What if I don't want videos of my hobby time available to the world?

I wonder if it's a generational or cultural difference present in the comments here.

I am sympathetic to the author, and I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.

I therefore find the (obviously common) attitude that videos are just "something you need to accept" quite alien, but I wonder how much of that attitude is just comments coming from a younger generation that have grown up with the idea that they're recorded all the time.

I'm old enough thankfully to have grown up without video being present, that's probably not true for someone 10 years younger than me.

There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube every single week".

With the former you can still reasonably anonymous, with the latter you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship.

I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on? Who's to say how much of you I have in the shot? Do you feature? Did you flash by? Are you blurred? Recognisable?

I was shooting video of a car park exit last year. (I was trying to prove to the shopping centre owners that it was dangerous.) Mundane footage. Some lady drives out in her car and sees me. Winds the window down and starts on the you don't have the right to film me carry-on.

I politely informed her that, I'm sorry, but I do. She's in public. That's the law (in Australia).

Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.

We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.

"This sounded much more interesting on the radio", the cop says. They left us alone to finish the shoot.

Back in my day shakes first there were places where someone could do things that would normally be mildly embarrassing because they were in a supportive community. In this example, it could be playing pretend and possibly saying goofy things or falling over and tripping or getting your butt handed to you by someone half your age or something.

When I was young, it would have been playing open mics as a teenager. I wasn't amazing but it's really important to play publicly in order to grow as a musician, and that means kinda sucking in public. I would not have become a musician if I didn't have that supportive community.

In this day and age, if I were to do that, someone would probably live stream it or film it on their phone and put it on YouTube, then It would get found by the kind of awful kids that like to make other people feel awful for no reason, then they would have found my like Facebook or social media or something, I'd catch shit at school, and I never would have touched an instrument again.

So yeah, save your highlight reels for someone else, thanks.

It is funny how insular and US centric many of the comments here are. In fact many countries do have legislation requiring consent in many scenarios for photographing or publishing photos. And it turns out that it is not actually very problematic.

Wikimedia has some examples, but I'm sure it is not comprehensive: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...

I would also push back against the whole "this is just being perceived in public" thing, because you're not consenting to being perceived by the entire planet, you were consenting to being perceived by the people present and in the community. Like if there's a bully in the community, the community can do something about it or you can at least avoid them. Like you are consenting to interacting with a culture of like-minded people, and you know they're like-minded because they all showed up to the same event to do the same thing. That is not true of the open internet.

The thing that I find more frustrating than anything is photos of children. I'm not so bothered about myself.

I have a young child - he's two and a half. Most people are considerate and ask if it's OK to take a photo - and I generally say yes if it's friends - but we were at a wedding recently and a staff member, total stranger, at the venue was laughing at him running around and asked if they could take a picture, and then got stroppy when I said no. I just think it's quite strange behaviour to want to take photos of a child you don't know. It's quite different to the professional photographer taking photos for the hosts in my mind, which you basically accept by bringing your kids to an event like that.

A mum at a playgroup just took out phone and started filming my son playing with her child. My wife asked her to stop and she again got quite stroppy, even though the group explicitly said that photos should only be taken with consent in that space!

I agree a lot with the sentiments here and I think people who want to avoid being filmed should have that right. But, as someone who doesn't mind (and is younger) I suppose I could share my rationalizion for it (as flawed as it may be)

One often mentioned reason is the fear that in some way your likeness will end up in something significant, or viral. That makes sense, it's the most invasive and significant violation. We "risk becoming the side character in someone else's parasocial relationship" as another commentator mentioned. I myself wouldn't want that either, but I derive some comfort from one main observation: virality doesn't scale. A lot of the worries come from the fact that "everyone is filming now", "everything is shared now". That's true, but the likelihood of any of this ever becoming popular or even seen goes down as the volume goes up. That alone is enough for me to not be that worried, at least not by the increased prevalence of public filming/photography.

On the other hand, this does nothing to limit the effect of data harvesting and government espionage, a real worry I might have.

I think conversation gets more telling if you include some more protected groups like children. And then more slightly more intimate places, like say pools or beaches and expand it to proper zoom and telephoto lenses.

Is there still in those case no expectation of privacy? Where exactly is the line? Maybe changing rooms and toilets are not public places anymore... But is the line really that clear?

I think I'm sympathetic to both sides of this.

If my kid is on some fun Disney ride, and I take a short video of them, and also there are some other people in the background or also on the ride, I would still fee comfortable sharing the video. Well, I wouldn't, because I don't put videos of my kids online, but if I was comfortable doing that, I wouldn't feel deterred by the presence of others.

But also, if someone else takes a photo of my kids in public (or at Disney), I would feel somewhat uncomfortable about it, and I'd feel even more uncomfortable about finding that photo online.

