what they are looking at and congratulate them if they tell
             | me it's a lifer...
             | 
             | Anyway, birds fascinate me and I am blessed to live along
             | the Pacific Flyway in a location with abundant wildlife and
             | natural areas outside my door (it's why I sometimes chat
             | with birders). But it only took me one look at what the
             | birdwatching community values to know it was not for me
             | (same as most religions, political movements, ideologies,
             | etc.).
        
               | brailsafe wrote:
               | That all sounds fantastic, I'm sure I'd find that pretty
               | engaging and I enjoy making small collections of hobbyist
               | interests and going on adventures in-pursuit of niche
               | experiences as well.
               | 
               | I wasn't so much curious about the mechanics of the
               | hobby, although it is interesting, rather what defines it
               | as a "community". Like what qualifies or doesn't qualify
               | as being in or out of the "community"? If I make a list
               | of birds I've seen, and don't share it with anyone, am in
               | a community? If I share a photo on Instagram and mention
               | it in passing to my close friend, am I in a community
               | then? Do I need to be on some common platform,
               | communicating at all about other bird lists? My
               | grandfather kind of has a similar hobby with planes, but
               | I'm sure he doesn't think of himself as part of a global
               | community of plane enthusiasts, yet his local wood
               | carving community is a place he goes and talks to people
               | he knows by name and has spent years around, evidently a
               | community with the requirement that you're into wood
               | carving
        
         | al_borland wrote:
         | I find photos and videos to both be invasive and unwanted.
         | 
         | I've been a member and gyms where the owner will start taking
         | videos and pictures of the class that ultimately end up on
         | social media or in marketing material. I'm not ok with it and I
         | get incredible uncomfortable when I'm in some weird position to
         | do an exercise and a camera starts heading my way.
         | 
         | Any time an unwanted camera is around there is some level of
         | anxiety that starts creeping up. Maybe this is, in part, why so
         | many of today's youth have anxiety disorders. How can anyone
         | just relax if they have to worry about anything they might say
         | or do being on camera, and then posted for the world to see.
         | 
         | I was at a party not too long ago where most people were 45+,
         | and some kids that were too young to have phones. No one was on
         | their phones, and people seemed free to dance and whatever. The
         | second one person took out their phone to take a picture/video
         | the vibe shifted drastically, and the owner of the house told
         | them to put it away, so people could go back to enjoying
         | themselves instead of being worried about an embarrassing
         | picture of video that might surface later.
         | 
         | I've seen so many good times destroyed by cameras.
        
           | lynx97 wrote:
           | I am assuming you have no good alternatives regarding your
           | gym? Because if you feel uncomfortable with the behaviour of
           | the owners, you should really vote with your wallet.
        
             | al_borland wrote:
             | I don't go there anymore. The owner has been texting me on
             | and off to try and get me to go back. I've been looking for
             | other options, but am having trouble finding one that looks
             | decent for me.
             | 
             | It's a bit of a paradox. When I'm looking for a gym, I find
             | pictures incredibly helpful, but I don't want them taken of
             | me as a member there.
        
               | detaro wrote:
               | Most gyms it shouldn't be that hard to take useful
               | pictures without people in them though? Do pictures of
               | classes add anything?
        
               | aleph_minus_one wrote:
               | > Most gyms it shouldn't be that hard to take useful
               | pictures without people in them though?
               | 
               | Or much simpler: when the photos of a class are taken,
               | simply ask beforehand who disagrees with being
               | photographed and/or photos containing him/her made
               | public, so that for those few minutes where the photos
               | are taken, these people can get out of the picture.
        
               | anigbrowl wrote:
               | Better yet, offer a free class to people who don't mind
               | being photographed (of whom there are many). 'Being part
               | of a company's marketing' isn't something that should be
               | included in the price of a product or service.
        
               | worik wrote:
               | Better still, pay people for the use of their image in
               | advertising
               | 
               | Always
        
               | collingreen wrote:
               | Right? Somehow we've let corporations (which arent even a
               | real life thing! They are just groups of people!) be
               | entitled to huge swaths of our lives. You want to use my
               | image for your marketing because you don't want to pay
               | models? Gtfo of here! What an insane thing to do to
               | customers.
        
               | saalweachter wrote:
               | I feel like if you announced your "picture day", you'd
               | also get a subset of the gym members who wanted to show
               | up that day looking their best. (And a subset of jokers
               | who want to see if they can sneak their way into the
               | marketing material so that there's a picture of someone
               | exercising in a tuxedo or whatever if you look closely
               | enough.)
        
           | landl0rd wrote:
           | Classes are a different story, but at least for the legion of
           | would-be gymfluencers that show up in gyms frequented by us
           | zoomers, there's an easy solution: tell them to please not
           | film you. If they don't comply, mess up their video.
           | Deliberately walk across the camera. Deliberately get in the
           | way. Take the machine against which they're resting a cell
           | phone and start using it. Make funny faces. Whatever.
           | 
           | More people should understand you are no more morally
           | obligated to behave sociably toward those exhibiting
           | antisocial behavior than you are to stay your hand from a man
           | who hits you.
           | 
           | Then there are those who film in the locker rooms which
           | arguably should be reason to ban them from said gyms.
           | 
           | Imo these types should stick to "influencer gyms". They
           | exist. Alphaland in Texas is a great example; a friend of
           | mine frequented it as she started her bodybuilding page.
           | Worked great for her. Just stay the hell out of the "normal
           | people" gyms.
        
             | Loughla wrote:
             | The problem with acting antisocial during someone else's
             | filming is that they are then free to blow you up with
             | whatever lies they feel like, just because they're angry.
             | People get their lives ruined by doing that.
             | 
             | That's where my anxiety comes in when I see people filming.
             | I am MASSIVELY aware of my face, body, and genuinely
             | everything about myself when I run into that, because I do
             | not want to be tried in the court of public opinion.
        
       | nomercy400 wrote:
       | Private site. The event site could hold events where cameras are
       | forbidden. There are other examples like spas or swimming pools
       | where cameras are forbidden.
        
       | Ekaros wrote:
       | I think conversation gets more telling if you include some more
       | protected groups like children. And then more slightly more
       | intimate places, like say pools or beaches and expand it to
       | proper zoom and telephoto lenses.
       | 
       | Is there still in those case no expectation of privacy? Where
       | exactly is the line? Maybe changing rooms and toilets are not
       | public places anymore... But is the line really that clear?
        
         | elric wrote:
         | I encounter people taking pictures, making video calls, and
         | recording insta/tiktok/whatever videos in the gym changing room
         | all the god damned time. I keep telling people to stop, but not
         | once has anyone responded with "oh sorry". A belligerent "why?"
         | is the most polite response I've received.
        
       | formerly_proven wrote:
       | > I occasionally see people saying "well, if you don't want to be
       | in photos published online, don't be in public spaces".
       | 
       | > This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should
       | be able to exist in society, including going outside one's own
       | home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
       | 
       | In the US the legal doctrine is no privacy at all in public
       | spaces (a lot more expansive than that actually), that's probably
       | where those comments come from.
        
         | swiftcoder wrote:
         | There are plenty of US states with two-party consent for
         | recording (audio, mostly, but in some cases video as well)
        
         | octo888 wrote:
         | Ok but it's a UK domain talking about an activity in the UK
        
       | trollbridge wrote:
       | I'm not nearly as strict: I just prefer that pictures of my kids
       | not be uploaded to social media (or cloud photo hosting services,
       | etc.)
       | 
       | Regardless of that, some strangers think it's fine to take
       | pictures of them in public... sometimes they ask first, sometimes
       | they don't.
        
         | mcv wrote:
         | In Netherland schools have to ask for permission to use photos
         | of your children on social media or elsewhere. I have no idea
         | if the same holds true for non-schools.
        
       | simon_void wrote:
       | this is exactly about what is legal or not. If I remember
       | correctly in Germany there's a distinction about people being the
       | focus of a photograph or people in the background. You can e.g.
       | publish a picture of a public place without asking everybody on
       | that place for their consent. Another corner case would be
       | filming police brutality. What if the police officers in question
       | wouldn't like to be photographed being brutal!? Local laws do
       | apply.
        
         | andersa wrote:
         | This law badly needs to be updated to account for the fact that
         | photo/video resolutions have massively increased since it was
         | written, and "not the focus of a picture" is no longer enough
         | to prevent you from being identified/tracked in the picture,
         | which was the original intent.
        
           | ipaddr wrote:
           | Have you seen the cameras on cell phones compared to the
           | cameras of yesterday? Resolutions are up but faked through
           | software. A 640 picture from 2004 can be enlarged with
           | clearer detail compared to a 2000px of today always looking
           | sharp but never truly capturing a clear picture.
        
       | balderdash wrote:
       | I think the laws around this are fairly antiquated. People should
       | clearly have the right to photograph in public, however, I
       | strongly believe that should someone take someone else's
       | photograph they shouldn't need their consent to post the photo
       | publicly or monetize it in anyway. Obviously, there should be
       | some limited car outs like public servants in the commission of
       | their duties, legitimate news organizations, use in court etc.
       | 
       | Edit: I don't think k posting a photo on a private social media
       | profile / group chat would count as public, but rather anything
       | the general public has access to.
        
         | AlecSchueler wrote:
         | The laws in Switzerland are actually what you're describing.
        
           | sandblast wrote:
           | In the whole EU, I think.
        
             | AlecSchueler wrote:
             | No, doesn't work like that in plenty of places in the EU,
             | and additionally Switzerland is not in the EU.
        
               | sandblast wrote:
               | I don't think I implied it was, but would you mind
               | sharing examples?
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Czechia etc etc.
        
               | sandblast wrote:
               | What exactly doesn't work like that in the countries you
               | mentioned?
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | Why did you say "in the whole EU, I think?" It seemed to
               | imply you grasped the context of the conversation
               | already, but now the thread has taken what feels like a
               | bizarre turn in a recursive direction.
        
               | sandblast wrote:
               | You claim that it is not the case, so I would like you to
               | point out which of these aspects is different in one of
               | these countries. Do you claim it's not allowed to
               | photograph others in public without their explicit
               | consent in Czech Republic, for example?
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | No, read back on the thread. The person imagined a kind
               | of law that limited public photography except for cases
               | of preventing crime etc. I said it works like that in
               | Switzerland. You said also in the rest of the EU, and I'm
               | pointing out it does not work that way in the rest of the
               | EU, because countries like Czechia are far more lax about
               | public photography than Switzerland or even The
               | Netherlands.
        
               | sandblast wrote:
               | > People should clearly have the right to photograph in
               | public
               | 
               | > should someone take someone else's photograph they
               | should need their consent to post the photo publicly
               | 
               | > I don't think posting a photo on a private social media
               | profile / group chat would count as public
               | 
               | That all sounds pretty similar to what I know from EU
               | countries. Of course, there are also exceptions like
               | photographing groups of people etc., but I don't think
               | that goes the spirit of the balderdash's concept.
        
         | sandblast wrote:
         | I think you meant "they should need their consent to post",
         | right?
        
           | balderdash wrote:
           | Yes I did
        
       | setterle wrote:
       | I play soccer. There are ways to bring people down a peg if they
       | do anything flashy, disrespectful, etc. We're not breaking legs
       | of course, but you'll feel it the next morning if you've been a
       | douchebag to your opponent.
       | 
       | In this case, _you have a gun_. Surely you can find a way to ruin
       | this guy 's day. He won't have much interesting footage if the
       | other team agrees to end his shit as soon as the game starts like
       | you would the flashy winger with fluorescent boots trying rainbow
       | flicks.
        
       | ionwake wrote:
       | I'm not sure if anyone has missed the delicious irony that
       | airsoft is one of the rare sports where faces and thus identity
       | is covered , pretty much the whole time. I don't think I've ever
       | even seen a human face or anything identifiable in ANY airsoft
       | video I've ever seen.
       | 
       | So while the author makes an interesting point about surveillance
       | I can't tell if he's being ironic on purpose.
        
