We're Americans. If we practiced DBAD, pretty much everything would be different.

Of all our American flaws, "It's not illegal for me to be a dick and therefore I am going to be on" is perhaps the one we're proudest of. (Followed, perhaps, by "It's illegal for me to be a dick but you can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and that's as good as legal" and "It's illegal for me to be a dick but nobody is going to bother prosecuting therefore it's as good as legal.")

It would be great if we all practiced Don't Be A Dick. But for those who are most harmed by people being dicks, we need to figure out ways to protect them legally, because otherwise people will be a dick to them as hard as they possibly can. And every time you try, people will say "Nobody is being a dick to me therefore nobody needs to be protected."

Sometimes I wonder if there is something in the food or the air, or if it's all due to Murdoch. You're describing the symptoms all too well. I wonder what the cause is.

There are two ways to view the world, and what we do in it. Which one we adopt largely depends on the one those around us adopt.

I make no judgement about which is "better" or "worse" - they both have positives and negatives. Inevitably, and obviously, you can probably figure out which one you fall into based on which one you react to.

In the first case, you view the world around you and yours. You see events and think "how does this affect me and people like me". If taxes are going up this means I get less money.

The alternative is through the lens of "how does this affect others." - them and theirs - yes, taxes are going up, but those in need will get better medical care, and I already have enough money myself.

It's not just about money. Basically every policy discussion revolves around "us" and "them". Immigration, inflation, exploitation, environment, defense, guns and do on. How will this affect me and mine. How will it affect them and theirs.

Inevitably every policy has an impact on a continuum, but too often the extreme is presented by media to reinforce one end of the spectrum. Thus the extremes start to matter more than the nuanced middle ground.

> There are two ways to view the world,....

More than that. Seeing that is the first step in "not being a dick"

I agree.

An additional aspect which is the reason I'm fairly left leaning is that I really dislike encounters with downtrodden people so I will gladly pay more taxes to prevent/save them from being that way.

I could not live in a place with a homelessness issue like LA.

Places like LA have high taxes and more homeless than places without high taxes. Maybe the programs in place that the high taxes pay for just incentivize homeless people to move there? Left leaning cities have a far greater number of homeless people.

I would argue there is a third. I'm open to taxes going up if the extra money is used effectively. Also what behavior are the funds incentivizing? If they are not used effectively or the incentivized behavior is not optimal then I am against them. For example cities like LA and SF give money to the homeless with virtually zero requirements so they are in effect incentivizing homeless people to move there and stay homeless. I am against this. I would be for spending money to clean homeless people up and get them jobs and provide shelter until they have acclimated back into society. The program would require actual proof of the participants trying to fix their circumstances. I am always for feeding and caring for homeless kids.

Individualism, lack of sanctions for misbehavior.

I think a lot of people (often Americans) have trouble distinguishing between illegal/legal and wrong/right. In fact, they see no right and wrong: if I can do it then I will do it, other people be damned. They’ll wave their hands right in front of your face taunting “Nyah Nyah Nyah I can legally do this and there’s nothing you can do to stop me! Ha ha ha!” People will go out of their way to be an asshole because they can and nobody can stop them.

Don’t like if I film you? Ha ha! It’s not illegal so I’m going to deliberately film you, and by the way, in other ways I’m going to also go right up to the line of what’s illegal and not cross it, because I can and because it irritates you.

This is so infuriating and irritating to read; well done, lol

The way I see it: we were very proud of our Bill of Rights, but never came up with a corresponding Bill of Responsibilities. You wouldn't expect one, of course, but the Bill of Rights gives people a thing to hold up and declare "I got mah rights!".

Pretty much any time you see somebody clamoring about their rights, and ignoring any talk about responsibility (or talking about your responsibilities but not theirs), you can tell the conversation isn't going to go well.

And if you punch me in the face I'll shoot you because I feared for my life. 'Merica!

It's baked into the founding of the country. A bunch of folks arrived in a place where people were living and decided those people were less than human and killed them or moved them away from their homes (often by signing contracts they had no intention of upholding). Then, we captured a bunch of people from somewhere far away and moved them here for free labor. After the war we fought to end that, many places passed a lot of unconstitutional laws to continue to make their lives miserable. It's no surprise to me that, never having reckoned with all of that, the general American attitude is entitled and thoughtless.

This actually pretty accurately and succinctly describes the difference between American and Canadian culture.

As a Canadian in the US I'm often asked the difference, and I've mostly held my tongue from saying "You're all pretty damn rude, and have fragile egos" but I think I might steal your description because it makes sense.

"You guys should practice DBAD"

Nonsense. As a fellow Canadian I can safely say that MANY Canadians have plenty of fragile ego problems and are plenty rude too. Let's not generalize between two whole countries. Canadian media and government policy also has an obsessive complex with "differentiating itself" from American culture, to the point of becoming tedious about it, but that's another story.

> Sure, it’s legal to film people in public in the US without their consent. But it’s also shitty.

I disagree that it’s always shitty to film people in public without their consent. This is not a black and white issue.