I don't know how to square that, ethically. Sometimes I see posts on Reddit that go "hey, I was out at the beach, and I saw this couple proposing, and I got this amazing photo of it, does anyone know them so I can send them a copy," and I think "you just took one of the most important, intimate, private moments of this couple's life and posted it online without their permission," but it doesn't seem to upset anyone because the couple will look really great in the photo. Does that make a difference? I've got no answers for this, just questions.

Genuinely curious: what concrete negative consequences are there from appearing in the background of other people’s photos/videos, in a full face mask no less?

Is he afraid that someone will be able to identify him as engaging in a hobby that some people might be judgmental about, e.g. a potential employer finding the footage and concluding “this guy spends lots of time and money playing a children’s game; he’s clearly not a serious person.” That I can understand.

But it seems like his position is stronger than this:

>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me

So essentially, it’s wrong to publish any photo that happens to include people in the background? If I take an artistic photo at an art museum [0] or a restaurant [1] or a streetscape [2] and there happen to be people in the background, what possible harm could come to the people incidentally captured?

[0] https://500px.com/search?q=the%20Met&type=photos&sort=releva...

[1] https://500px.com/search?q=Busy%20restaurant&type=photos&sor...

[2] https://500px.com/search?q=Times%20Square%20&type=photos&sor...

I had this when I rode with a motorbike group. It was a loose collection of people that rode a specific route on the weekend.

I only went a few times, but it was obvious the people with the cameras were looking for interesting content and drama. I cut an open corner and ended up in the highlight reel as some example of what not to do. Even though everyone there was 50% over the speed limit and riding “dangerously” in the eyes of others, what got put on the video was the interesting stuff. And of course, you never got to see the speedo of the camera man as he went 2-3 times the limit.

Another biker I knew said he didn’t ride with those guys because they’re just out there to bait for content.

> There has been no “put on this purple lanyard if you don’t want to be included in the public version of the video” rule, which I’ve seen work pretty well at conferences I have attended (even if it is opt-out rather than consent).

This bothers me. The default should be not including people, and instead offer lanyards (or whatever) who want to be included.

I know why it doesn’t work that way, though.

I’m not sure if anyone has missed the delicious irony that airsoft is one of the rare sports where faces and thus identity is covered , pretty much the whole time. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a human face or anything identifiable in ANY airsoft video I’ve ever seen.

So while the author makes an interesting point about surveillance I can’t tell if he’s being ironic on purpose.

I wonder what would happen if someone wore a T-shirt with an ITAR restricted weapons blueprint on it or something. Hypothetically it would be legal to display that in public in the US, but illegal to post it publicly facing for foreigners to access on the internet.

Even if it were a gray area, the serious penalties would probably be enough to make someone want to blur it out.

I would like to share an even more extrem version of this.

I come from a country that could be potentially affected by the Russian-Ukranian war.

A couple of years ago, the government presented a program for volunteers, consisting of a military crash-course over a weekend to get to know the basics. Military service is voluntary in my country, so I thought it might actually be a good idea to have had a rifle in my hand at least once. You never know.

So I decided to sign up and got a few documents to sign. One of them was explicit consent for the organizing party to use any pictures taken during the training in order to use it as promotional material. No opt-out possible.

You understand? They could take pictures of me during a voluntary training, and post them on Facebook or anywhere on the Internet!

I even sent them an email asking to clarify and if I could opt out. They refused and would not allow me to participate if I didn't accept.

I agree with the author, and it Reminds me of people who video at the gym. I think it goes to a deeper issue in our society: people love taking video of other people, and then put them on the internet, which always runs the risk of being turned into a meme, etc.

I lament that this guy may have to wear a mask, And I wish more venues had no photography or video. The last thing I wanted to go to the gym and working out, and I accidentally glance over at someone, who videotaped it, and then put me on the internet with some caption..

This isn't a general solution, but since it's Airsoft can't you just wear a helmet that covers your whole head?

I agree and it bugs me too.

Sometimes I just want to enjoy a thing with other people enjoying a thing without any expectation that it might end up as "content" to be monetized by the algorithm.

I don't look forward to mass adoption of things like Meta glasses, where even the mundane examples of _going outside_ are all content opportunities waiting to happen.

The answer seems pretty simple.

Ask your teammates not to take videos, or find a different group or a different hobby. But since they genuinely enjoy posting the videos, and there's nothing wrong with that, you're probably the one who's going to have move on.

You're entitled to not want videos of you taken in public places showing up online. But you're not entitled to getting that outcome.

Unfortunately, being serious about privacy is socially damaging. I've experienced it.

I eventually accepted that being outside my home meant I gave up on my privacy. I still take it seriously in my home and online, but not in public.

I'd love to see the culture shift on this, but I won't hold my breath.

I'm not nearly as strict: I just prefer that pictures of my kids not be uploaded to social media (or cloud photo hosting services, etc.)

Regardless of that, some strangers think it's fine to take pictures of them in public... sometimes they ask first, sometimes they don't.

I think this is something you need to address with the owner or organizer of the event. If they say you can film, you can. If they say you can't, you can't. I imagine there might be sufficient demand for airsoft fights where video is not allowed.