       | parsimo2010 wrote:
       | I don't know about the UK, but in the USA the idea of "if you
       | don't want to be in photos published online, don't be in public
       | spaces" is pretty regularly upheld in courts. You don't have an
       | expectation of privacy in a public space.
       | 
       | You might have some recourse if another person's video singles
       | you out, but just being one of the several people in an airsoft
       | video, where your face is partially obscured anyway, isn't much
       | of a legal standing.
        
         | cs02rm0 wrote:
         | > You don't have an expectation of privacy in a public space.
         | 
         | Pretty similar in the UK.
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | Yea, and in this case unless the property owner says no filming
         | said person would have no legs to stand on.
         | 
         | In most 'fun' events like this with random members of the
         | public said venue has a monetary interest in ensuring people
         | can film in the vast majority of the cases. People go there to
         | have fun, and sharing videos of said fun is but one more way to
         | ensure they get future customers.
        
       | rs186 wrote:
       | > well, if you don't want to be in photos published online, don't
       | be in public spaces
       | 
       | That's the correct answer. End of the story.
       | 
       | It is our consensus of what "public space" means and one can do
       | with it (which varies depending on where you are) that forms a
       | lot of our social norms and society. It is why hang drying
       | clothes is acceptable/normal in many parts of the world but not
       | in the US. It is why people are expected to wear at least some
       | clothes. It is why you can take photos of random people,
       | including kids, without their/their parents' consent in the US in
       | public space.
       | 
       | If you think you are so special to never show up in a photo,
       | don't be in the public in the first, or wear a mask, a hat plus
       | sunglasses or something else. Celebrities have been doing this
       | for forever.
        
         | op00to wrote:
         | Huh? Hanging clothes is absolutely accepted in the US. I have a
         | clothesline.
        
         | alex77456 wrote:
         | > In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it
         | is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a
         | hobby)
        
         | sigwinch wrote:
         | Not the end of the story. Photographing where people do not
         | expect strong assurances of privacy is complex to enforce. Try
         | photographing inside a stadium, at the Olympics, etc. Others
         | around you might be photographing, but security might ask you
         | to stop or leave.
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | Strong disagree.
         | 
         | The right to take photos of random people without consent in
         | public spaces, is NOT the same as the right to publish those
         | photos online for the world to see and as a theoretically
         | permanent discoverable archive.
        
           | rs186 wrote:
           | You must be extraordinarily naive to think that people take
           | photos in public places without ever posting them online, by
           | default.
           | 
           | And let me know one single instance where someone gets sued
           | for posting a photo of someone appearing in public space in
           | the US.
        
       | phillipharris wrote:
       | This isn't a general solution, but since it's Airsoft can't you
       | just wear a helmet that covers your whole head?
        
         | trenchpilgrim wrote:
         | ^ you should be wearing a mouthguard and goggles anyway, add a
         | skate helmet and your head is probably not visible
        
       | mcv wrote:
       | I think this is something you need to address with the owner or
       | organizer of the event. If they say you can film, you can. If
       | they say you can't, you can't. I imagine there might be
       | sufficient demand for airsoft fights where video is not allowed.
        
         | Simulacra wrote:
         | And there might be events to find that explicitly state no
         | filming.
        
       | sebstefan wrote:
       | >I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera
       | "would you mind not including me in anything you upload,
       | please?". And, since everyone with whom I've spoken at games, so
       | far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly
       | 
       | I must be living in a parallel universe of airsoft players. I
       | can't possibly imagine anyone in that space changing their ways
       | because somebody kindly asked them to
        
       | jillesvangurp wrote:
       | It's a legally grey area. In most countries, you can't really
       | stop people from shooting video and photos in public spaces. But
       | you can do something about publishing the material. Most stock
       | photography websites and similar websites will insist on
       | permission from identifiable individuals in photos or videos for
       | this reason. And a lot of conferences or fairs will give notice
       | of the fact that there will be photos and videos taken at such
       | events (thus clearly marking them as public events). I've seen
       | that here in Germany at least.
       | 
       | And this is a sensitive topic here. Some people here get upset if
       | you point a camera at them and will aggressively demand that you
       | delete their photo. I've seen that happen a few times (not to
       | me). Some people really get pissed off over this here and they
       | tend to known their rights. So good luck arguing otherwise.
       | 
       | If you look at the rules here, they are quite sensible. You can't
       | just publish photos or videos with recognizable people in them
       | unless it's clearly a public event (like a demonstration,
       | concert, etc.). Taking the photos is mostly OK (up to a point).
       | And there's an exemption for private photos. But you can't just
       | publish photos with people recognizably in them unless falls
       | under the narrow set of exceptions to that rule.
       | 
       | Photos of people actually count as personally identifiable
       | information under GDPR. So, people can object to that being
       | stored by companies, ask for it to be removed, and companies need
       | valid reasons for storing such photos.
       | 
       | In this case, the person is in the UK where people simply have
       | less protections against this. Which is something the tabloid
       | press there tends to abuse by trying to get photos of famous
       | people in private / embarrassing situations by all means
       | possible. That would be a lot less legal in Germany and expose
       | you to lawsuits if you were to do that. The German tabloid press
       | has a rich history of that happening.
        
         | mothballed wrote:
         | In the US in most states it's illegal to monetize the image of
         | children [without consent] unless it's just incidental to the
         | film.
         | 
         | I'd imagine if 17 year olds were allowed you could make it
         | legally dicy enough for someone that they'd not want to do it,
         | if they were profiting off of it.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | It is funny how insular and US centric many of the comments here
       | are. In fact many countries do have legislation requiring consent
       | in many scenarios for photographing or publishing photos. And it
       | turns out that it is not actually very problematic.
       | 
       | Wikimedia has some examples, but I'm sure it is not
       | comprehensive:
       | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...
        
         | frantathefranta wrote:
         | 1. The author of the article is in the UK
         | 
         | 2. Recording people without their consent still happens in lot
         | of other countries other than the US. I bet I'm in tons of
         | YouTube videos showing skiing in the Alps.
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | Because the US has other laws that make the kind of laws you're
         | talking about very difficult. You have to look at the laws
         | together as a part of a system and not a one off set of
         | actions.
         | 
         | In addition laws in the US tend to protect the rich very well
         | and get wholesale ignored for the poor. That is Jeffrey Bezos
         | will punish you with the full extent of the law for taking a
         | video of him beating a baby fur seal to death with a bat, while
         | star-wars kid will be begging for venmo donations in order to
         | get thousands of copies of video taken down while law
         | enforcement ignores the situation.
        
         | deepsun wrote:
         | Not really, other European countries also have the "don't
         | participate if you don't want to be filmed" mentality.
         | 
         | E.g. author says:
         | 
         | > But then I've seen the same at (private) conference
         | 
         | I've been to many such conferences, and they all make it very
         | clear that all the photos can be taken and used in advertising
         | by anyone, both in agreements as well as entrance banners. Same
         | as in US.
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | Some conferences I've attended provide stickers to put on
           | your badge and if you don't want to be photographed/published
           | the conference organizers may pay attention with respect to
           | their publicity photos. Of course, others snapping pics with
           | their cell phones may not. (And, in Germany as well as other
           | countries, I've never seen explicit warnings about not
           | publishing photos of people at a conference without
           | permission.).
           | 
           | Most people are pretty reasonable and aren't aggressive with
           | their picture taking. But there are almost certainly photos
           | of you online whatever the local country laws may say.
        
           | lomase wrote:
           | In my country is like this, or was, I have not worked in that
           | space for a long time.
           | 
           | An individual can record you on the street without problems.
           | 
           | A crew can't record you on the street for anything that will
           | be aired on tv/cinema without your signing that you give your
           | permision.
           | 
           | A Youtuber can record you on the street without problems.
        
         | Vrondi wrote:
         | Well, the author in the article is in the US, posting about
         | behavior they experience in the US, so it really isn't that
         | surprising.
        
           | detaro wrote:
           | ah, .co.uk, the TLD long favored by lawyers blogging in the
           | US, indeed.
        
       | Simulacra wrote:
       | I agree with the author, and it Reminds me of people who video at
       | the gym. I think it goes to a deeper issue in our society: people
       | love taking video of other people, and then put them on the
       | internet, which always runs the risk of being turned into a meme,
       | etc.
       | 
       | I lament that this guy may have to wear a mask, And I wish more
       | venues had no photography or video. The last thing I wanted to go
       | to the gym and working out, and I accidentally glance over at
       | someone, who videotaped it, and then put me on the internet with
       | some caption..
        
       | poszlem wrote:
       | I disagree. Filming Airsoft is no more intrusive than filming
       | football matches or paintball. It's a public-facing hobby where
       | documenting the experience is part of the culture, and that's a
       | big reason the sport grows and attracts new players.
       | 
       | UK law already strikes the right balance: you're free to record
       | in public or semi-public spaces unless there's a specific ban,
       | while also having protections against harassment or misuse.
       | That's a sensible framework we should never dilute with "consent-
       | by-default" rules, which would only stifle creativity and
       | community sharing. If you join a hobby where cameras are
       | standard, it's fair to expect that presence, not to restrict
       | others' enjoyment because of hypothetical discomfort.
       | 
       | If you don't like that, nothing stops you from setting up your
       | own private games with different rules
        
       | agedclock wrote:
       | I found this frustrating to read. First the other airsoft
       | participates he seems to seem to be okay with people filming.
       | There is clearly no expectation of privacy.
       | 
       | > I occasionally see people saying "well, if you don't want to be
       | in photos published online, don't be in public spaces".
       | 
       | >
       | 
       | > This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should
       | be able to exist in society, including going outside one's own
       | home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
       | 
       | There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is
       | considered public.
       | 
       | I don't like it that things are recorded around the clock or by
       | anyone and be broadcast anywhere, but the ship on this has sailed
       | long ago.
       | 
       | > In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is
       | a private site, where people engage in private activity (a
       | hobby). > > But then I've seen the same at (private) conferences,
       | with people saying "Of course I'm free to take photos of
       | identifiable individuals without their consent and publish them
       | online".
       | 
       | Again is there an expectation of privacy? Are people told that
       | they are not allowed to use their cameras?
       | 
       | It is whether the is a expectation of privacy. A McDonald's or a
       | Burger King is "private property", but there is no expectation of
       | privacy. I would not expect privacy at an airsoft, paint-balling
       | or any other outdoor activity even if it is on private property.
       | 
       | A public toilet cubical is a public place _with_ an expectation
       | of privacy.
       | 
       | > Publishing someone's photo online, without their consent,
       | without another strong justification, just because they happen to
       | be in view of one's camera lens, feels wrong to me
       | 
       | It depends whether there was an expectation of privacy as whether
       | it should feel wrong. If there isn't an expectation of privacy.
       | Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".
       | 
       | > This isn't about what is legal (although, in some cases, claims
       | of legality may be poorly conceived), but around my own
       | perceptions of a private life, and a dislike for the fact that,
       | just because one can publish such things, that one should.
       | 
       | How else is this supposed to be tacked if not by what is legally
       | permissible?
        
         | eertami wrote:
         | > There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is
         | considered public.
         | 
         | Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is
         | true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany, where
         | you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.
         | 
         | > Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".
         | 
         | The author knows what the laws are, but presumably disagrees
         | with the reasoning behind the laws and is criticising them. If
         | someone came to Switzerland and started complaining that they
         | can't install a doorbell camera, then it would also be a case
         | of them 'not liking it' - but they have a right to voice their
         | opinion.
        
           | agedclock wrote:
           | > Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is
           | true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany,
           | where you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.
           | 
           | Obviously the law is different in different places.
           | 
           | However. The person is talking about Newbury which I used to
           | live near, which is in the UK. So they are talking about
           | their experience in the UK.
           | 
           | So the only law the is applicable here is UK law.
           | 
           | > The author knows what the laws are, but presumably
           | disagrees with the reasoning behind the laws and is
           | criticising them.
           | 
           | He specifically says at the end "This isn't about what is
           | legal". I also don't believe he understands the law, since he
           | often conflates/misuses the use of term private throughout
           | the entire article.
           | 
           | What he understands as private isn't what is understood by
           | almost anyone (both legal and colloquially).
        