Do you feel that consent should be obtained from everyone who is visible in any video taken outdoors, regardless of whether those people are the intended subject of the video? Do you have a consent problem with surveillance videos? How about videos captured on car dash cameras?

Let’s say you are at a tourist attraction, capturing a video of the attraction. Another visitor asks that you stop filming, because they don’t want to be in your video. Dickish to continue? I’m not so sure.

It’s easy to say “don’t be a dick,” but that statement sidesteps the reality that reasonable people can (and do) disagree about what that means.

I don't think the point is "family video." I think the point is "viral tik tok video." And it seems like we've been here before. Monetized entertainment is monetized entertainment.

https://www.quora.com/Do-you-have-to-sign-a-waiver-or-other-...

There's a reason that appearance releases are a thing.

Legally, I believe the only time you actually need a model release is if you are going to use the image in advertising. I am not a lawyer, and if you want the real answer you should probably ask one. But the answers to that quora question look wrong to me. Note that I am talking about the US, the rules may be different elsewhere.

* * *

I'm a little less convinced that "crowd shots" count in this discussion.

When some jerk goes up to a girl with the intent to humiliate her for TikTok lulz by asking her to name 3 ACDC songs, that video no only should never be "shared with 3rd parties", but should never even be made in the first place.

On the other hand, I wouldn't even think about asking your consent to post a crowd pan shot of a music festival with hundreds (or thousands) of people in shot. And unless you happened to be one of the people right behind me and obviously recognisable in the clip, I'd consider you insane if you objected or asked me to take it down.

I've not fully thought this through, but there's a big difference between "active engagement" with a specific person like the TikTok jerk, and passive engagement like "look at the crowd here at SXSW!" And there's a hard line in the sand about the TikTok jerk's intentions of hoping to humiliate people publicly.

If that TikTok jerk had caught me on a bad day as I was coming back to my partner while he was pulling that shit, he'd probably be buying a new microphone and camera after I'd stomped them...

> Do you feel that consent should be obtained from everyone who is visible in any video taken outdoors

It's a spectrum.

When someone is the subject of your video, like the AC/DC person in the article, then YES, you are a shitty person if you post that for the world to see without their permission.

The entire point of my comment is that it’s a spectrum.

That's pretty much the "not all men!!!" argument that jerks use whenever women are on guard against approaches from strange men...

Sure, there's a "spectrum". But if you're videoing people without consent to humiliate them for your TikTok content, then you are a dick. And there are so many of those dicks that if you are walking around in public with a microphone and a friend videoing you, I'm just gonna assume up front that you are a dick. There is zero downside for me doing that, and potentially a huge upside. Maybe you are somehow on the "not dick" end of the spectrum of people walking around with a microphone and a film crew, I don't care. You can cry #notAllTikTikCreators all you like, it's always in my best interest to assume you are a dick.

… and yet there are still counter-examples: Candid photography[1] has long been recognized as art, and I wouldn't feel that the photographer is a "shitty person" for trying to capture a view of the world not affected by knowledge that the camera is trained on them. (And permission after the fact is not always possible. Nor necessary, even to avoid be "shitty".)

Photo-journalism, particularly of politicians, would be greatly harmed by a permission requirement: is a journalist a shitty person for reporting the truth, even truths that a politician might not like? (And let's say it's something public, like capturing a politician giving a public speech that would appear to be whipping a crowd into a mob, not tabloid/paparazzi type stuff.) Someone photographing or videotaping police brutality?

Intent, I think, is what matters in determining if any one photo/capture is "shitty"; there are instances where you can be a good person while creating photos or videos that might be very detrimental to the subject. Some of the examples from TFA are good examples: creators looking to find people on the street to make a fool of.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candid_photography#As_an_art_f...

[2]: (I'd perhaps also add the last time I surreptitiously recorded someone was because the person was issuing death threats to those around him. AITA? But there are other, more artistic or journalistic cases that I think also have merit, which is why this is a footnote.)

> … and yet there are still counter-examples: Candid photography[1] has long been recognized as art, and I wouldn't feel that the photographer is a "shitty person" for trying to capture a view of the world not affected by knowledge that the camera is trained on them. (And permission after the fact is not always possible. Nor necessary, even to avoid be "shitty".)

I think if the picture/video is to be posted online or in a gallery, the person in the picture has a right to say how their likeness is being used, regardless of context. If someone's in the background of a video a I would say it's not as relevant, unless the background person becomes the subject unintentionally (as often seen in fail videos).

Surveillance is a different matter. You are notified you're entering a building with cameras, and those also aren't streamed online or displayed publicly.

As for public figures: there's usually separate laws for such things for public figures, AFAIK

Fortunately the TikToker avoided a demonstration of "Ballbreaker" and other gonad-themed AC/DC song titles.

If the recording-in-public is for commercial purposes, yes I want to be asked for consent if for no other reason than to demand my slice of the pie.

And yes, posting to TikTok for "clout" is "commercial purposes". There are many drone pilots who found out the expensive way that posting drone footage on YouTube resulted in fines/prosecutions under commercial drone operation regulations.