I don’t know about the UK, but in the USA the idea of “if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces” is pretty regularly upheld in courts. You don’t have an expectation of privacy in a public space.

You might have some recourse if another person’s video singles you out, but just being one of the several people in an airsoft video, where your face is partially obscured anyway, isn’t much of a legal standing.

I do a lot of photography, including "street" photography, but I don't shoot photos of people. I believe that you should be asked for your consent to be photographed, and I tend to avoid social interaction whenever possible. I empathize with the author here. I would probably say "yes" in that situation, but I would also expect to be asked.

If this was beach volleyball I would be more inclined to agree with the poster, but surely everyone is wearing face masks playing Airsoft?

It's really interesting that the big objection is really about sharing the resultant video (widely).

I actually feel the same, I don't really mind if I'm at the gym and in the back of a video someone's taking of themselves to review later to take notes on their form. I actually do kind of care if it gets posted to YouTube and now 100,000 people have seen me covered in sweat or struggling with something or whatever. It's something that's technically 'illegal' in a private space here in the UK, so why do we all just accept/allow it anyway? YouTube or Instagram could easily work out if the video was taken indoors and show a 'are you sure' message.

Just a thought. It's not that big a deal, of course, though to some people it might be (for good reasons).

The one time I was accidentally captured on video, I was filtered out, but I actually wish I was there.

Many years ago, I went to a Green Day concert where they played 21st Century breakdown for the first time. There was a large video camera on a crane above the floor. About a year later, I visited a friend and we played Green Day's (then) new Rockband game.

I noticed that Tre's dance around his drums looked awfully familiar, and then at the end of one song, the camera focused on a statue next to the stage, that I was staring at before the show. My friend didn't believe me when I told him I was in the concert they recorded to make the game.

Unfortunately, all the people in the crowd were removed and replaced with faceless stick-figure-like people. I really wish my face was in there, because it would have proved that I was there, and give me something to look for when someone else is playing the game.

A counterbalance is that there's such a colossal volume of new YouTube 'content' published every day that approximately no one will end up watching an obscure video with your cameo anyway.

I guess the concern then shifts to dragnet automated surveillance of it.

We Brits don't speak up enough in general. An e.g. German would have no qualms about going up to the person filming and making their concerns known. That's exactly why it's become normalised

Also many people just flip out even about the most reasonable of requests.

> I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I’d be hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not done this.

I've done this several times in various contexts. If you ask in a nice way, it usually works

If you don't ask, it's very unlikely people will have the telepathy needed to understand what you quietly want

For air-soft specifically it is also very feasible to wear a full face mask and become very hard for regular people to recognise.

I feel it spans way wider than just hobbies. For example, when people film in gyms, which is a private place. Or everywhere you go, there is a good chance you will be in someone's vlog/photo/youtube video.

Great points. With Meta glasses and other similar gadgets I think manual consent is not enough. There should be a 'protocol' to announce that you don't allow your images to be included in social media. I propose a QR code that would signify that you don't want to filmed. We need to push for legislation allowing (returning) such liberty. After such automated consent is legal it will be up to social media platforms to blur and anonymize individuals with such preferences. Finally we will have a job where AI could be put to good use!

Last year I was at a concert hanging outside enjoying a J and my beer. Suddenly there were four young women shoving a phone in my face asking me questions. I was a deer in the headlights. Turns out they were live streaming and just talking to random people. It made me quite uncomfortable - who's on the other end looking at me? They were later live streaming from the pit...

Of course Ive had video cameras in my face before at concerts but they weren't streaming and the results were probably seen by very few people. Now its instant broadcast to whoever is on the other end.

In Germany, they have to ask him for his permission. If he insists, the video has to get deleted. If they publish the video without his consent, he can sue them and – aside of deleting the video – they may face penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment, though both are improbable in that context.

https://www.prigge-recht.de/filmen-im-oeffentlichen-raum-was...

Genuinely curious, not trolling, why is it considered acceptable to spray plastic pellets into the woods?

On one hand: You are not nearly as important or meaningful as you think, and no ones brain will store and index your face for more than the length of the video. With online content the way it is now, you are a blade of grass in a continental sized grassland. It should be liberating to understand how little anyone actually cares.

On the other hand: The threat of being fed into a future AI-god is real, the the downstream effects unknown.

I have the same issue with board gamers. Now, admittedly it isn't as intrusive as audio/video uploads. But so many want to record the game along with the names of the players. When I request they don't use my actual name and just put Player A (or whatever) they look at me like I'm a weirdo. When did it become weird to want as little information about yourself to be online?

Every picture of you posted publicly will eventually be linked to you. Probably by Palantir.

There's face recognition. There's gait recognition. There's inference of the likely participants from cell phone data and known movement patterns. Some of this is probabilistic but still useful. Even if the matching wasn't done at the time, it can be done later.