         | WarcrimeActual wrote:
         | >There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is
         | considered public.
         | 
         | I had a guy at Walmart yesterday call the cops on me because I
         | took a picture of the strip mall it was in on a small point and
         | shoot and he assumed I was for some reason taking a picture of
         | him, his wife, and kid. He was literally just a random car in
         | the middle of a public parking lot. The officer talked to him
         | and asked that I stepped away and then she came to me. The
         | conversation went exactly like this.
         | 
         | Before she could even start to talk I told her I assumed that
         | she knew that there was no expectation of privacy in public and
         | that I could take a thousand pictures and there would be
         | nothing that she could do about it. She agreed. She then asked
         | if I'd like to give her my name (because she had no right to
         | demand I do), and I said no I wouldn't like that. Then came the
         | kicker. Would you like to just show me you don't have a picture
         | of him. I said no I won't because I did nothing wrong and
         | there's no reason for you to see my pictures. All of these were
         | phrased as requests to bypass illegal search because she knew
         | she was in the wrong even questioning me about it. People seem
         | to really be the main character in the most boring story ever,
         | at least in their minds. I have a healthy disregard for feigned
         | authority anyway and was so indignant that I almost took some
         | pictures of them while they talked. Trampling rights because
         | Jim Bob is upset that someone dared take a picture in his
         | direction rubs me the wrong way.
        
       | martin-t wrote:
       | Attention-seeking behaviors (such as an obsession with recording
       | everything and putting it online) are unhealthy and a possible
       | symptom of anti-social traits such as narcissism.
       | 
       | Unfortunately for all of us, if public-by-default becomes the
       | norm, then this is gonna lead to even more social cooling, more
       | conformism and less freedom.
        
       | MontyCarloHall wrote:
       | Genuinely curious: what concrete negative consequences are there
       | from appearing in the background of other people's photos/videos,
       | in a full face mask no less?
       | 
       | Is he afraid that someone will be able to identify him as
       | engaging in a hobby that some people might be judgmental about,
       | e.g. a potential employer finding the footage and concluding
       | "this guy spends lots of time and money playing a children's
       | game; he's clearly not a serious person." That I can understand.
       | 
       | But it seems like his position is stronger than this:
       | 
       | >Publishing someone's photo online, without their consent,
       | without another strong justification, just because they happen to
       | be in view of one's camera lens, feels wrong to me
       | 
       | So essentially, it's wrong to publish any photo that happens to
       | include people in the background? If I take an artistic photo at
       | an art museum [0] or a restaurant [1] or a streetscape [2] and
       | there happen to be people in the background, what possible harm
       | could come to the people incidentally captured?
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://500px.com/search?q=the%20Met&type=photos&sort=releva...
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://500px.com/search?q=Busy%20restaurant&type=photos&sor...
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://500px.com/search?q=Times%20Square%20&type=photos&sor...
        
         | squigz wrote:
         | You're looking for a generic reason, I think, and there isn't
         | and doesn't need to be one other than "people can desire their
         | privacy for various reasons"
         | 
         | Maybe publicizing where someone is every week lets criminals
         | plan their crimes. Maybe it gives away someone's location to an
         | abusive ex or family member or stalker. Maybe people just don't
         | want Google and the like to have even more data about our
         | whereabouts and actions and identity.
        
           | MontyCarloHall wrote:
           | These are all nice concrete consequences, but I'm not sure
           | having public images meaningfully exacerbates them.
           | 
           | >robbers
           | 
           | Why would a criminal take time to comb through random,
           | anonymous, uncategorized images of people to ambiguously
           | identify someone who might not be home (and might not even
           | have a house worth breaking into), when it's much easier to
           | just stake out wealthy neighborhoods and definitively see
           | who's not home and who has unsecured valuables, as has been
           | done for centuries?
           | 
           | >stalkers
           | 
           | So said stalker would have to run facial recognition software
           | on every image on the internet to find the handful that might
           | incidentally contain their victim? Someone that determined
           | would just hire or use the methods of a PI, which have long
           | been effective at finding people who don't want to be found.
           | 
           | >Google et al.
           | 
           | The solution here is to regulate what Google et al. can do
           | with your data, not regulate what people can post online.
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | >So said stalker would have to run facial recognition
             | software on every image on the internet
             | 
             | This argument is so poorly formed I almost believe it's in
             | bad faith.
             | 
             | Both you and I know that a stalker wouldn't do that. People
             | tend to congregate their online behaviors in a very small
             | circle of sites based upon their physical locations, I'm
             | not going to index files in Japan to find someone in Iowa.
             | Digital footprints are both large and small at the same
             | time.
             | 
             | > when it's much easier to just stake out wealthy
             | neighborhoods and definitively see who's not home and who
             | has unsecured valuables
             | 
             | Because it's risky and time consuming to be there in
             | person. In fact it's even easier to setup a camera in said
             | neighborhoods and have software track users behavior then
             | to sit around there yourself.
        
             | iamnothere wrote:
             | > So said stalker would have to run facial recognition
             | software on every image on the internet to find the handful
             | that might incidentally contain their victim?
             | 
             | Stalkers often have knowledge of the victim's friends and
             | associates and have no problem combing through their social
             | media looking for photos.
             | 
             | > Someone that determined would just hire or use the
             | methods of a PI, which have long been effective at finding
             | people who don't want to be found.
             | 
             | PIs will not do work for people without a legitimate
             | purpose, as they could lose their license. Stalkers with
             | ill intent will also be leaving a paper trail if they hire
             | a PI. And non-PIs may be able to use some PI methods, but
             | they won't be able to access the full range of PI tools or
             | PI relationships.
        
             | detaro wrote:
             | > _So said stalker would have to run facial recognition
             | software on every image on the internet to find the handful
             | that might incidentally contain their victim_
             | 
             | Or use an image search engine that does facial recognition.
             | Already exist, and likely to become more common.
        
             | squigz wrote:
             | > Why would a criminal take time to comb through random,
             | anonymous, uncategorized images of people to ambiguously
             | identify someone who might not be home (and might not even
             | have a house worth breaking into), when it's much easier to
             | just stake out wealthy neighborhoods and definitively see
             | who's not home and who has unsecured valuables, as has been
             | done for centuries?
             | 
             | Knowing your target's movements and schedule has also been
             | an integral part of crime since forever. Also, you are
             | again focusing on the generic - the goal being hitting any
             | wealthy target, not _this particular_ target.
             | 
             | > So said stalker would have to run facial recognition
             | software on every image on the internet to find the handful
             | that might incidentally contain their victim? Someone that
             | determined would just hire or use the methods of a PI,
             | which have long been effective at finding people who don't
             | want to be found.
             | 
             | Maybe they know their target likes airsoft but, probably
             | due to the stalking, has changed locations to try and get
             | away. Looking at the few local airsoft places is probably
             | way cheaper than hiring a PI. Can one easily hire a PI for
             | stalking purposes, anyway? Seems like an industry that has
             | some strong regulations but I don't really know.
             | 
             | Besides, you don't need to worry about things like a PI or
             | finding random images if, for example, a friend or
             | acquaintance in your group posts a lot. The stalker need
             | only find that one person to keep an eye on their target -
             | a very common tactic by abusers, by the by: being aware of
             | your target's social circle and using it to keep tabs on
             | them.
             | 
             | This also seems to focus on the physical aspect of it, as
             | if getting attacked/kidnapped is the only possible result,
             | but constantly getting messages like "Looks like you had
             | fun at X" from an abuser can cause harm too.
             | 
             | > The solution here is to regulate what Google et al. can
             | do with your data, not regulate what people can post
             | online.
             | 
             | There are 2 separate issues. Should we regulate what people
             | can post online? And should we expect people to respect our
             | privacy, even if they're not legally required to? One is a
             | legal question, the other is social/cultural.
        
         | jedimastert wrote:
         | I mean the whole point of privacy is you not knowing... It kind
         | of defeats the point if you need a reason, because the reason
         | is probably... _private_
        
         | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
         | Maybe you just don't want the AI that Google is definitely
         | training to predict video frames to insert your face into AI-
         | generated videos?
        
           | card_zero wrote:
           | That would be the fault of Google.
        
             | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
             | It's stated in a terms of use agreement that you are simply
             | not a party to.
        
         | wang_li wrote:
         | >>Publishing someone's photo online, without their consent,
         | without another strong justification, just because they happen
         | to be in view of one's camera lens, feels wrong to me
         | 
         | If you don't want someone to make a record of the photons that
         | arrive at a particular place because those photons bounced off
         | you, then don't let them go out into the world far beyond your
         | private space.
        
           | sumtimes89 wrote:
           | Why are you trying to dehumanize the idea of taking a picture
           | of someone and possibly posting it publicly by referring to
           | it as photons? Yes we are all just atoms moving around in 3D
           | space but it doesn't take away the fact that people should be
           | allowed to exist outside their house without some random
           | person recording them and possibly posting it to the
           | internet. You don't care and that is totally fine but some
           | people do.
        
             | wang_li wrote:
             | I'm not dehumanizing it, I'm making it clear that
             | photography is generally a passive activity. Where's the
             | line between "don't record me" and "don't look at me"? If
             | it's ok you look at you, but not record you, where's the
             | line? Can someone use a telescope to look at you? Can a
             | store have a camera and a live TV view of all the people
             | who walk in? Can there be a live camera that captures the
             | people on a sidewalk and display it on a giant billboard on
             | the side of a building? If you're at a sporting event can
             | they aim a camera at you in the crowd and put you on the
             | jumbotron? These are all amplifications of visibility,
             | which ones are allowed and which are not. And why should
             | you be able to insist on the absolute bare minimum of
             | noticeability when you are out in public?
        
         | Ntrails wrote:
         | > what concrete negative consequences are there
         | 
         | It isn't necessarily about _consequences_. I don 't want photos
         | of me on the internet. I don't like the idea that other people
         | get to do that without my consent.
         | 
         | I don't have any power to stop it. I am not even sure I should,
         | or what limits it should have. But I don't think I should need
         | to justify that as a preference.
        
         | advisedwang wrote:
         | There are A LOT of concrete reasons you might not want to be
         | recorded at an airsoft event:
         | 
         | * Don't want to be ridiculed if you look silly (it is airsoft,
         | after all)
         | 
         | * It's distracting to be videoed
         | 
         | * You have a stalker trying to find information about you
         | 
         | * Makes you feel pressure to put on make up and look "decent"
         | 
         | * Something you say might sound bad out of context and result
         | in being ostracized or otherwise socially punished
         | 
         | * You might have a secret airsoft tactic or codes you don't
         | want people to know about
         | 
         | * You don't want facial recognition trained on you
         | 
         | * You told someone you couldn't go to their party because you
         | are sick and don't want to get caught lying
         | 
         | * etc etc
         | 
         | These aren't all huge issues, but they are reasonable.
        
           | tintor wrote:
           | * You called-in sick for work :)
        
         | bsder wrote:
         | > Genuinely curious: what concrete negative consequences are
         | there from appearing in the background of other people's
         | photos/videos, in a full face mask no less?
         | 
         | How about if you're overweight, doing airsoft to try to get
         | into shape, and bellyflop into some mud on video?
         | 
         | That's social media crack right there, boys and girls.
         | 
         | Can you understand why someone might _not_ want that kind of
         | thing posted?
        
       | mothballed wrote:
       | I wonder what would happen if someone wore a T-shirt with an ITAR
       | restricted weapons blueprint on it or something. Hypothetically
       | it would be legal to display that in public in the US, but
       | illegal to post it publicly facing for foreigners to access on
       | the internet.
       | 
       | Even if it were a gray area, the serious penalties would probably
       | be enough to make someone want to blur it out.
        
