How dare they not spew everything in public for all to see.

"(for example see the fate of Google Street View in Germany)"

and b/c you can't find everyone easily on facebook

I am not sure if that answers my question.

>I'm a German living in the United States and find this part of German society pretty annoying: Being super careful about anything that could potentially encroach on your privacy

In the case of Google Maps, I understand that a non-functional application might be annoying and at least Google makes some effort to blur data. But in my reading of the original post, the poster is annoyed that the German community at large has decided to exercise their rights to privacy.

It just seems like a national pastime to post as little information about yourself or anything you're associated with anywhere online at all. As an expat that it makes it hard to stay in contact with many people.

It's everybody's right to do whatever they want with their personal information, but in Germany it often gets to a point where you're being judged if you yourself decide to post something on a social network site.

It also leads to all kind of weird regulations from the government (again, see Street View as an example or the more recent EU-wide regulation of a minimum age of 16 to open social network accounts).