>I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly

I must be living in a parallel universe of airsoft players. I can't possibly imagine anyone in that space changing their ways because somebody kindly asked them to

I always wondered: who is picking up all that plastic waste afterwards? Never been myself, but I was told 1000s of shots being fired during one session is not an exceptional case. The author talks about "Running around in the woods" so I'm a bit concerned that this may cause undesirable amounts of environmental pollution.

This is an issue a lot of gyms are facing; idiot "influencers" coming in and not caring who or what they film. It is really up to the private establishment to set rules for taking images and video within their facilities, but most will allow it because they want that almighty dollar to continue flowing in.

So sue. Don't expect legislators or online legions to protect you. Sue to protect others in the same situation.

The common-law tort of invasion of privacy grows to encompass new situations only through court cases.

Courts (i.e., judges) are not looking to create rules out of thin air, but look to reflect when expectations have changed in a way that tracks the principles behind the tort.

In this case, an initial historical period of permitting publication by default can be followed by a restrictive period of prohibiting invasions, based on the recognizing dangers from publication, e.g., permanent and lasting damage to one's business relationships through disclosing of embarrassing but irrelevant images.

To make law you have to get out of the realm of personal feelings and start expressing principles for the way people should live together.

Maybe off-topic and patronizing .. sorry about that.

"Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people, in pursuit of a contrived-to-be-fun mission, turns out to be, well, fun."

I was wondering if there are no biodegradable bullets for Airsoft and found out that they exist. Maybe a better solution than plastic in the woods.

As someone who plays a lot of online games, there is a similar problem with streamers. While I don’t say anything I wouldn’t want to be recorded because that’s probably a good idea anyway, it is certainly possible I could end up in some kind a fail compilation or otherwise.

But I don’t really care, for one because the stakes are lower when it’s fully online behind a mostly anonymous account, but also because I am confident if anyone was actually watching a streamer in my game I would find out about it.

If the YouTuber at your local field was raking in views, you would probably know about it, and could you try to resolve it with them. Otherwise these videos are probably not being seen by anyone but their recorder.

Posting videos on YouTube is commercial use. Even if you earn no money, the intent is almost always to “grow the channel” to the point where you can monetize it, sponsorships, brand deals, etc.

Commercial use in most jurisdictions is handled differently from the “free speech” exception. There are generous carve outs for art though. Which is interesting. If I sell a photograph it’s art but if I sell it to an ad agency for use on a billboard it’s commerce?

But the world we live in is so changed, it is a very recent change where taking a photograph was almost always a 1:1 photo to print ratio. It’s very new the idea that everyone is carrying around an internet connected video camera that can publish live to billions of people. This absolutely changes the calculus and laws should be updated accordingly.

I don’t know what that should look like but it seems we should acknowledge that this activity is primarily commercial (clout is marketing and/or brand value a/k/a goodwill in accounting parlance) and that laws intended to protect art making maybe don’t / shouldn’t protect this form of commerce as much as they seem to presently.

To be clear: if you are in public and someone takes a recognizable photo of you eg your face and uses it to sell perfume congratulations on being beautiful and also call a lawyer because that use is not protected just because you were in a public space.

But you can make a print hang it in a gallery and sell it for whatever price you want. (AFAIK). Maybe there’s more nuance— could you put it in a book of your work and sell it? On the cover? Make postcards? NFT’s (remember those?) etc.

Anyway there are already limits and we should maybe enforce the ones that we have in some of these circumstances. I wonder if it’s already happening- I can’t be the first person to view this activity as commercial right? There must already be precedent somewhere.

Just like how every YouTube gear review says “company X sent me this but they have no say and no money changed hands” is pretending it’s not a sponsored video. It’s absolutely a sponsored video. 1. You are paid for views 2. People watch reviews on “release day” aka embargo day 3. If you get the product later you will have less views and less money, and you will miss the window of product hype cycle.

So just like every not sponsored review video is absolutely sponsored live-streaming a kids birthday or whatever is commercial and you need model releases. I guess these people will have to post notice of filming warnings at the door along with the balloons.

One time I rented and apartment (in California), and the agreement said they can make promotional media with me. I tried to fight it, but they didn't really care -- big real estate company is not going to redline legal agreement for me.

I was having a similar discussion regarding the Renn faire this weekend. It's silly fun, but it used to be you could dress up as your persona and escape for a while (see also: larping, SCA, or really any number of similar outlets) . However now everything is being recorded, and those recordings act both as unwanted publicity and as a method of cultural mining and extraction

What once was a funny little niche character at the faire is now a TikTok tourist spot.

Where once you could dress up as your pseudo anonymous alter ego with friends and have fun, now you get recorded without consent and get to enjoy all the perks that can come with

Ultimately it will be up to us as a society to determine what is acceptable or how to communicate boundaries for this new element in our culture, with the understanding (to the authors point) that some of us will be against it and others will be enthusiastically for it.

Social dance (swing, Latin, etc) has some of this too. I think generally where most scenes have fallen is “only film yourself and your friends, unless it’s something intentionally performative like a jam circle or competition, in which case go nuts.”