         | waste_monk wrote:
         | > Hypothetically it would be legal to display that in public in
         | the US
         | 
         | Would it? I'm certainly not a lawyer or ITAR expert, but I
         | would think that if you walked through a public space where you
         | couldn't positively confirm that everyone present (and everyone
         | who might view it transitively via video recordings, live
         | streams, etc.) was OK to access the materiel on the shirt, that
         | would be considered an export and you'd be in big trouble.
        
           | mothballed wrote:
           | I'm no ITAR expert either, but IDK how wearing a T-shirt
           | could possibly be an export. My lay understanding of export
           | is that the information would somehow have to leave the
           | country; if someone looks at the T-shirt and transmits it out
           | the country they'd be the exporter, not the person wearing
           | the T-shirt. If someone records the t-shirt and transmits it,
           | they'd be the exporter.
        
             | dlgeek wrote:
             | I'll continue in the "not an expert" chain, but my
             | understanding is that ITAR's prohibitions include
             | communicating the information to a non-US person (a US
             | person is a citizen or permanent resident), even if that is
             | done on US soil.
        
             | waste_monk wrote:
             | >My lay understanding of export is that the information
             | would somehow have to leave the country;
             | 
             | It's not just physical items like munitions, but also
             | things like transfers of information (blueprints, technical
             | data, documentation, etc.) or services being performed,
             | regardless of where (inside or outside the USA) or how
             | (paper, electronic, verbal, etc.) it takes place.
             | 
             | Have a look at [1] SS 120.50 (Export) and SS 120.63
             | (definition of Foreign person).
             | 
             | >if someone looks at the T-shirt and transmits it out the
             | country they'd be the exporter, not the person wearing the
             | T-shirt.
             | 
             | I believe the person wearing the shirt would be considered
             | the exporter, as that is the point where the information
             | moves from (I'm assuming for the purposes of conversation)
             | an USA citizen to a foreign person.
             | 
             | But again, I could be wrong. Safest bet is not to print the
             | shirt to begin with :)
             | 
             | [1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchap
             | ter-M...
        
               | mothballed wrote:
               | Hmm... I'd be interested to look at any 1A cases
               | regarding that. I'm unable to find any 1A exceptions
               | regarding mere information on weapons. The US is allowed
               | to suspend constitutional rights at border controls,
               | which is how they prevent exporting the information
               | outside the US, but I'd bet dollars to donuts the
               | blueprints/information part is unenforceable as non-
               | commercial speech within the US.
               | 
               | Here's an example of T-shirt with a machinegun blueprint
               | on it for instance, for sale in USA without any checks as
               | to your immigration status [note US law considers a
               | device that induces automatic fire as a 'machinegun'
               | despite the fact the device itself isn't really a gun]:
               | 
               | https://ctrlpew.com/product/yankee-boogle-tee-gatalog-
               | editio...
        
         | wang_li wrote:
         | ITAR was circumvented for PGP by publishing a book of the
         | source code and exporting that. I fail to see how publishing a
         | video would be different.
        
           | mothballed wrote:
           | My understanding following Cody Wilson's lawsuit to publish
           | gun plans online, which is a more recent case, did not follow
           | that. He ended up having to follow ITAR export compliance,
           | although he was allowed unlimited distribution to US
           | nationals and granted an ITAR license that might let him
           | export under the conditions of that license.
           | On remand to the district court, and on the eve of changes to
           | the federal export regulations, the U.S. State Department
           | offered to settle the case, and on July 27, 2018, Defense
           | Distributed accepted a license to publish its files along
           | with a sum of almost $40,000.[6][7]
           | 
           | Nowadays you'll find most gun plans end up on odyssee or
           | surreptitiously on github or something like that. If you go
           | to high-profile 3d gun websites they will almost always point
           | you to a decentralized server that the government can't go
           | after.
           | 
           | It seems maybe they might allow you to export it, but you'd
           | have to get a license first, even if they were required to
           | issue it to you could take years of lawsuits that a youtuber
           | probably will not pursue?
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Distributed_v._United_.
           | ..
        
       | mikepurvis wrote:
       | Social dance (swing, Latin, etc) has some of this too. I think
       | generally where most scenes have fallen is "only film yourself
       | and your friends, unless it's something intentionally
       | performative like a jam circle or competition, in which case go
       | nuts."
        
         | exodust wrote:
         | Not to mention EDM festivals. Remote bush doofs where everyone
         | is off their chops, escaping reality, dancing during the day,
         | exposed in the light.
         | 
         | Being recorded in 4k from different angles including action
         | cams on people's heads on the dance floor, is a far cry from
         | the relative anonymity of festivals of old. I remember when the
         | only people who'd see you all bright eyed and bushy tailed were
         | other participants in the party mayhem, which is how it should
         | be.
        
       | helsinkiandrew wrote:
       | If this was beach volleyball I would be more inclined to agree
       | with the poster, but surely everyone is wearing face masks
       | playing Airsoft?
        
         | diflartle wrote:
         | As an avid beach volleyball player, every tournament and most
         | league games have one or more people recording them with cell
         | phones or go pros on tripods at the end line. Just part of the
         | game.
         | 
         | Nobody bats an eye, I assume because we're already out in
         | public, basically in bathing suits.
        
       | GaryNumanVevo wrote:
       | I'm surprised that YouTube doesn't have a "blur everyone's faces
       | except for me" feature to post process on videos
        
       | stackedinserter wrote:
       | Their venue, their rules. If you don't like them, go to somewhere
       | else or run with airsoft "gun" alone.
        
       | masfuerte wrote:
       | Many people are claiming it is legal but it's not that simple in
       | Europe and the UK.
       | 
       | It is legal (in most places) to film people in public but it is
       | not necessarily legal to post the video to social media.
       | 
       | The Irish Data Protection Commission says:
       | 
       | > There is nothing in the General Data Protection Regulation
       | (GDPR) that prohibits people from taking photos in a public
       | place. Provided you are not harassing anyone, taking photographs
       | of people in public is generally allowed and most likely will
       | qualify for the household exemption under Article 2(2)(c) of the
       | GDPR.
       | 
       | > However, what you do with that photo can potentially become a
       | data protection issue, for example, if the photograph, which
       | contained the personal data of individuals, was sold for
       | commercial gain or was posted publicly on a social media account.
       | Under those circumstances, you are likely to be considered a data
       | controller which brings with it a host of obligations and duties
       | under data protection law. In particular, it would be necessary
       | for you to demonstrate, amongst other things, your lawful basis
       | for the processing of such personal data under Article 6(1) of
       | the GDPR.
        
       | jedimastert wrote:
       | Back in my day _shakes first_ there were places where someone
       | could do things that would normally be mildly embarrassing
       | because they were in a supportive community. In this example, it
       | could be playing pretend and possibly saying goofy things or
       | falling over and tripping or getting your butt handed to you by
       | someone half your age or something.
       | 
       | When I was young, it would have been playing open mics as a
       | teenager. I wasn't amazing but it's really important to play
       | publicly in order to grow as a musician, and that means kinda
       | sucking in public. I would not have become a musician if I didn't
       | have that supportive community.
       | 
       | In this day and age, if I were to do that, someone would probably
       | live stream it or film it on their phone and put it on YouTube,
       | then It would get found by the kind of awful kids that like to
       | make other people feel awful for no reason, then they would have
       | found my like Facebook or social media or something, I'd catch
       | shit at school, and I never would have touched an instrument
       | again.
       | 
       | So yeah, save your highlight reels for someone else, thanks.
        
         | cosmic_cheese wrote:
         | It may be an exaggeration but it feels like half the problem
         | with the internet has been this sort of "dunk culture" that's
         | proliferated in the past 10-15 years. How heinous is it that
         | anybody can gain significant notoriety by just providing a
         | steady supply of innocent people to lambast?
        
           | scuff3d wrote:
           | It's definitely not an exaggeration. YouTubers talk about
           | this all the time. The videos that do the best are the ones
           | that are negative.
        
         | CobrastanJorji wrote:
         | One day somebody is going to run for President who had an
         | extensively online youth and it's going to be wild.
        
           | renewiltord wrote:
           | Well J D Vance has all those awkward pics of him as a young
           | fellow and it hasn't hurt him. He made VP coming from
           | nowhere.
        
             | al_borland wrote:
             | They still get used to try and discredit him all the time.
             | Same with the videos of AOC dancing.
        
               | renewiltord wrote:
               | Yeah but both of those are clearly ineffective since both
               | those people won their respective elections.
        
               | sentientslug wrote:
               | I get your point but even if elected it can sway public
               | perception of character
        
               | jonny_eh wrote:
               | Any negative perception of JD Vance is due to his recent
               | behavior and statements, not from his awkward youth.
        
               | greycol wrote:
               | I wouldn't be surprised if spurious criticisms about an
               | awkward youth and couch fucking have inured him to very
               | real criticism of his governance.
        
             | johnnyanmac wrote:
             | I don't know if that's the best example when the
             | presidential candidate running has literal criminal records
             | against him. We are clearly not in times where "binders
             | full of women" is an election ending quote.
        
       | frou_dh wrote:
       | A counterbalance is that there's such a colossal volume of new
       | YouTube 'content' published every day that approximately no one
       | will end up watching an obscure video with your cameo anyway.
       | 
       | I guess the concern then shifts to dragnet automated surveillance
       | of it.
        
       | dominicrose wrote:
       | In the context of airsoft I guess you could cover yourself
       | completely and why not shoot yellow plastic bullets at the
       | cameraman.
       | 
       | The cost of filming is very low. Even people who aren't
       | interested in taking pictures or filming now have a camera with
       | them at all times.
       | 
       | I remember a village in Africa about 20 years ago where people
       | thought cameras stole their soul.
       | 
       | Technology steals everything it can. I mean think of all the data
       | that went into google maps or chatgpt, to only name a couple of
       | apps.
        
       | mrweasel wrote:
       | Switch to paintballs and shoot the cameras.
        
       | jedimastert wrote:
       | I would also push back against the whole "this is just being
       | perceived in public" thing, because you're not consenting to
       | being perceived by the entire planet, you were consenting to
       | being perceived by _the people present and in the community_.
       | Like if there 's a bully in the community, the community can do
       | something about it or you can at least avoid them. Like you are
       | consenting to interacting with a culture of like-minded people,
       | and you know they're like-minded because they all showed up to
       | the same event to do the same thing. That is not true of the open
       | internet.
        
         | tonymet wrote:
         | I agree that we need a renewed social agreement on "no
         | perception of privacy in public" concept now that cameras are
         | everywhere, are smaller than a pinhead, and cost pennies .
         | 
         | Laws aren't sacred, they are just the rule over the living by
         | the dead. All of our privacy laws were made when the technology
         | , culture and demographics were completely different.
        
         | Terr_ wrote:
         | I feel this has some parallels to concerns over house/porch
         | cameras which are proliferating these days.
         | 
         | I have no problem with the idea that _everyone_ on the street
         | is recording from their porch... as long as it 's for their own
         | siloed use, and it takes a conscious act for them to share it.
         | If someone wants to stalk you, they'd need conscious assistance
         | from your neighbors. If the police are tracking a hit-and-run,
         | they need to _ask_ people for footage during a time period,
         | etc.
         | 
         | But the moment someone says "hey let's network all those with
         | object/face recognition so that you can easily trace every
         | person walking down the street", then we've got a problem.
        
       | blindriver wrote:
       | I have changed my mind on this topic recently. I believe that
       | when you video in public everyone that gets videoed should
       | require explicit permission or their face and voices should be
       | removed. The only exceptions would be videoing public servants
       | and if a crime is being committed. Videoing for private
       | consumption would also be allowed in my opinion but not if it's
       | posted in a way that more than a handful of people could see or
       | if its uploaded to a site.
       | 
       | With AI this is entirely possible and if you are going to post
       | videos on youtube or anything, you should be able to afford the
       | removal of non-verified participants.
        
