Comment by Almondsetat
10 hours ago
Feel free to point out the hypochrisy. I'll remind you that sharing a video you took of someone without their consent is not the same as recording them and keeping the video strictly for yourself
10 hours ago
Feel free to point out the hypochrisy. I'll remind you that sharing a video you took of someone without their consent is not the same as recording them and keeping the video strictly for yourself
This person was not trespassing on Meta property and nothing indicates that he was harassing employees who refused to be interviewed. It is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to record people in public places.
You don't need someone's consent to record in public, and if any of the employees objected to the publication of the recording, they could consult with an attorney about a portrait rights claim. Such a claim should be adjudicated by a court, not Facebook.
And let's be clear about the context here: these types of glasses are used by "content creators" to do street interviews that are published online, and they're also used to record all sorts of junk/nonsense ("pranks", pickup artist BS, etc.).
Meta doesn't seem to have a problem with content recorded with these glasses being posted on its platforms, even when it's objectionable, because it's literally everywhere. The only problem here, obviously, was that he was recording Meta employees.
"these types of glasses are used by "content creators" to do street interviews that are published online"
This to me is wild. I use the glasses to film my kids and share it on private hard-drives with grandparents, that's it. It's wild to me that I can surreptitiously film someone on the street and publish it online for views, and the only recourse the person has, is to go to court? Seems insane.
Why does Hollywood require a release but Youtube does not?
EDIT: People are getting hung-up on my use case. But that's not the question posed here.
You might want to think twice about this. The videos from those glasses are uploaded and used for AI training, for which they are also reviewed by humans in Kenya, according to the explainer from Bits Of Freedom (with English subs, here: https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/campagnes/gluurbril/)
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Not just their grandparents, the chances are that Meta is processing those videos you take of your kids too even when they say they aren't.
They've played fast and loose with copyrighted material for years, as shown in court records.
They company was founded on the principle of breaking privacy law, as highlighted in Zuckerberg's famous Dumb Fucks conversation.
Meta does what Meta can get away with and you really can't do anything about it without exceptionally deep pockets.
The publishing industry has more money than you do and they failed too.
Wasn't all that long ago people posted pictures of their kids on social media. Someone is going to watch your 12 year old in a swimsuit.
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Some auditors in the USA did that already. I was surprised to see that, since here in Europe, people have a much more negative view of Facebook's spyglasses. I think it is similar to getting money from Facebook directly, just as other "sports" people do product placement, such as for Red Bull (Dom Tomato; and many in the bboying scene). I find this annoying to no ends, but money convinces people. My problem is that I am not interested in ads and no "argument" can convince me otherwise. Since I am not interested in ads, I don't watch it and I don't buy from such companies. It places some restrictions onto me, since many companies advertise, in particular the big ones, but it also means I get to know smaller companies better. (Sometimes there is a de-facto monopoly, so I can not always avoid all companies and their ads; in particular for things you really need, such as food and so forth.)
> the only recourse the person has, is to go to court
Well, typically, if you are in public, you can do just about anything with regards to recording. In private the laws are a bit different. Either way it is a barrier.
FALSE! It's legal to record in public spaces and share it if you are not targeting any individual in particular. What the author did was instead purpusefully focus on those particular employees.
Author made the people he was recording unrecognizable. So even though he focused on specific employees he didn't violate their right to privacy which means it isn't illegal.
https://www.anp.nl/blog/305/privacywetgeving-mag-je-filmen-o... is a decent article(in Dutch) about some of the complexities of Dutch privacy law when it comes to filming people in public spaces.
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Highly dependent on jurisdiction.
Yelling "FALSE" doesn't make you correct.
You could use Google, ChatGPT, Claude, etc. to educate yourself about the law before you post.
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But we are talking about Meta removing content from their own website, right?
In contrast to what people think, Facebook IS NOT public infrastructure.
If Meta removes some content from Meta website, and you don't like that, it's a you problem, right?
> Facebook IS NOT public infrastructure
They want protection from liability and also editorial control?
Regardless of the legal status, it seems clear that when massive companies refuse to allow the media they own to publish a dissenting opinion, we’re not headed towards a ~~more~~ democratic society.
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No problem with that as long as content responsibility is enlarged to all videos published on their platform.
Given all the sh*t that FB videos contain, I guess Meta's direction will soon be in jail.
They have to choose, safe harbor provisioning or responsibility for the content.
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If they want common carrier protections I actually think it should not up to meta to remove things they don’t like.
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> portrait rights claim
Note that the employees were not recognisable; their faces were blurred out.
