5 Ethical Questions On Posting Photos Of Strangers Online

Our thoughts about the famous Cracked.com.

Re: 5 Ethical Questions On Posting Photos Of Strangers Onlin

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Jun 13, 2015 9:09 pm

FaceTheCitizen wrote:It does, actually. A picture can be seen by hundreds, thousands, and potentially millions of people. It's one thing when in front of a busload of strangers. Sure, they might tell their friends, but they weren't there, they don't know your face, and they'll probably forget about it after a short laugh. But with a picture, that shit can be seen by everyone and will stay up for eternity until the internet is somehow destroyed by Al Gore's evil twin.


And since those internet people are more likely to be very geographically distant from you, you're much less likely to ever meet one of them in person. By contrast, the people on the street live in your city and their social circles are likely centered there.

The bit about "they'll probably forget about it after a short laugh" also applies in the internet. How much detail do you remember about every funny GIF you've seen in your life, especially the less noteworthy ones like "lol look at this guy scratching his balls"? Sure, if you saw a picture of someone burning a cat or something else very noteworthy, you might remember that picture. Of course, the same applies IRL as well--an eyewitness' friends will remember that story a lot longer than the story about a guy cutting a huge fart on the subway.

And it's not just people mocking you online, either. Like the Scumbag Steve quote above, people can find out your info and harass you. You may not think that'd be a big deal, but after the 103rd call in the middle of the night where someone threatens to murder your family members, because, for the sake of argument, someone took a photo of you burning an effigy of the President of the USA, you'd be worn down too.


And if a crowd of people saw you burning that effigy in a public place, you could easily become a pariah that way too. Hell, you could potentially become a pariah even if those people just flat-out lied or mistook someone else for you. I mean, nobody took a photo of that librarian in Canada that Askias has been talking about--someone said on their blog that he harasses women and bam, instant pariah.

Keep in mind that describing something rather than taking a picture or video allows people to use their imaginations, which often just makes things worse. A couple imaginative retellings later, suddenly you were dancing naked next to that effigy shouting "Death to America!" as well, just because some git got the details of the story wrong.

Every time you add the internet to any equation, shit changes. This should be in future math problems from now on.

"If Mary takes a photo of herself in her lacey underwear and accidentally uploads it to Facebook, how many 'Hey sexii bitch, call me if u wanna a real man' comments will she receive in one minute? Show your work."


We're not talking about posting photos of things that are currently private, we're talking about posting photos of things that are already public knowledge. A better comparison might be Mary posting a picture of the dumb outfit she wore to school that day.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: 5 Ethical Questions On Posting Photos Of Strangers Onlin

Postby Ribby » Sat Jun 13, 2015 9:27 pm

Oh furthermore, if someone's behaviour is out of line, if you think it is bad enough that it needs correcting, the way to do that is to tell them.
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Re: 5 Ethical Questions On Posting Photos Of Strangers Onlin

Postby EstebanColberto » Sat Jun 13, 2015 11:40 pm

The first site I thought of while reading this article was People of Walmart. I never thought of whether it's right or wrong until this was brought up. I don't think that website is really doing anything terrible. Though since they are making a profit off these pictures, maybe some of the shots of people's faces should be blurred.

As for the people who became targets of online harassment, there's just no predictor for that. 99.999% of the time a picture is posted on the internet, nothing happens to the person in real life. It wasn't the intention of whoever created the Scumbag Steve meme to start nonstop death threats. And why did Scumbag Steve become a target and not any of the other candid pictures that represent all the other annoying people we know? Why didn't that hippie chick from the College Liberal meme become a target. Or Psycho Girlfriend? Or the neckbeard guy tipping his fedora with the caption "Ladies"?

Now if you're intentionally trying to make someone a laughingstock, that's different. That Star Wars kid's "friends" posted that video knowing it would make everyone at school laugh at him. They may have not meant for it to become an internet sensation. Internet memes bleeding into traditional media never happened before, but they were trying to embarrass him in front of the whole school.
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Re: 5 Ethical Questions On Posting Photos Of Strangers Onlin

Postby FaceTheCitizen » Sat Jun 13, 2015 11:46 pm

...
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Re: 5 Ethical Questions On Posting Photos Of Strangers Onlin

Postby TheSyrupNugget » Sun Jun 14, 2015 12:44 pm

CarrieVS wrote:
ghijkmnop wrote:As a human being, nobody has a right to know anything about me without my allowing it first.


However, if you are in public, you are allowing anyone at all to see you and see what you're doing.


HA HA HA! Joke's on you, I never go outside!

:lol:



:?



:cry:
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