       | profsummergig wrote:
       | Genuinely curious, not trolling, why is it considered acceptable
       | to spray plastic pellets into the woods?
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | Why is it considered acceptable to shed millions of tons of
         | tire dust in to cities where people live and breath.
         | 
         | In the order of environmental issues, these plastic pellets are
         | insignificant.
         | 
         | If you want to get up in arms about something, look at how many
         | container loads of plastic feedstock falls off of ships per
         | year and you'll see a problem a million times bigger.
        
       | dncornholio wrote:
       | No alternative's being made. Only considering his own feelings,
       | everyone else should follow. Expects people to not film (read:
       | shoot) him because he asked. Neil's a bit of a Karen in this one
       | I'm afraid.
        
       | randomtoast wrote:
       | > Publishing someone's photo online, without their consent,
       | without another strong justification, just because they happen to
       | be in view of one's camera lens, feels wrong to me
       | 
       | We are getting monitored all the time, we are in an age where
       | cameras are omnipresent. Everyone carries one in their pocket in
       | the form of a smartphone, and countless stationary cameras are
       | installed throughout cities.
       | 
       | When you walk through streets, buildings, and especially public
       | facilities, you can see cameras almost everywhere. While it is
       | often said that these devices exist only for security purposes
       | and that footage is routinely deleted, this is no longer the
       | reality. In many cases, people can request this footage through
       | FOIA and use it as they wish, including uploading it to platforms
       | like YouTube.
        
         | hk__2 wrote:
         | > In many cases, people can request this footage through FOIA
         | and use it as they wish, including uploading it to platforms
         | like YouTube.
         | 
         | Please don't assume the world is limited to the US. In Europe
         | you cannot do that.
        
           | Ylpertnodi wrote:
           | When I worked for a us company, as a European, i filed a
           | foia. And then a gdpr request from their eu branch. Both were
           | successful- i corrected some information i knew to be
           | incorrect, and there are now signs by each 'hidden' camera.
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | > We are getting monitored all the time
         | 
         | That doesn't make it right, so we should keep questioning it
         | until it's right.
        
         | card_zero wrote:
         | Being _monitored,_ or tracked or stalked, is different from
         | having your photo published.
        
       | Piraty wrote:
       | don't tell author about new meta glasses everybody and their
       | grandma will wear 24/7 in 10y.
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283306
        
         | mapmeld wrote:
         | Google Glass has been a thing for 12 years, Snapchat's glasses
         | have been around for 9. And you rarely see someone using them.
         | (I'm aware of reports of ICE officers wearing the Meta glasses,
         | but this is probably an extension of norms around police
         | bodycams)
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | They probably are very aware, and it makes having this
         | discussion more important, not less.
        
       | posterguy wrote:
       | worth looking into Camera Lucida by roland barthes, sontag's on
       | photography and for something more recent, bernard stiegler's
       | writings on cameras as technics if interested in some of the
       | headier aspects of what cameras and photography do to culture and
       | human relationships (as opposed to, say, legal implications). i
       | tend to agree with the author: the presence of cameras in
       | community spaces have completely ruined my relationship to those
       | spaces. ive seen people here call the author a karen which,
       | maybe, but the last time i went to a small DIY rock show in my
       | community there were more people taking pictures than there were
       | watching the show. what value is it if everyone films and uploads
       | a set from a local band on youtube? what is the point?
        
       | chaostheory wrote:
       | This only applies to airsoft and paintball, but don't players
       | wear full on masks for both protection and camouflage?
        
       | aynyc wrote:
       | Clearly, author needs to work on their camouflage skill like John
       | Cena.
        
       | s1mplicissimus wrote:
       | I always wondered: who is picking up all that plastic waste
       | afterwards? Never been myself, but I was told 1000s of shots
       | being fired during one session is not an exceptional case. The
       | author talks about "Running around in the woods" so I'm a bit
       | concerned that this may cause undesirable amounts of
       | environmental pollution.
        
         | wmeredith wrote:
         | Biodegradable airlift BB's are unfortunately an exception in
         | the sport.
        
         | pavel_lishin wrote:
         | I would bet that dumping a 747's worth of plastic BBs in remote
         | UK woodland is probably not as bad as everyone driving their
         | petrol-powered cars there.
        
         | handoflixue wrote:
         | It's being done on private property, so presumably the property
         | owner is okay with that damage?
        
           | justusthane wrote:
           | That plastic is still going to be there thousands of years
           | after the property passes out of the current owner's hands.
        
         | komali2 wrote:
         | Yeah unfortunately those BBs are going to stay there basically
         | forever. Biodegradable means it'll degrade in like, hella hot
         | temperatures that you'll never get unless there's a forest
         | fire.
         | 
         | Plus side I don't think they degrade into microplastics? And
         | aerate your soil! :D
         | 
         | Though water bottles is probably orders of magnitude more
         | harmful to the planet.
        
       | _ink_ wrote:
       | Yeah, I am not looking forward to Meta glasses being widely used.
       | But that is probably inevitable. Being anonym in public will be a
       | dear memory from the past.
        
       | chrischen wrote:
       | I think you can make arguments for and against the fundamental
       | right to record or to not be recorded.
       | 
       | If someone is doing something bad/illegal, do we have a right to
       | record/document it? If I am outside minding my own business and
       | not doing anything bad, do I have a right to not be recorded?
       | 
       | What is the difference between seeing and recalling something
       | that happened vs recording? What happens when technology blurs
       | the difference (for example if we all start wearing and using
       | camera AR glasses)?
        
         | strgcmc wrote:
         | A purely technology-minded compromise to this question (aka how
         | to support both the "good" and "bad" kinds of recording), is
         | probably something along the lines of expiry and enforcing a
         | lack of permanence as the default (kind of like, the digital
         | age recording-centric version of "innocent until proven
         | guilty", which honestly is one of the greatest inventions in
         | the history of human legal systems). Of course, one should
         | never make societal decisions purely from a technological
         | practicality standpoint.
         | 
         | Since you can't be sure what is "bad"/illegal, and people will
         | just record many things anyways without thinking too much about
         | it --> then the default should be auto-expiring/auto-deletion
         | after X hours/days, unless some reason or some confirmation is
         | provided to justify its persistence.
         | 
         | For example, imagine we lived in a near-future where AI
         | assistants were commonplace. Imagine that recording was
         | ubiquitous but legally mandated to default into being
         | "disappearing videos" like Snapchat, but for all the major
         | platforms (YouTube, TikTok, X, Twitch, Kick, etc.). Imagine
         | that every day, you as a regular person doing regular things,
         | get maybe 10000 notifications of, "you have been recorded in
         | video X on platform Y, do you consent for this to be
         | persisted?", and also law enforcement has to go through a judge
         | (kind of like a search warrant) to file things like
         | "persistence warrants", and then maybe there is another
         | channel/method for concerned citizens who want to persist video
         | of a "bad guy" doing "bad things" where they can request for
         | persistence (maybe it's like an injunction against auto-
         | deletion until a review body can look at the request)...
         | Obviously this would be a ton of administrative overhead, a ton
         | of micro-decisions to be made -- which is why I mentioned the
         | AI-assistant angle, because then I can tell my personal AI
         | helper, "here are my preferences, here is when I consent to
         | recording and here is when I don't... knowing my personal
         | rules, please go and deal with the 10000 notifications I get
         | every day, thanks". Of course if there's disagreement or lack
         | of consensus, some rules have to be developed about how to
         | combine different parties wishes together (e.g. take a
         | recording of a child's soccer game, where maybe 8 parents
         | consent and 3 parents don't to persistence... perhaps it's
         | majority rule so persistence side wins, but then majority has
         | to pay the cost of API tokens to a blurring/anonymization
         | service that protects the 3 who didn't want to be persisted --
         | that could be a framework for handling disputed outcomes?)
         | 
         | I'm also purposefully ignoring the edge-case problem of, what
         | if a bad actor wants to persist the videos anyways, but in
         | short I think the best we can do is impose some civil legal
         | penalties if an unwilling participant later finds out you kept
         | their videos without permission.
         | 
         | Anyways, I know that's all super fanciful and unrealistic in
         | many ways, but I think that's a compromise sort of world-
         | building I can imagine, that retains some familiar elements of
         | how people think about consent and legal processes, while
         | acknowledging the reality that recording is ubiquitous and that
         | we need sane defaults + follow-up processes to review or
         | adjudicate disputes later (and disputes might arise for trivial
         | things, or serious criminal matters -- a criminal won't consent
         | to their recording being persisted, but then society needs a
         | sane way to override that, which is what judges and warrants
         | are meant to do in protecting rights by requiring a bar of
         | justification to be cleared).
        
       | Workaccount2 wrote:
       | On one hand: You are not nearly as important or meaningful as you
       | think, and no ones brain will store and index your face for more
       | than the length of the video. With online content the way it is
       | now, you are a blade of grass in a continental sized grassland.
       | It should be liberating to understand how little anyone actually
       | cares.
       | 
       | On the other hand: The threat of being fed into a future AI-god
       | is real, the the downstream effects unknown.
        
       | reactordev wrote:
       | In Airsoft, there's a niche audience for people wanting to see
       | other people get hit. Just like there's a niche audience for
       | people who like watching car crashes. Just like there's a niche
       | audience for people who like...
       | 
       | While you may not like being recorded, the player is well within
       | their right to do so. Just label them a "mech" and award 5 points
       | for the take down. If you have a squad of filmers, put them all
       | together. Your problem is now isolated to the roaming mech beast
       | in the woods. Flank right and live out your day.
        
       | TomMasz wrote:
       | I do a lot of photography, including "street" photography, but I
       | don't shoot photos of people. I believe that you should be asked
       | for your consent to be photographed, and I tend to avoid social
       | interaction whenever possible. I empathize with the author here.
       | I would probably say "yes" in that situation, but I would also
       | expect to be asked.
        
         | pks016 wrote:
         | I also do occasional street photography. I'm opposite of your
         | view. I don't ask for consent and take photos (even candids).
         | People rarely have problems. If they have, they'll come and ask
         | me not to include them in the frame.
        
       | Pet_Ant wrote:
       | > This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should
       | be able to exist in society, including going outside one's own
       | home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
       | 
       | I think this is the rule that is currently under renegotiation in
       | society. At one point you could imagine saying "I should be able
       | to go out in public without having had a certain medical
       | procedure (like a vaccine)." Now, I don't agree with that.
       | 
       | The overton window of behaviours is always shifting and not
       | always in ways that we like.
        
       | ozim wrote:
       | Well I never liked bigger Airsoft events - going into some
       | abandoned buildings with 5-10 guys we know well to play was
       | always best fun for me.
       | 
       | Downside is you cannot do that in current circumstances.
        
       | SamPatt wrote:
       | Unfortunately, being serious about privacy is socially damaging.
       | I've experienced it.
       | 
       | I eventually accepted that being outside my home meant I gave up
       | on my privacy. I still take it seriously in my home and online,
       | but not in public.
       | 
       | I'd love to see the culture shift on this, but I won't hold my
       | breath.
        
       | humanfromearth9 wrote:
       | Doesn't a LIDAR break digital cameras?
       | 
       | Maybe those who don't want to be filmed should be walking around
       | with some portable LIDAR device, de facto breaking the cameras of
       | people who don't respect their desire to not be filmed.
        
       | deadbabe wrote:
       | I don't understand the author, everyone in airsoft wears masks?
       | You're an anonymous person, just a brief obstacle the cameraman
       | shoots quickly on his way to the _real_ fire fight.
        