The biggest problem I have with those tiktokers is that they will ruin filming in public for the rest of us, as people will demand some kind of radical law prohibiting it.

I am totally fine with the distinction that is enshrined in law in many places around the world: you can record everything in public, but you cannot publish what you recorded without consent.

The issue is that we have two extremes (as it often happens) that either react to the camera as if it's the devil eating their souls and freak out, or we have the tiktokers basically ignoring the second part (no publication without consent).

>react to the camera as if it's the devil eating their souls and freak out

The problem is, if they politely ask someone to stop filming them, it won't have any effect.

If things end up online (and everything recorded by a modern cam will end up online at least at one of Google, Apple, FB, or MS) this is not OK. You can't control what those companies do with the data. If you don't like your life ending up in the cloud nobody may film you without our consent. There is not much room for discussion. (Maybe if the recordings would be done with offline devices and you would get written guaranties that the recording never gets onto an networked computer, but how could promise this in today's world?)

> There is not much room for discussion

And yet here we are. You’re not in charge, and telling other people what they are and aren’t allowed to do just to meet some arbitrary desire of yours is being a dick. Do you really expect everyone not to take pictures and videos of games you’re at? Museums you’re in? Concerts you attend? Come on.

Thankfully I'm in the EU.

It's my right to demand that.

(This does not mean that everybody conforms to the law. But people that don't would be at least liable for damages.)

Edit, to clarify: Of course you can film in public. But you're required to cut out people who didn't give explicit consent before showing the material in public or handing it over to third parties.

No it isn’t (there are similar laws in at least France and Italy, and a much broader one in the UK).

All of this delightful nuance goes to my previous point; there’s plenty to debate and discuss here and the whole idea of an absolute right to privacy in public is comical.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/kunsturhg/__23.html

There is no "absolute right to privacy in public", of course.

But distributing or handing over such material is limited and requires usually consent.

Please pay special attention to the second sentence of the cited paragraph.

No it doesn’t. That consent is gated around violating their legitimate purpose (see the other words in that second paragraph). So in general just posting stuff/uploading to TikTok/facebook/etc does not require consent and you don’t have a right to have it taken down without specific cause.

No, that's wrong.

We're talking here about rights that are derived directly form the first sentence of the German constitution!

Such right is very strong. Only in exceptional cases it can be overruled by other constitutional rights.

Details can be found for example here: https://www.prigge-recht.de/wann-darf-ich-bilder-von-anderen...

You should tell your Supreme Court that, they just ruled that street photography is constitutionally protected art.

In Japan, it’s been common practice to blur out the faces of anyone who hasn’t given consent in a photo/video. This applies to crowds as well. This can be an easy way to always avoid being a dick.

I find that when people present these ethical gray areas about a given behavior, they always conclude that it's best to allow the behavior to continue, the (false) premise being that doing so is the ethically neutral position to take. It's a neat little rhetorical trick used to rationalize all kinds of things.

> Do you have a consent problem with surveillance videos?

Ubiquitous CCTV cameras certainly bring issues of privacy, as well as what they should be used for.

One example is Smart Streetlights, which were initially promoted as energy saving lights that would help to monitor and manage traffic, but quickly turned into dragnet police surveillance systems, initially to solve violent crimes but ultimately including property crimes such as vandalism, illegal dumping, and destruction of city property[1], and for protest surveillance [2].

[1] https://voiceofsandiego.org/2020/02/03/the-mission-creep-of-...

[2] https://mashable.com/article/police-surveil-black-lives-matt...

License plate cameras tend to have similar mission creep - they start out for parking enforcement and turn into a system for tracking citizens whenever and wherever they drive.

I didn't say it was a black and white issue. I said it was an ethical issue, and like all ethical issues, there is a very wide spectrum of what fits, what doesn't, and what's grey area.

I can think of reasons why one might record a stranger in public, or a stranger might end up in a recording, but I thought it was pretty clear from the article that we're not talking about that—we're talking about content creators (any person making content) filming strangers without consent so they can create content using those strangers. These other things you're talking about are irrelevant to that conversation.

Since just before 2016 and enforced by the pandemic, it's pretty obvious if you are going through life relying on people not to take advantage of the fact that "being a dick" is a loophole while everyone else is polite or obeys the law, you are going to get run over or killed.

Doesn't it differ by state law? I thought it was generally legal only insofar as the use of the footage isn't commercial.

It's interesting as this is one area where Japanese law is significantly different from American law. It's really easy to sue people in Japan and win for people using your image without your permission. This is why you see so many videos from Japan when news agencies film on the streets they'll blur people's faces.

The kind of behavior described in the article can be off putting and unethical.

Sometimes however pushing the boundary causes positive change.

I am a photography enthusiast and a lot of very impactful if not world-changing photography in the past has been called unethical in their times.

Some examples are Robert Frank's "The Americans" (https://www.lensculture.com/articles/robert-frank-the-americ... https://www.nga.gov/features/robert-frank/the-americans-1955...), Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_Mother)" and Steve McCurry's "Afghan girl" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl) photos. All received harsh criticism, but also raised awareness of issues in transformative ways.