Meanwhile in another part of the galaxy…

“Burning Man’s number one rule of etiquette for photography is Ask First — you should get permission before taking somebody’s photo.”

https://burningman.org/about/about-us/press-media/photo-guid...

don't tell author about new meta glasses everybody and their grandma will wear 24/7 in 10y. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283306

Is the airsoft range on public property? If not, you could probably complain to the owners. If its on public property then you probably can't do much about it except complain to YouTube and ask them to take it down.

I think the issue is "available to the whole world". "Back in the day" people would take photos or even videos (remember camcorders?) and it wasn't a big deal because well, only that person would have it and maybe show it to some friends or family (or give you a copy).

But now it means archived for the whole world to see, potentially forever. 30 years from now, someone might dig it up.

So it's not so much about the photography (which as someone pointed out, might be allowed in public places), it's about posting the photos/videos into a potentially eternal public archive.

Doesn't a LIDAR break digital cameras?

Maybe those who don't want to be filmed should be walking around with some portable LIDAR device, de facto breaking the cameras of people who don't respect their desire to not be filmed.

I have changed my mind on this topic recently. I believe that when you video in public everyone that gets videoed should require explicit permission or their face and voices should be removed. The only exceptions would be videoing public servants and if a crime is being committed. Videoing for private consumption would also be allowed in my opinion but not if it's posted in a way that more than a handful of people could see or if its uploaded to a site.

With AI this is entirely possible and if you are going to post videos on youtube or anything, you should be able to afford the removal of non-verified participants.

> Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

This is not clear at all to me.

When you go into public you’re accepting that you might be filmed. The reality is that you are being filmed constantly. It’s just that it bothers you sometimes.

It reminds me of The Light of Other Days (a book about a society where technology makes any privacy impossible). Nearly everybody gets over it really quick and the world moves on.

The good news about this is that hardly any normal person would ever watch these Airsoft videos for more than 5 or 10 seconds.

I feel like this a lot of the time too.

The author describes the sentiment nicely. I don’t like it, it feels icky but I also don’t ask people to stop. I just wish that culturally it wasn’t assumed to be ok by default

In Airsoft, there's a niche audience for people wanting to see other people get hit. Just like there's a niche audience for people who like watching car crashes. Just like there's a niche audience for people who like...

While you may not like being recorded, the player is well within their right to do so. Just label them a "mech" and award 5 points for the take down. If you have a squad of filmers, put them all together. Your problem is now isolated to the roaming mech beast in the woods. Flank right and live out your day.

>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.

Why?

I dont ask this dismissively. Im not suggesting he's unjustified. That's just the interesting question to me and the author doesnt explore it. I believe this feeling is a new trend.

I dont think people had these qualms, say, 20 years ago. The world was a very different place back then. At the end of the day I suppose it's because 20 years ago, even with a totally permissive policy, you'd never expect footage of you to reach any significant amount of people. It would rarely happen and when it did there wouldnt be a huge audience to share it with.

But does it go beyond that? Would people have cared even if it did reach a wide audience? Is it possible people seek more privacy and control over their image than before? And not just as a reaction to how global everything is because of the internet? Gen Z being afraid of answering phone calls, etc.

This strikes me as similar to the attitude towards phone number privacy. People used to publicly share their phone numbers by default. You were included in the phone book unless you specially requested not to be. Now it feels invasive for parties to ask you for it, even when they have some plausible reason.

I don't want to be someones "content", even if it is due to my rougish good looks and a suave mix of bond with john wick on the airsoft battlefield.

I feel like at least part of the issue is that the internet is a different kind of public than everywhere else. it's not transient, and it's not limited to the people who happened to be in the same part of public as you at the same time. instead it's a fully-automatable, permanent record that is 100% available to all present and future humans. that deserves consideration to my mind.

> I could, I suppose, ask each person that I see with a camera “would you mind not including me in anything you upload, please?”. And, since everyone with whom I’ve spoken at games, so far anyway, has been perfectly pleasant and friendly, I’d be hopeful that they would at least consider my request. I have not done this.

I feel like the reasonable place to start is here no? Why write this whole post when this would probably be easier?

In the context of airsoft I guess you could cover yourself completely and why not shoot yellow plastic bullets at the cameraman.

The cost of filming is very low. Even people who aren't interested in taking pictures or filming now have a camera with them at all times.

I remember a village in Africa about 20 years ago where people thought cameras stole their soul.

Technology steals everything it can. I mean think of all the data that went into google maps or chatgpt, to only name a couple of apps.

this is exactly about what is legal or not. If I remember correctly in Germany there's a distinction about people being the focus of a photograph or people in the background. You can e.g. publish a picture of a public place without asking everybody on that place for their consent. Another corner case would be filming police brutality. What if the police officers in question wouldn't like to be photographed being brutal!? Local laws do apply.

I relate some to the premise but for an entirely different reason than privacy.