       | physicsguy wrote:
       | The thing that I find more frustrating than anything is photos of
       | children. I'm not so bothered about myself.
       | 
       | I have a young child - he's two and a half. Most people are
       | considerate and ask if it's OK to take a photo - and I generally
       | say yes if it's friends - but we were at a wedding recently and a
       | staff member, total stranger, at the venue was laughing at him
       | running around and asked if they could take a picture, and then
       | got stroppy when I said no. I just think it's quite strange
       | behaviour to want to take photos of a child you don't know. It's
       | quite different to the professional photographer taking photos
       | for the hosts in my mind, which you basically accept by bringing
       | your kids to an event like that.
       | 
       | A mum at a playgroup just took out phone and started filming my
       | son playing with her child. My wife asked her to stop and she
       | again got quite stroppy, even though the group explicitly said
       | that photos should only be taken with consent in that space!
        
         | jonny_eh wrote:
         | Does stroppy mean angry where you're from? Where's that?
        
           | physicsguy wrote:
           | I'm from the UK
           | 
           | It does yes but more like in a bad mood. A teenager who is
           | rolling their eyes and making a comment because they've been
           | asked not to do something could be described as having a
           | strop.
        
       | Extropy_ wrote:
       | It's clear that "privacy " in public spaces requires a fair bit
       | of entitlement, why can't we all just love one another and let it
       | go? What harm comes from being in someone's cool AirSoft video?
       | Is it just a matter of principle that bothers you or something
       | deeper?
        
         | hedora wrote:
         | For one thing, the video might have objectionable content
         | edited into it.
         | 
         | For instance, one video could be filmed by a genocidal maga
         | nutjob, and a second could be a documentary about how PLA
         | doesn't biodegrade, made by a woke LGBTQ+ immigrant with a
         | working understanding of chemistry, physics and biology.
         | 
         | Almost 100% of the US would be upset to know they supported the
         | production of at least one of those videos.
        
           | Extropy_ wrote:
           | That they're upset does not mean that the world should bend
           | to their feelings. I think you would agree that getting upset
           | does not necessarily mean something is wrong externally,
           | oftentimes things are wrong internally. Thank you for taking
           | the time to reply
        
       | firesteelrain wrote:
       | > Publishing someone's photo online, without their consent,
       | without another strong justification, just because they happen to
       | be in view of one's camera lens, feels wrong to me
       | 
       | Not wrong, it's rude.
       | 
       | Be nice to just live without needing to feel like crowd sourced
       | surveillance all the time.
        
       | damnesian wrote:
       | >well, if you don't want to be in photos published online, don't
       | be in public spaces
       | 
       | equates to
       | 
       | >you only have to worry about surveillance if you are doing
       | something wrong.
       | 
       | This is, 100% guaranteed, a systematically injected narrative.
        
       | blackhaj7 wrote:
       | I feel like this a lot of the time too.
       | 
       | The author describes the sentiment nicely. I don't like it, it
       | feels icky but I also don't ask people to stop. I just wish that
       | culturally it wasn't assumed to be ok by default
        
       | skwee357 wrote:
       | I feel it spans way wider than just hobbies. For example, when
       | people film in gyms, which is a private place. Or everywhere you
       | go, there is a good chance you will be in someone's
       | vlog/photo/youtube video.
        
       | hk1337 wrote:
       | There's several caveats to this but generally it seems silly to
       | me to worry about people posting pictures with you in it. It
       | seems a bit selfish to me to be concerned about "your image"
       | being out in public instead of living in the moment.
       | 
       | I think though, with the internet and social media came 2-3
       | generations that really wanted to share what was going on in
       | their lives with other people and with that came harsh resistance
       | to even being in the background of someone's picture.
       | 
       | I thought this post was going to be about not wanting to share
       | their hobby in a blog, pictures, or video form. This is something
       | I have struggled with, because I would like to get started with
       | blogging and a podcast but I have held back because a lot of
       | people are so mean and harsh with their replies and I tend to
       | take things so personally that it really hurts and keeps me from
       | doing it.
        
       | hereme888 wrote:
       | Agree with author. Laws do not necessarily dictate right vs.
       | wrong. Filming others to publicly share that video may be legally
       | allowable, is unethical regardless of the laws. It's like those
       | crazy people who start playing their social media feed without
       | headphones in public places like airplanes, or bathroom
       | stalls....it's so weird, and annoying.
        
       | DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
       | > I am very much enjoying my newly-resurrected hobby of Airsoft.
       | Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at
       | other people
       | 
       | What's wrong with you?
        
       | gwbas1c wrote:
       | The one time I was accidentally captured on video, I was filtered
       | out, but I actually wish I was there.
       | 
       | Many years ago, I went to a Green Day concert where they played
       | 21st Century breakdown for the first time. There was a large
       | video camera on a crane above the floor. About a year later, I
       | visited a friend and we played Green Day's (then) new Rockband
       | game.
       | 
       | I noticed that Tre's dance around his drums looked awfully
       | familiar, and then at the end of one song, the camera focused on
       | a statue next to the stage, that I was staring at before the
       | show. My friend didn't believe me when I told him I was in the
       | concert they recorded to make the game.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, all the people in the crowd were removed and
       | replaced with faceless stick-figure-like people. I really wish my
       | face was in there, because it would have proved that I was there,
       | and give me something to look for when someone else is playing
       | the game.
        
       | NoSalt wrote:
       | This is an issue a lot of gyms are facing; idiot "influencers"
       | coming in and not caring who or what they film. It is really up
       | to the private establishment to set rules for taking images and
       | video within their facilities, but most will allow it because
       | they want that almighty dollar to continue flowing in.
        
         | ProllyInfamous wrote:
         | This is one of the reasons I use the free county gym -- there
         | are no influencers here (it's bare bones dudes slamming
         | weights, only). I used to pay for a membership at a higher-end
         | local establishment (and could still afford to), but got tired
         | of all the glimglam of social gyms. The only thing I miss is
         | the yoga class.
        
       | trumbitta2 wrote:
       | I can relate, and it's especially concerning when it comes to my
       | child ending up in videos (and pictures) by random people.
        
       | ibejoeb wrote:
       | > I occasionally see people saying "well, if you don't want to be
       | in photos published online, don't be in public spaces".
       | 
       | > This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should
       | be able to exist in society, including going outside one's own
       | home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
       | 
       | I feel the same way, but that's just not reality anymore. If you
       | go outside your home, you're on camera. If your home faces your
       | neighbor's door, you're probably on camera even in your own home
       | unless you have constant obstruction of your windows and doors. I
       | regularly see camera on apartment doors surveilling the interior
       | of secure high-rise residential buildings. Guess you just gotta
       | know when unit 18A takes out the trash...
        
       | trahlyta_blue wrote:
       | This is a concern I also have in youth sports. People are filming
       | practice and games then posting that on social media and
       | sometimes the goal is to show their child (sometimes as young as
       | 5) "embarrassing" someone's else's child with a move. It's
       | unfortunately very common.
        
       | IAmGraydon wrote:
       | I understand the overall sentiment of the post, but in this
       | particular example, isn't everyone who's playing airsoft wearing
       | a full face mask anyways?
        
       | blitzar wrote:
       | I don't want to be someones "content", even if it is due to my
       | rougish good looks and a suave mix of bond with john wick on the
       | airsoft battlefield.
        
         | aeternum wrote:
         | You can always leave or ask the airsoft organizers to make new
         | rules. The more interesting question is whether there's some
         | legal avenue to avoid being someone's "content".
         | 
         | Reality TV has to get consent + releases so where is the line?
        
       | ascendantlogic wrote:
       | Seems like the most reasonable answer would be to have days where
       | no video was permitted, and days where it is. Then you can attend
       | on the days where no video is permitted but the ones who like
       | creating and uploading videos can have their chances as well.
        
       | duncangh wrote:
       | Have you considered taking up your hobby in Afghanistan? Somewhat
       | tongue in cheek, but a locality under the Taliban have ratified a
       | morality law that bans photography of living things
       | https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-media-moralit...
        
       | philwelch wrote:
       | This is a very reasonable concern in the general case, but
       | airsoft in particular is probably one of the few social
       | activities where it's not entirely out of place to wear a
       | balaclava and tinted goggles.
        
       | deepsun wrote:
       | One time I rented and apartment (in California), and the
       | agreement said they can make promotional media with me. I tried
       | to fight it, but they didn't really care -- big real estate
       | company is not going to redline legal agreement for me.
        
       | praptak wrote:
       | How does the new Denmark "copyright on your body, face and voice"
       | work in this aspect? I read that the intention is to combat
       | deepfakes but does it also work for uses like this?
        
         | tokai wrote:
         | It wouldn't do anything in this case. Its only about
         | manipulated media content that imitate personal
         | characteristics.
        
       | aunty_helen wrote:
       | I had this when I rode with a motorbike group. It was a loose
       | collection of people that rode a specific route on the weekend.
       | 
       | I only went a few times, but it was obvious the people with the
       | cameras were looking for interesting content and drama. I cut an
       | open corner and ended up in the highlight reel as some example of
       | what not to do. Even though everyone there was 50% over the speed
       | limit and riding "dangerously" in the eyes of others, what got
       | put on the video was the interesting stuff. And of course, you
       | never got to see the speedo of the camera man as he went 2-3
       | times the limit.
       | 
       | Another biker I knew said he didn't ride with those guys because
       | they're just out there to bait for content.
        
         | berkes wrote:
         | We, a group of people living on a street where we get a lot of
         | dangerous motorbikers passing our homes, started collecting
         | these video's recently.
         | 
         | Our goal is to get the roads closed for motorbikes, place bike-
         | repelling infrastructure and to have police involved in the
         | many cases of one-sided accidents. For that we need to convince
         | local governments that motorbikes are misbehaving.
         | 
         | So we now sift through instagram, youtube, etc to find such
         | video's you mention where they ride "our" roads. Or where
         | individuals that we've seen riding our roads misbehave in other
         | places. This is obviously nothing "legal proof", but it's a
         | growing dossier. And also a clear reason why someone may not
         | want to be filmed. In one case, a motorbike lost control,
         | narrowly missed a thick metal bar and plowed through two front
         | yards of neighbors. Police was involved. We managed to find
         | this individual on several other such videos clearly racing way
         | over the speed limit. He lost his drivers licence. Not because
         | of the video's, but they did help make the case this person was
         | structurally misbehaving, not a one-time mistake or technical
         | error.
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | Sidenote, to illustrate this is not a few "get off my lawn"
         | people, but that this is an actual problem: These motorbikers
         | are but a few dozen individuals over the year, yet their noise
         | and the danger and agression towards others road users is out
         | of any proportion. This is a quiet nature reserve where people
         | come to run, stroll, watch birds, go swimming with family,
         | drive grandma around, bicycle, skate, picknick. Where our kids
         | play and where our teens cycle to school. On busy days there
         | can be hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians in a sunny
         | afternoon. The speed limit is mostly 30km/h (18mph), the road
         | is 2.5 to 3m (8-9ft) wide, traffic from both sides. Motorbikers
         | have been seen to hit 130km/h (80mph). Where children are
         | cycling, couples are walking, fitgirls skating and so on.
        
           | scratchyone wrote:
           | lol why do you want to punish all motorcycle riders instead
           | of the actual people who are misbehaving....
        
             | jacobgkau wrote:
             | New people will always be popping up to misbehave.
             | Addressing the problem at the infrastructure level is the
             | only way to ensure it's permanently solved.
             | 
             | Kind of like "why would you want to build a pedestrian
             | bridge instead of just jailing the driver who hit someone
             | at that intersection." The odds that it'll be the last time
             | are basically zero.
        
           | aunty_helen wrote:
           | I sympathise with this, people who are endangering others
           | deserve consequences of the law. I live in a city near a
           | straight road and often hear bikes step through 2-3 gears at
           | night. I know how fast that is and it's dangerous.
           | 
           | One of the reasons I stopped riding with this group was a few
           | people there didn't have a strong will to live and so
           | adrenaline and confrontation was what they were looking for.
           | 
           | The specific route I mentioned though is 50km outside of the
           | nearest city, through a wasteland and ridden at times to
           | minimise traffic getting in the way. The best time was 6pm on
           | a Tuesday night where you'd be lucky to pass anyone.
        