> is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to record people in public places.
it's perfectly legal to record but publish, especially in but not limited to a commercial context without explicit consent violates portrait rights under the GDPR in the EU. And I strongly suspect if you posted a video in which people explicitly object to being filmed and flag that on Facebook or other platforms it will get taken down.
It's illegal to record people in public spaces in Germany. Not sure how NL is important here, did I miss something?
It wasn't in Germany, and my understanding is that in Germany, the issue isn't the video, it's the recording of the audio conversation.
Anyway, still not applicable in the Netherlands.
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> Roel Maalderink visited the company's Amsterdam office
That's not true in that simplified form.
It's perfectly fine to take pictures of the Brandenburger Tor for example and post them online. There will likely be people in that picture but as they are not the main aspect of the image, it will be fine.
It's something different if you zoom in on somebody in that scene and he becomes the main point of the image. Then his personal rights overwhelm the right to document public spaces.
> It's illegal to record people in public spaces in Germany.
That's wild. In Ireland, there's no expectation of privacy in a public place, so you can record without issue.
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Users of these devices already share that data with Meta.
Where do you get the "without their consent" bit from?
The hypocrisy is probably located around here:
> "I've been making satirical videos about all kinds of things for ten years: Gaza, Ukraine, refugees. Funny videos that push boundaries and provoke discussion. But I've never experienced a video being removed before.
The hypocrisy is that meta is creating a tool that their employees are very uncomfortable seeing used on them.
What the law says about consent is irrelevant to the hypocrisy, and the videos are automatically uploaded to meta without anyone's consent anyway. You know this very well, there is no need to cosplay the smart devil's advocate.
Since you can apparently read my mind, there is no need for me to reply
They made a device that will create this problem by the millions for other people, they should have it inflicted on them every day.
It is not as you feel any different when you are being recorded. Once recorded, you don't know what they will do with the video.
I agree, I cannot control what other people will do. Are you applying this fear to all other facets of your life? I guess not, since that would mean you'd live in a state of constant fear and paranoia.
A person is being treated disrespectfully and your point is that they should do nothing with it. Filming without permission is no different than harassing or bullying. A weak person would bear with it, a strong one would punch in the face.
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>since that would mean you'd live in a state of constant fear and paranoia.
we do indeed live in a low trust society as of now.
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It's incredibly hypocritical. It's like working at Flock and complaining about being filmed on a Flock camera. Or working for a company that sells cars that emit a loud, annoying sound and complaining about those cars in your neighborhood. Or making devices for children but banning your own children from using them because the devices are harmful. They clearly don't care that the product their company is selling can legally (in most places) be used to film people in public until they themselves are filmed in public. How is that not hypocrisy?
Any camera in the world can be used to film people in public without their consent. There are lawful ways to do it (if the people are "background noise" and not the point of the video), and unlawful ways to do it (if the people become the subject of the video).
So tell me now, is a GoPro/Canon/Apple employee who doesn't consent to being the subject of a video taken with a GoPro/Canon/iPhone camera also a hypochrite?
There is not only law but respect and politeness. If you disrespect other people do not expect being treated respectfully.
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The mental gymnastics that people do here to defend these untouchable corporations is disgusting. From Meta to OpenAi, for a lot of people here it's just a "yeah, but actually". I've reported everything from holocaust glorification to videos of people being filmed in public in europe just to be humiliated, to obvious far right propaganda done by russian linked accounts, nothing goes against Meta's policy anymore, except when it's about them...
The asymmetry bothers me. No one corporation is going to get it right 100% of the time but it's when you report stuff and it never gets removed but they ban you that you can really see how morally bankrupt they are
(Oh, and they don't care about local solutions. Their sneakiness with Free Basics is clear. Can you blame them for Myanmar? I think you can, but it's also clear they want to supplant all the other social networks, like a system each individual country might come up with)
It does bother me being here on hacker news because it's a good aggregator but you get people standing up for their industry no matter what or flagging anything they disagree with
neither of these things are remotely acceptable. the degree of distinction is relevant to the impact on the victim and in a punitive sense, but doing either of these things is a mark of a severely antisocial behavior disorder that needs to be addressed by mental healthcare and prevention of access to tools that facilitate this behavior.
Feel free to cite scientific studies proving your unhinged claim
wild choice to double down on focusing on the degree of difference in what one does with footage obtained from filming people without their consent!
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Spoken as a man with no children or partner. Any women or child being recorded by a stranger will feel unsafe.
Do you have a point beside saying something completely unrelated while making up stuff about me?
No one cares if you are not uploading if they still feel unsafe. The differences are marginal to those that actually have a family or a partner. I'm still going to bet that my assumption is correct because no one with a family is going to argue against this.
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