Simply one of my less common hobbies has an incredibly high hit rate of gimmick social media accounts stealing videos for their own profit, with zero credit, while highly misrepresenting things. A problem not nearly unique to the hobby nor any one type of media, but a problem plaguing it nonetheless.

Its basically pushed an already obscure hobby even more so.

Yeah, I am not looking forward to Meta glasses being widely used. But that is probably inevitable. Being anonym in public will be a dear memory from the past.

Private site. The event site could hold events where cameras are forbidden. There are other examples like spas or swimming pools where cameras are forbidden.

Agree with author. Laws do not necessarily dictate right vs. wrong. Filming others to publicly share that video may be legally allowable, is unethical regardless of the laws. It's like those crazy people who start playing their social media feed without headphones in public places like airplanes, or bathroom stalls....it's so weird, and annoying.

I am not a lawyer.

In the USA, anyone is allowed to photograph, video, or otherwise record anything they can see from a public sidewalk, subject to some soft restrictions like it being illegal to impede the movement of others. Any attempt by law enforcement or others to restrict this would likely fail in the courts.

Folks can get pretty upset by this in the real world.

Then don't make them and be happy.

Perhaps it is a generational gap, but the idea that I have to justify NOT attempting to squeeze a hustle out of absolutely everything I do reduces my trust in any content generated in [current year] as nothing more but a carefully crafted advertising space.

This is a concern I also have in youth sports. People are filming practice and games then posting that on social media and sometimes the goal is to show their child (sometimes as young as 5) "embarrassing" someone's else's child with a move. It's unfortunately very common.

Somehow you eventually have to square the fact that if you do things outside of your home, you are going to run into other people, who are very much going to do whatever they want, regardless of any existing laws, customs, or mores. And factor that into your decision making.

I feel like I can't really have fun and be myself when I see people shooting video all around me.

I like to be silly with my kids and close friends, I like to act out around the people who find me fun or funny. But the rest of the world would ridicule me, or make fun of me, or make me a meme possibly.

This makes me sad because as a young man I could just be out there and fun, and at the end of the day, I held a place in the memories of my closest friends, maybe a handful of bystanders. But today, I could be gif'd and immortalized for my silly actions without my permission.

I disagree with the sentiment, you're in public, it's fair game. That just means I have to bend to your world-view, and you don't have to be considerate of mine.

This behaviour is a thousandfold worse when you have kids, especially at social gatherings like birthday parties. Other parents (at least in my age cohort) assume it is OK to film them and post it to whatever social media they have without even asking.

Seems like the most reasonable answer would be to have days where no video was permitted, and days where it is. Then you can attend on the days where no video is permitted but the ones who like creating and uploading videos can have their chances as well.

> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me

Not wrong, it’s rude.

Be nice to just live without needing to feel like crowd sourced surveillance all the time.

There's several caveats to this but generally it seems silly to me to worry about people posting pictures with you in it. It seems a bit selfish to me to be concerned about "your image" being out in public instead of living in the moment.

I think though, with the internet and social media came 2-3 generations that really wanted to share what was going on in their lives with other people and with that came harsh resistance to even being in the background of someone's picture.

I thought this post was going to be about not wanting to share their hobby in a blog, pictures, or video form. This is something I have struggled with, because I would like to get started with blogging and a podcast but I have held back because a lot of people are so mean and harsh with their replies and I tend to take things so personally that it really hurts and keeps me from doing it.

No alternative's being made. Only considering his own feelings, everyone else should follow. Expects people to not film (read: shoot) him because he asked. Neil's a bit of a Karen in this one I'm afraid.

The best answer is becoming comfortable with the part of yourself that enjoys your hobbies. Embrace it, let go of the anxiety. Strangers have thoughts like oceans have waves.

This is a very reasonable concern in the general case, but airsoft in particular is probably one of the few social activities where it’s not entirely out of place to wear a balaclava and tinted goggles.

> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me

We are getting monitored all the time, we are in an age where cameras are omnipresent. Everyone carries one in their pocket in the form of a smartphone, and countless stationary cameras are installed throughout cities.

When you walk through streets, buildings, and especially public facilities, you can see cameras almost everywhere. While it is often said that these devices exist only for security purposes and that footage is routinely deleted, this is no longer the reality. In many cases, people can request this footage through FOIA and use it as they wish, including uploading it to platforms like YouTube.

How does the new Denmark "copyright on your body, face and voice" work in this aspect? I read that the intention is to combat deepfakes but does it also work for uses like this?

Clearly, author needs to work on their camouflage skill like John Cena.

As a street photographer this constant video/livestreaming culture shift in the last 10 years has made it really hard to not make folks uncomfortable when out in public.

I don’t understand the author, everyone in airsoft wears masks? You’re an anonymous person, just a brief obstacle the cameraman shoots quickly on his way to the real fire fight.

Well I never liked bigger Airsoft events - going into some abandoned buildings with 5-10 guys we know well to play was always best fun for me.

Downside is you cannot do that in current circumstances.

I understand the overall sentiment of the post, but in this particular example, isn’t everyone who’s playing airsoft wearing a full face mask anyways?