       | JadoJodo wrote:
       | I feel this about all of the AI notetaking bots that everyone is
       | adding to web meetings these days:
       | 
       | "Welcome to the meeting. Your voice is now being recorded and
       | sent to a server somewhere in the world to be processed by an AI
       | and you have zero control over it. If we were to get hacked, it
       | will be impossible to you know if your voice will be synthesized
       | and used to scam, abuse, or any other nefarious purposes between
       | now and the end of time. Happy meeting!"
       | 
       | I've seriously been in meetings with 3+ AI bots from different
       | companies I've never heard of.
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | On the flipside, if I'm attending a meeting, I should have a
         | right to my choice of disability assistance. I have glasses to
         | deal with vision impairment, and notetaking assistance to deal
         | with short term memory impairment. The AI is a part of
         | cybernetic "me", rather than the platform.
        
       | djoldman wrote:
       | Check out first amendment auditing for a look at the edges of
       | this at least in the USA.
        
       | dpcan wrote:
       | I feel like I can't really have fun and be myself when I see
       | people shooting video all around me.
       | 
       | I like to be silly with my kids and close friends, I like to act
       | out around the people who find me fun or funny. But the rest of
       | the world would ridicule me, or make fun of me, or make me a meme
       | possibly.
       | 
       | This makes me sad because as a young man I could just be out
       | there and fun, and at the end of the day, I held a place in the
       | memories of my closest friends, maybe a handful of bystanders.
       | But today, I could be gif'd and immortalized for my silly actions
       | without my permission.
       | 
       | I disagree with the sentiment, you're in public, it's fair game.
       | That just means I have to bend to your world-view, and you don't
       | have to be considerate of mine.
        
       | arghwhat wrote:
       | > This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should
       | be able to exist in society, including going outside one's own
       | home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
       | 
       | I find these kinds of argument somewhat odd, as they imply that
       | "this kind of thing" is some unacceptable violation of clearly
       | pre-established rights.
       | 
       | Rather, one must realize that existing in society always had the
       | implication of being visible to society, and that public spaces
       | are just that: a place accessible to all, where if you chose to
       | be you must also accept being observed by its other attendants.
       | 
       | Some physical public spaces might be crammed so full of people
       | that it's hard to breathe, while others will have them few and
       | far in between. Some virtual public spaces might be breaking
       | records with their viewer counts, others will never be graced
       | with the presence of an eyeball. Streamers just connect a
       | physical public space with a virtual public space.
       | 
       | Being _recorded_ and published in a final edit of an on-demand
       | video is slightly different (and not implied in streaming), but
       | that is a much older dilemma that we have had more time to adjust
       | to and hammer out rights regarding, and few would really pay
       | attention to someone recording on the street with anything other
       | than slight curiosity.
       | 
       | So no. I believe this is the society you must accept being a
       | member of. The only thing that has changed with time is the
       | medium (memory and word-of-mouth, paintings, photos, video
       | recording and finallys livestreaming), not the actions. But as
       | important, being caught on rando streamer's camera will by
       | default only contribute about as much to your internet fame (and
       | loss of privacy) as going to the local grocery store.
       | 
       | (For those curious if age contributes to the standpoint, I'd fall
       | in the 30-40 bucket.)
        
       | MisterTea wrote:
       | Last year I was at a concert hanging outside enjoying a J and my
       | beer. Suddenly there were four young women shoving a phone in my
       | face asking me questions. I was a deer in the headlights. Turns
       | out they were live streaming and just talking to random people.
       | It made me quite uncomfortable - who's on the other end looking
       | at me? They were later live streaming from the pit...
       | 
       | Of course Ive had video cameras in my face before at concerts but
       | they weren't streaming and the results were probably seen by very
       | few people. Now its instant broadcast to whoever is on the other
       | end.
        
       | djoldman wrote:
       | I am not a lawyer.
       | 
       | In the USA, anyone is allowed to photograph, video, or otherwise
       | record anything they can see from a public sidewalk, subject to
       | some soft restrictions like it being illegal to impede the
       | movement of others. Any attempt by law enforcement or others to
       | restrict this would likely fail in the courts.
       | 
       | Folks can get pretty upset by this in the real world.
        
         | IncreasePosts wrote:
         | The story is about a person on private grounds. They could talk
         | to the owner and ask them to make a rule about no filming, but
         | the owners probably like filming because if a cut goes viral on
         | their airsoft grounds, it's like free advertising.
        
       | insane_dreamer wrote:
       | I think the issue is "available to the whole world". "Back in the
       | day" people would take photos or even videos (remember
       | camcorders?) and it wasn't a big deal because well, only that
       | person would have it and maybe show it to some friends or family
       | (or give you a copy).
       | 
       | But now it means archived for the whole world to see, potentially
       | forever. 30 years from now, someone might dig it up.
       | 
       | So it's not so much about the photography (which as someone
       | pointed out, might be allowed in public places), it's about
       | posting the photos/videos into a potentially eternal public
       | archive.
        
       | procaryote wrote:
       | > I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera
       | "would you mind not including me in anything you upload,
       | please?". And, since everyone with whom I've spoken at games, so
       | far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I'd be
       | hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not
       | done this.
       | 
       | I've done this several times in various contexts. If you ask in a
       | nice way, it usually works
       | 
       | If you don't ask, it's very unlikely people will have the
       | telepathy needed to understand what you quietly want
       | 
       | For air-soft specifically it is also very feasible to wear a full
       | face mask and become very hard for regular people to recognise.
        
       | artursapek wrote:
       | Running around littering the forest with plastic, and he is
       | concerned about his privacy. This is the state of modern man.
        
       | miladyincontrol wrote:
       | I relate some to the premise but for an entirely different reason
       | than privacy.
       | 
       | Simply one of my less common hobbies has an incredibly high hit
       | rate of gimmick social media accounts stealing videos for their
       | own profit, with zero credit, while highly misrepresenting
       | things. A problem not nearly unique to the hobby nor any one type
       | of media, but a problem plaguing it nonetheless.
       | 
       | Its basically pushed an already obscure hobby even more so.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | > vim over emacs
       | 
       | Hell Yes lol
        
       | phyzix5761 wrote:
       | Is the airsoft range on public property? If not, you could
       | probably complain to the owners. If its on public property then
       | you probably can't do much about it except complain to YouTube
       | and ask them to take it down.
        
       | nmilo wrote:
       | > I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera
       | "would you mind not including me in anything you upload,
       | please?". And, since everyone with whom I've spoken at games, so
       | far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I'd be
       | hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not
       | done this.
       | 
       | I feel like the reasonable place to start is here no? Why write
       | this whole post when this would probably be easier?
        
         | zahlman wrote:
         | > when this would probably be easier?
         | 
         | I don't think it would be. It sounds incredibly tedious in the
         | long run.
        
         | Kon5ole wrote:
         | Even simpler, have a discussion with the group once and have
         | cameras either be prohibited on all days except X, or allowed
         | on all days except X, depending on the majority preference.
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | I have the same issue with board gamers. Now, admittedly it isn't
       | as intrusive as audio/video uploads. But so many want to record
       | the game along with the names of the players. When I request they
       | don't use my actual name and just put Player A (or whatever) they
       | look at me like I'm a weirdo. When did it become weird to want as
       | little information about yourself to be online?
        
       | CobrastanJorji wrote:
       | I think I'm sympathetic to both sides of this.
       | 
       | If my kid is on some fun Disney ride, and I take a short video of
       | them, and also there are some other people in the background or
       | also on the ride, I would still fee comfortable sharing the
       | video. Well, I wouldn't, because I don't put videos of my kids
       | online, but if I was comfortable doing that, I wouldn't feel
       | deterred by the presence of others.
       | 
       | But also, if someone else takes a photo of my kids in public (or
       | at Disney), I would feel somewhat uncomfortable about it, and I'd
       | feel even more uncomfortable about finding that photo online.
       | 
       | I don't know how to square that, ethically. Sometimes I see posts
       | on Reddit that go "hey, I was out at the beach, and I saw this
       | couple proposing, and I got this amazing photo of it, does anyone
       | know them so I can send them a copy," and I think "you just took
       | one of the most important, intimate, private moments of this
       | couple's life and posted it online without their permission," but
       | it doesn't seem to upset anyone because the couple will look
       | really great in the photo. Does that make a difference? I've got
       | no answers for this, just questions.
        
       | iagooar wrote:
       | I would like to share an even more extrem version of this.
       | 
       | I come from a country that could be potentially affected by the
       | Russian-Ukranian war.
       | 
       | A couple of years ago, the government presented a program for
       | volunteers, consisting of a military crash-course over a weekend
       | to get to know the basics. Military service is voluntary in my
       | country, so I thought it might actually be a good idea to have
       | had a rifle in my hand at least once. You never know.
       | 
       | So I decided to sign up and got a few documents to sign. One of
       | them was explicit consent for the organizing party to use any
       | pictures taken during the training in order to use it as
       | promotional material. No opt-out possible.
       | 
       | You understand? They could take pictures of me during a voluntary
       | training, and post them on Facebook or anywhere on the Internet!
       | 
       | I even sent them an email asking to clarify and if I could opt
       | out. They refused and would not allow me to participate if I
       | didn't accept.
        
         | tintor wrote:
         | That is a positive example of respecting consent:
         | 
         | They asked for consent before filming.
         | 
         | You disagreed and didn't participate.
         | 
         | They didn't record you and didn't publish video of you.
        
       | nkrisc wrote:
       | > There has been no "put on this purple lanyard if you don't want
       | to be included in the public version of the video" rule, which
       | I've seen work pretty well at conferences I have attended (even
       | if it is opt-out rather than consent).
       | 
       | This bothers me. The default should be not including people, and
       | instead offer lanyards (or whatever) who want to be included.
       | 
       | I know why it doesn't work that way, though.
        
       | nakedrobot2 wrote:
       | Just tell the other person "please blur my face out if you
       | publish this online" in 2025, this is _easy to do_.
        
       | nilslindemann wrote:
       | In Germany, they have to ask him for his permission. If he
       | insists, the video has to get deleted. If they publish the video
       | without his consent, he can sue them and - aside of deleting the
       | video - they may face penalties ranging from fines to
       | imprisonment, though both are improbable in that context.
       | 
       | https://www.prigge-recht.de/filmen-im-oeffentlichen-raum-was...
        
       | tshaddox wrote:
       | > I occasionally see people saying "well, if you don't want to be
       | in photos published online, don't be in public spaces".
       | 
       | > This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should
       | be able to exist in society, including going outside one's own
       | home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
       | 
       | > Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including
       | going outside one's own home, without needing to accept this kind
       | of thing.
       | 
       | Well, here is the heart of the disagreement. I suspect everyone
       | agrees that the social norms are "clear," they just vehemently
       | disagree about what those norms are.
       | 
       | I don't know anything specific about the implicit cultural norms
       | of airsoft, but it sounds like the author is playing at a
       | privately owned facility which I would expect to have very
       | explicit rules and liability waivers. I'd be surprised if those
       | rules don't cover photography.
        
       | nonethewiser wrote:
       | >Publishing someone's photo online, without their consent,
       | without another strong justification, just because they happen to
       | be in view of one's camera lens, feels wrong to me.
       | 
       | Why?
       | 
       | I dont ask this dismissively. Im not suggesting he's unjustified.
       | That's just the interesting question to me and the author doesnt
       | explore it. I believe this feeling is a new trend.
       | 
       | I dont think people had these qualms, say, 20 years ago. The
       | world was a very different place back then. At the end of the day
       | I suppose it's because 20 years ago, even with a totally
       | permissive policy, you'd never expect footage of you to reach any
       | significant amount of people. It would rarely happen and when it
       | did there wouldnt be a huge audience to share it with.
       | 
       | But does it go beyond that? Would people have cared even if it
       | did reach a wide audience? Is it possible people seek more
       | privacy and control over their image than before? And not just as
       | a reaction to how global everything is because of the internet?
       | Gen Z being afraid of answering phone calls, etc.
       | 
       | This strikes me as similar to the attitude towards phone number
       | privacy. People used to publicly share their phone numbers by
       | default. You were included in the phone book unless you specially
       | requested not to be. Now it feels invasive for parties to ask you
       | for it, even when they have some plausible reason.
        
