Comment by OutOfHere

I'm not particularly fond of the whole "privilege" discourse, but this comment is a great example of somebody completely failing to understand a privilege they have. Which they share with many other people, sure,[0] but there are many people who, through no fault of their own, do need to worry about others learning about their location.

[0] Which is probably one reason why the discourse grates some. Privilege still sounds to me like it's something exclusive, like a 0.1%er thing. Naming stuff is hard.

It's possible to accidentally post something, or have it swiped by many of the untrusted and untrustworthy applications on a PC or mobile device.

It's even easier to unintentionally include identifying information when intentionally making a post, whether by failing to catch it when submitting, or by including additional images in your online posting.

There are also wholesale uploads people may make automatically, e.g., when backing up content or transferring data between systems. That may end up unsecured or in someone else's hands.

Even very obscure elements may identify a very specific location. There's a story of how a woman's location was identified by the interior of her hotel room, I believe by the doorknobs. An art piece placed in a remote Utah location was geolocated based on elements of the geology, sun angle, and the like, within a few hours. The art piece is discussed in this NPR piece: <https://www.npr.org/2020/11/28/939629355/unraveling-the-myst...> (2020).

Geoguessing of its location: <https://web.archive.org/web/20201130222850/https://www.reddi...>

Wikipedia article: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_monolith>

These are questions which barely deserve answering, let alone asking, in this day and age.

I read the "accidentally" as applying to the "identifying" not the "post", although I agree the sentence structure would suggest "accidentally" as a modifier for "post" that makes a lot less sense.

A selfie with a snippet of building in the background might give away your location even if you think there's no way it could be locatable.

>If you don't want to post a photo, then don't post a photo.

Other people have posted photos of me without my consent, how am i meant to stop that?

If i posted photos 20 years ago when i was a dumb teenager i cant undo that, either

I've definitely noticed that there's a huge trend of technology at any cost apologists on HN that can't pause to imagine the real world impacts of how AI products they're championing will actually be used.

It's terrifying that people exist that have no problem making the world a shittier place and hiding behind a cover of "well it's not the technology that's evil but the people abusing it" as if each tool given to bad actors doesn't make their job easier and easier to do.

Seriously, what's the utility of developing and making something like this public use?