> I am very much enjoying my newly-resurrected hobby of Airsoft. Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people

What's wrong with you?

I think the laws around this are fairly antiquated. People should clearly have the right to photograph in public, however, I strongly believe that should someone take someone else’s photograph they shouldn’t need their consent to post the photo publicly or monetize it in anyway. Obviously, there should be some limited car outs like public servants in the commission of their duties, legitimate news organizations, use in court etc.

Edit: I don’t think k posting a photo on a private social media profile / group chat would count as public, but rather anything the general public has access to.

I'm with Neil on this, but I'd go a bit farther. This whole idea that you somehow give up the right to privacy because you're in a public space is fucking nonsense. Your personal right to privacy should be an inalienable right unless you specifically consent, regardless if it's public or not.

Just because you possess a device that records images doesn't automatically give you the right to record/post/upload images of me without my express consent.

Wow, such a nice idea with the purple lanyard it would be great to have something like this in general, walking down the streets someone films you and them or even YT or viewers to scan/flag the videos in question. I guess EU could put forth such regulation - no biggie. Maybe we could also create a framework on existing legislation - design a lanyard, put a QR on it leading to a "I do not consent" site. Advertise it a bit and I'm sure it would be newsworthy, at-least in EU, not sure about the rest of the world.

Attention-seeking behaviors (such as an obsession with recording everything and putting it online) are unhealthy and a possible symptom of anti-social traits such as narcissism.

Unfortunately for all of us, if public-by-default becomes the norm, then this is gonna lead to even more social cooling, more conformism and less freedom.

I'm surprised that YouTube doesn't have a "blur everyone's faces except for me" feature to post process on videos

Just tell the other person "please blur my face out if you publish this online" in 2025, this is easy to do.

I can relate, and it's especially concerning when it comes to my child ending up in videos (and pictures) by random people.

i'm not going to address the central complaint, but what i think is weird about this version is the venue: everybody is essentially wearing a disguise, and you could consciously disguise yourself even more with no inconvenience except less of a chance of being hit in the face with a paint ball

I think you can make arguments for and against the fundamental right to record or to not be recorded.

If someone is doing something bad/illegal, do we have a right to record/document it? If I am outside minding my own business and not doing anything bad, do I have a right to not be recorded?

What is the difference between seeing and recalling something that happened vs recording? What happens when technology blurs the difference (for example if we all start wearing and using camera AR glasses)?

Running around littering the forest with plastic, and he is concerned about his privacy. This is the state of modern man.

> Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people

sounds like an environmental nightmare

Have you considered taking up your hobby in Afghanistan? Somewhat tongue in cheek, but a locality under the Taliban have ratified a morality law that bans photography of living things https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-media-moralit...

This only applies to airsoft and paintball, but don’t players wear full on masks for both protection and camouflage?

Plastic pellets in the woods?

Is it what it sounds like? As in plastic sprayed in to the ground?

Collected? How?

Check out first amendment auditing for a look at the edges of this at least in the USA.

I feel this about all of the AI notetaking bots that everyone is adding to web meetings these days:

“Welcome to the meeting. Your voice is now being recorded and sent to a server somewhere in the world to be processed by an AI and you have zero control over it. If we were to get hacked, it will be impossible to you know if your voice will be synthesized and used to scam, abuse, or any other nefarious purposes between now and the end of time. Happy meeting!”

I’ve seriously been in meetings with 3+ AI bots from different companies I’ve never heard of.

Many people are claiming it is legal but it's not that simple in Europe and the UK.

It is legal (in most places) to film people in public but it is not necessarily legal to post the video to social media.

The Irish Data Protection Commission says:

> There is nothing in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that prohibits people from taking photos in a public place. Provided you are not harassing anyone, taking photographs of people in public is generally allowed and most likely will qualify for the household exemption under Article 2(2)(c) of the GDPR.

> However, what you do with that photo can potentially become a data protection issue, for example, if the photograph, which contained the personal data of individuals, was sold for commercial gain or was posted publicly on a social media account. Under those circumstances, you are likely to be considered a data controller which brings with it a host of obligations and duties under data protection law. In particular, it would be necessary for you to demonstrate, amongst other things, your lawful basis for the processing of such personal data under Article 6(1) of the GDPR.

I agree with the author here.

Go to a restaurant with friends or family for dinner - someone has to request the waiter to take a photo of all our faces stuffed with food, can't even have a meal without modeling for stupid photos.

Go to any event - we have to take photos, we have to pose for photos. Back when meetup.com was a thing, every event people were more interested in taking photos than having meaningful conversations.

Go to any tourist place - flashes everywhere, photos everywhere. I used to live in Manhattan, you can't walk 10 feet without some tourist group posing for photos. You have grit your teeth and wait for their photo session to finish, or feel bad for interrupting it.