         | baobun wrote:
         | What changed?
         | 
         | Awareness and prevalence of dragnets, AI, surveillance economy.
        
         | xboxnolifes wrote:
         | Social media is why. 20 years ago social media was not what it
         | is today. The dynamics have changed.
        
         | rkomorn wrote:
         | For me, the "why" is a mix of:
         | 
         | 1- ubiquity: now, virtually everyone's got a device capable of
         | capturing high quality photo/video of you at any time
         | 
         | 2- discoverability: social media gives anything the potential
         | to go viral which might put you in the spotlight or limelight,
         | and the frequency at which things can go viral "enough" is way
         | higher (more platforms, larger follower counts, etc) (this is I
         | assume what you meant by "reach")
         | 
         | 3- "content creators" are everywhere: people want to turn
         | anything into something, through all kinds of incentives that
         | were unavailable 20 years ago, so it's a much more active
         | "capture and use it" context
         | 
         | Things just aren't the same as they were 20 years ago.
        
       | tooape wrote:
       | As a street photographer this constant video/livestreaming
       | culture shift in the last 10 years has made it really hard to not
       | make folks uncomfortable when out in public.
        
       | NiloCK wrote:
       | This is mostly a joke, but objects in fantasy land are sometimes
       | closer than they appear.
       | 
       | Major cloud compute and OS infra providers should provide a
       | global opt-out of public bystander-recording. OK, record me, but
       | it will be known by my face, location stamps from my device, etc,
       | that it's me, and post-processing will anonymize me.
       | 
       | Legitimate public interest? EG, I stole your car and it's on
       | tape? Sure, provide the cloud provider with a warrant for
       | 'originals'.
        
       | Wilsoniumite wrote:
       | I agree a lot with the sentiments here and I think people who
       | want to avoid being filmed should have that right. But, as
       | someone who doesn't mind (and is younger) I suppose I could share
       | my rationalizion for it (as flawed as it may be)
       | 
       | One often mentioned reason is the fear that in some way your
       | likeness will end up in something significant, or viral. That
       | makes sense, it's the most invasive and significant violation. We
       | "risk becoming the side character in someone else's parasocial
       | relationship" as another commentator mentioned. I myself wouldn't
       | want that either, but I derive some comfort from one main
       | observation: virality doesn't scale. A lot of the worries come
       | from the fact that "everyone is filming now", "everything is
       | shared now". That's true, but the likelihood of any of this ever
       | becoming popular or even seen goes down as the volume goes up.
       | That alone is enough for me to not be that worried, at least not
       | by the increased prevalence of public filming/photography.
       | 
       | On the other hand, this does nothing to limit the effect of data
       | harvesting and government espionage, a real worry I might have.
        
         | wslh wrote:
         | It's interesting that you mentioned being younger. One thing
         | I've noticed is that as people accumulate different experiences
         | and social groups (not necessarily just because of age), they
         | often develop different "personas" depending on the
         | environment. In one setting, you might be an enthusiast sharing
         | a video about a hobby, while in another you might be a CEO
         | interacting with your team, shareholders, partners, or
         | customers where you naturally behave differently. The challenge
         | is managing these "many worlds" without them colliding. One
         | solution that's becoming more feasible now is the ability to
         | modify your appearance and voice depending on the context.
        
       | brisky wrote:
       | Great points. With Meta glasses and other similar gadgets I think
       | manual consent is not enough. There should be a 'protocol' to
       | announce that you don't allow your images to be included in
       | social media. I propose a QR code that would signify that you
       | don't want to filmed. We need to push for legislation allowing
       | (returning) such liberty. After such automated consent is legal
       | it will be up to social media platforms to blur and anonymize
       | individuals with such preferences. Finally we will have a job
       | where AI could be put to good use!
        
       | bityard wrote:
       | Somehow you eventually have to square the fact that if you do
       | things outside of your home, you are going to run into other
       | people, who are very much going to do whatever they want,
       | regardless of any existing laws, customs, or mores. And factor
       | that into your decision making.
        
       | lbrito wrote:
       | This behaviour is a thousandfold worse when you have kids,
       | especially at social gatherings like birthday parties. Other
       | parents (at least in my age cohort) assume it is OK to film them
       | and post it to whatever social media they have without even
       | asking.
        
         | lippihom wrote:
         | Here in Germany we are about to start our daughter in pre-
         | school ("kita") and every single parent had to fill out a few
         | forms explicitly stating if they were ok or not ok with having
         | photos or videos taken of their child (both by staff and by
         | other parents).
        
       | w10-1 wrote:
       | So sue. Don't expect legislators or online legions to protect
       | you. Sue to protect others in the same situation.
       | 
       | The common-law tort of invasion of privacy grows to encompass new
       | situations only through court cases.
       | 
       | Courts (i.e., judges) are not looking to create rules out of thin
       | air, but look to reflect when expectations have changed in a way
       | that tracks the principles behind the tort.
       | 
       | In this case, an initial historical period of permitting
       | publication by default can be followed by a restrictive period of
       | prohibiting invasions, based on the recognizing dangers from
       | publication, e.g., permanent and lasting damage to one's business
       | relationships through disclosing of embarrassing but irrelevant
       | images.
       | 
       | To make law you have to get out of the realm of personal feelings
       | and start expressing principles for the way people should live
       | together.
        
       | mattmaroon wrote:
       | It's frustrating when there's a problem and you know any solution
       | to it is worse than the problem itself.
       | 
       | For instance, in my area we've recently had a couple Nazi
       | demonstrations. People with swastika flags and "Hitler was right"
       | signs. I'd like that to go away.
       | 
       | But to attempt to use law to do anything about it would mean
       | allowing someone to choose what others can and cannot say in
       | public. That's worse, or at least at some point it will be.
       | 
       | This is very much like that (though of course far less nefarious)
       | and you just have to let people take paintball videos. Imagine if
       | we didn't let people video anything they want in public. How many
       | instances of police brutality would go unpunished. That's worse.
       | 
       | My advice: start a paintball league and make that the rule. And
       | yeah, it does suck to have to suddenly become an event planner
       | just to not end up on YouTube but welcome to the future I guess.
        
       | f17428d27584 wrote:
       | Posting videos on YouTube is commercial use. Even if you earn no
       | money, the intent is almost always to "grow the channel" to the
       | point where you can monetize it, sponsorships, brand deals, etc.
       | 
       | Commercial use in most jurisdictions is handled differently from
       | the "free speech" exception. There are generous carve outs for
       | art though. Which is interesting. If I sell a photograph it's art
       | but if I sell it to an ad agency for use on a billboard it's
       | commerce?
       | 
       | But the world we live in is so changed, it is a very recent
       | change where taking a photograph was almost always a 1:1 photo to
       | print ratio. It's very new the idea that everyone is carrying
       | around an internet connected video camera that can publish live
       | to billions of people. This absolutely changes the calculus and
       | laws should be updated accordingly.
       | 
       | I don't know what that should look like but it seems we should
       | acknowledge that this activity is primarily commercial (clout is
       | marketing and/or brand value a/k/a goodwill in accounting
       | parlance) and that laws intended to protect art making maybe
       | don't / shouldn't protect this form of commerce as much as they
       | seem to presently.
       | 
       | To be clear: if you are in public and someone takes a
       | recognizable photo of you eg your face and uses it to sell
       | perfume congratulations on being beautiful and also call a lawyer
       | because that use is not protected just because you were in a
       | public space.
       | 
       | But you can make a print hang it in a gallery and sell it for
       | whatever price you want. (AFAIK). Maybe there's more nuance--
       | could you put it in a book of your work and sell it? On the
       | cover? Make postcards? NFT's (remember those?) etc.
       | 
       | Anyway there are already limits and we should maybe enforce the
       | ones that we have in some of these circumstances. I wonder if
       | it's already happening- I can't be the first person to view this
       | activity as commercial right? There must already be precedent
       | somewhere.
       | 
       | Just like how every YouTube gear review says "company X sent me
       | this but they have no say and no money changed hands" is
       | pretending it's not a sponsored video. It's absolutely a
       | sponsored video. 1. You are paid for views 2. People watch
       | reviews on "release day" aka embargo day 3. If you get the
       | product later you will have less views and less money, and you
       | will miss the window of product hype cycle.
       | 
       | So just like every not sponsored review video is absolutely
       | sponsored live-streaming a kids birthday or whatever is
       | commercial and you need model releases. I guess these people will
       | have to post notice of filming warnings at the door along with
       | the balloons.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | Every picture of you posted publicly will eventually be linked to
       | you. Probably by Palantir.
       | 
       | There's face recognition. There's gait recognition. There's
       | inference of the likely participants from cell phone data and
       | known movement patterns. Some of this is probabilistic but still
       | useful. Even if the matching wasn't done at the time, it can be
       | done later.
        
       | RobRivera wrote:
       | Then don't make them and be happy.
       | 
       | Perhaps it is a generational gap, but the idea that I have to
       | justify NOT attempting to squeeze a hustle out of absolutely
       | everything I do reduces my trust in any content generated in
       | [current year] as nothing more but a carefully crafted
       | advertising space.
        
       | pg3uk wrote:
       | Aim for the expensive kit.
        
       | ratelimitsteve wrote:
       | I feel like at least part of the issue is that the internet is a
       | different kind of public than everywhere else. it's not
       | transient, and it's not limited to the people who happened to be
       | in the same part of public as you at the same time. instead it's
       | a fully-automatable, permanent record that is 100% available to
       | all present and future humans. that deserves consideration to my
       | mind.
        
       | rajer wrote:
       | As someone who plays a lot of online games, there is a similar
       | problem with streamers. While I don't say anything I wouldn't
       | want to be recorded because that's probably a good idea anyway,
       | it is certainly possible I could end up in some kind a fail
       | compilation or otherwise.
       | 
       | But I don't really care, for one because the stakes are lower
       | when it's fully online behind a mostly anonymous account, but
       | also because I am confident if anyone was actually watching a
       | streamer in my game I would find out about it.
       | 
       | If the YouTuber at your local field was raking in views, you
       | would probably know about it, and could you try to resolve it
       | with them. Otherwise these videos are probably not being seen by
       | anyone but their recorder.
        
       | fsckboy wrote:
       | i'm not going to address the central complaint, but what i think
       | is weird about this version is the venue: everybody is
       | essentially wearing a disguise, and you could consciously
       | disguise yourself even more with no inconvenience except less of
       | a chance of being hit in the face with a paint ball
        
       | matt-p wrote:
       | It's really interesting that the big objection is really about
       | sharing the resultant video (widely).
       | 
       | I actually feel the same, I don't really mind if I'm at the gym
       | and in the back of a video someone's taking of themselves to
       | review later to take notes on their form. I actually do kind of
       | care if it gets posted to YouTube and now 100,000 people have
       | seen me covered in sweat or struggling with something or
       | whatever. It's something that's technically 'illegal' in a
       | private space here in the UK, so why do we all just accept/allow
       | it anyway? YouTube or Instagram could easily work out if the
       | video was taken indoors and show a 'are you sure' message.
       | 
       | Just a thought. It's not that big a deal, of course, though to
       | some people it might be (for good reasons).
        
       | elif wrote:
       | The best answer is becoming comfortable with the part of yourself
       | that enjoys your hobbies. Embrace it, let go of the anxiety.
       | Strangers have thoughts like oceans have waves.
        
       | whiterock wrote:
       | > Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at
       | other people
       | 
       | sounds like an environmental nightmare
        
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