They didn’t ask to go viral

The &quot;everyone:1&quot; ratio of internet criticism also has had an interesting effect on politics. Given the sheer amount of vitriol directed at politicians no sane person would run for election. A plausible base-case scenario is a group of socially disabled internet dwellers dedicate their life to hounding you for imagined wrongs. Let alone the pressure of making any decision in a situation where large groups of people are in conflict. As a result I think we&#x27;ll see detectable pressure for <i>only</i> risk taking narcissists to run for public office. Even beyond what is usual for politics.<p>I don&#x27;t think we have a choice about allowing roving internet mobs - the cost of forcibly breaking groups up would be too high. But as always, the more protections we have to slow action down in the real world the better. Mobs make decisions that are foolish, fast and often final.

The online shaming culture at tumblr, twitter and reddit was what convinced me that you need to stay pseudonymous on the internet at all cost.<p>There are so many people that participate in this and haven&#x27;t realized yet that they are being an asshole to random strangers.

But what about the legality?<p>You don&#x27;t need people to sign a release form if you&#x27;re a photojournalist or anything considered to be an editorial source.<p>But as professional filmmakers know, you absolutely do need a release form if you&#x27;re producing anything commercial (for sale). Or if you&#x27;re pushing the boundaries of this like they do when filming Law &amp; Order, to at least put up prominent signs so Manhattan pedestrians know they might wind up on the show if they walk down a particular patch of sidewalk that day.<p>Isn&#x27;t there a strong argument to be made that posting on social media without consent is therefore illegal? Because while you&#x27;re not explicitly <i>selling</i> the video, you and&#x2F;or the site is <i>monetizing</i> it via ads, which these days is the same thing.<p>Has this been tested in court?

&gt; Still, a blanket law against posting strangers without their consent would be draconian and unworkable. There are too many variables, too many circumstances, and simply too many cases.<p>I disagree. If someone (who is a non public figure) is the subject of a photo&#x2F;video and has their likeness used without consent by a third party, the third party should be liable. There should be legal recourse for the victim to sue and force the third party to take it down (plus compensate for legal fees)<p>Courts already deal with situations where there are &quot;too many variables&quot;, the law isn&#x27;t black and white for everything. The way that the author just brushes any legal solution aside seems like a cop-out

It seems like existing laws could already cover some of these scenarios if judged correctly.<p>E.g. if a TikTok&#x27;er uploads a video lying about you, isn&#x27;t that slander? The size of their audience and known effect of internet mobs makes it very clear to a reasonable observer that harm to the victim is expected&#x2F;intended.<p>And gaslighting children or abusing the elderly is already illegal, right?

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

This would be about 90% of Reddit&#x27;s front page.<p>Just look at &#x2F;r&#x2F;tinder: people just casually posting screenshots of ostensibly private conversations with the person&#x27;s face &amp; first name visible. It&#x27;s frankly ridiculous.

I stay away from the kind of content the article refers to however I think there are cases where it&#x27;s important to highlight the behaviour of those who would prefer you didn&#x27;t such as recording the bad behaviour of public workers.<p>Popular 1st Amendment auditor Long Island Audit has highlighted much of this and shown how many police officers lack knowledge of laws they are supposed to be upholding.<p>Here&#x27;s a video that went viral[0] and a recent follow up[1] where things went kind of differently i&#x27;m assuming because of the exposure in the first.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yewtu.be&#x2F;watch?v=AsxNf54ep1Q" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yewtu.be&#x2F;watch?v=AsxNf54ep1Q</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yewtu.be&#x2F;watch?v=CZtgVrYC4f0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yewtu.be&#x2F;watch?v=CZtgVrYC4f0</a>

Social media truly is the opioid of today&#x27;s society.<p>While browsing &#x2F;r&#x2F;all, I ran across a post from a very popular sub which had an airport worker stripping in the airport, flailing on the floor, etc. No one knows why, could have been drugs, could have been a mental defect.<p>Yet many of the thousands of responses were laughing because they could see the man&#x27;s flaccid penis.<p>While we don&#x27;t know what caused the man to do this, imagine your next mental breakdown being posted to an insanely popular sub for everyone to gawk and laugh at.<p>Oh, and of course Reddit found that the post didn&#x27;t violate the &quot;no non-consentual nudity&quot; which according to the guidelines does cover non-consentual public nudity.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.reddithelp.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360043513411" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.reddithelp.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;36004351341...</a>

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

&gt; Another law being considered in France would make parents responsible for their children’s privacy rights. Le Monde cites, as an example of fame-seeking behavior that France is hoping to discourage, TikTokkers scaring their children by pretending to call the police on them, and an Instagrammer who smeared chocolate on her 4-year-old and convinced them they were covered in feces.<p>It&#x27;s a depressing state of affairs that any country has to consider passing laws for this kind of behavior. Shouldn&#x27;t we, as a society, have enough shame to prevent this, or at least prevent it from becoming trendy?<p>I worry about how these laws could be bent to authoritarian ends. &quot;You can&#x27;t record me without my consent&quot; laws have worrisome implications for police encounters. I think (well, honestly, I hope) the populace has the capacity to prevent fame-seeking behavior by shaming it out of existence, rather than leaning on government to punish people for an activity that we would be doing little else to disincentivise.<p>I truly believe the solution is to not engage with malicious fame-seeking content in any way. Avoid platforms where it is regularly shared. Vocally villify it. It can&#x27;t be shamed out of existence until we start shaming it.

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

While I agree, humans are immoral, and will always be immoral. We&#x27;re inherently flawed and self-serving (speaking collectively, not individually as a rule).<p>This is why cryptocurrency is at its core a very good idea (I personally found the Satoshi whitepaper very beautiful), yet in practice is completely and utterly abused and useless to society - it failed to take into account that humans will do anything and everything to abuse a system for a dopamine hit or for status, etc.<p>As soon as technology catches up to this reality, we&#x27;ll start to see change there. I don&#x27;t think regulators will ever catch on to this, honestly. I think we need to stop thinking they will.<p>I don&#x27;t know the solutions here, but this is my pessimistic take. It makes the problems harder (but IMO not unsolvable).

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

Living in Germany I always appreciated their privacy laws related to being filmed&#x2F;photographed in public. The US should do something similar.

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

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy when in public. While it&#x27;s certainly polite not to take photos of strangers and post them without asking if it&#x27;s ok, you shouldn&#x27;t morally or legally need permission. They&#x27;re in public. Their actions can be seen by anyone else in public who crosses paths with them, whether online or off. There are cameras everywhere, and a random person with their smartphone should not be held to a higher standard than a surveillance company or security camera. I recently had someone give me a hard time because I had posted a selfie where someone else was in the background smoking a cigarette. The person was recognizable but far from being the focus of the photo. It was a complete coincidence that they were in the background, but a friend of theirs recognized them was angry that I had posted a photo of them without consent doing something that they didn&#x27;t want shared on social media. Well, I&#x27;m sorry, but if you don&#x27;t want people to see you doing something, don&#x27;t do it in public. I chose to immediately remove the photo out of politeness and to avoid drama, but in my opinion, people have no right to be upset if a photo of them doing something in public goes viral.