Couple of years ago (I forgot exactly when) I noticed the self checkout kiosks at WholeFoods had video cameras. I can't even buy half a pound of tomatoes without being on someone's camera/database. As if WholeFoods is some top secret nuclear facility...What crime am I gonna commit there? Steal onions?

And on and on and on...

Who even looks at these stupid photos anyway? Do we really need to document what we ate for breakfast along with our faces, as if we ate some exotic fruit that is only available once every 25 years? It is the same shitty toast and crappy coffee

Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.

This makes perfect sense. I don't want to take anyone's photo (even those people I know very well, like family and friends) without their consent. Same way, I don't want anyone taking my photo either, and most certainly don't want anyone posting them online where it is gonna stay there forever.

We are just plain stupid, as a society

> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

I find these kinds of argument somewhat odd, as they imply that "this kind of thing" is some unacceptable violation of clearly pre-established rights.

Rather, one must realize that existing in society always had the implication of being visible to society, and that public spaces are just that: a place accessible to all, where if you chose to be you must also accept being observed by its other attendants.

Some physical public spaces might be crammed so full of people that it's hard to breathe, while others will have them few and far in between. Some virtual public spaces might be breaking records with their viewer counts, others will never be graced with the presence of an eyeball. Streamers just connect a physical public space with a virtual public space.

Being recorded and published in a final edit of an on-demand video is slightly different (and not implied in streaming), but that is a much older dilemma that we have had more time to adjust to and hammer out rights regarding, and few would really pay attention to someone recording on the street with anything other than slight curiosity.

So no. I believe this is the society you must accept being a member of. The only thing that has changed with time is the medium (memory and word-of-mouth, paintings, photos, video recording and finallys livestreaming), not the actions. But as important, being caught on rando streamer's camera will by default only contribute about as much to your internet fame (and loss of privacy) as going to the local grocery store.

(For those curious if age contributes to the standpoint, I'd fall in the 30-40 bucket.)

> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.

> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

> Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

Well, here is the heart of the disagreement. I suspect everyone agrees that the social norms are "clear," they just vehemently disagree about what those norms are.

I don't know anything specific about the implicit cultural norms of airsoft, but it sounds like the author is playing at a privately owned facility which I would expect to have very explicit rules and liability waivers. I'd be surprised if those rules don't cover photography.

>well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces

equates to

>you only have to worry about surveillance if you are doing something wrong.

This is, 100% guaranteed, a systematically injected narrative.

This made me chuckle remembering the time a friend photographed a dog in a bicycle in Berlin and was yelled at by the owner until the photo was deleted. Photographing a pet crossed a big red privacy line. Seems absurd, but I think sensitivity to the phenomenon the author is noting will vary by country.

worth looking into Camera Lucida by roland barthes, sontag's on photography and for something more recent, bernard stiegler's writings on cameras as technics if interested in some of the headier aspects of what cameras and photography do to culture and human relationships (as opposed to, say, legal implications). i tend to agree with the author: the presence of cameras in community spaces have completely ruined my relationship to those spaces. ive seen people here call the author a karen which, maybe, but the last time i went to a small DIY rock show in my community there were more people taking pictures than there were watching the show. what value is it if everyone films and uploads a set from a local band on youtube? what is the point?

Nah, its a free country. You come to a public place, you accept the risks. Others have a right to live their lives too. See you in court

> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.

> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

I feel the same way, but that's just not reality anymore. If you go outside your home, you're on camera. If your home faces your neighbor's door, you're probably on camera even in your own home unless you have constant obstruction of your windows and doors. I regularly see camera on apartment doors surveilling the interior of secure high-rise residential buildings. Guess you just gotta know when unit 18A takes out the trash...

A very valid and timely concern, in my opinion!

Switch to paintballs and shoot the cameras.

Their venue, their rules. If you don't like them, go to somewhere else or run with airsoft "gun" alone.

This is mostly a joke, but objects in fantasy land are sometimes closer than they appear.

Major cloud compute and OS infra providers should provide a global opt-out of public bystander-recording. OK, record me, but it will be known by my face, location stamps from my device, etc, that it's me, and post-processing will anonymize me.

Legitimate public interest? EG, I stole your car and it's on tape? Sure, provide the cloud provider with a warrant for 'originals'.

Aim for the expensive kit.

> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

I think this is the rule that is currently under renegotiation in society. At one point you could imagine saying "I should be able to go out in public without having had a certain medical procedure (like a vaccine)." Now, I don't agree with that.

The overton window of behaviours is always shifting and not always in ways that we like.

It's a legally grey area. In most countries, you can't really stop people from shooting video and photos in public spaces. But you can do something about publishing the material. Most stock photography websites and similar websites will insist on permission from identifiable individuals in photos or videos for this reason. And a lot of conferences or fairs will give notice of the fact that there will be photos and videos taken at such events (thus clearly marking them as public events). I've seen that here in Germany at least.

And this is a sensitive topic here. Some people here get upset if you point a camera at them and will aggressively demand that you delete their photo. I've seen that happen a few times (not to me). Some people really get pissed off over this here and they tend to known their rights. So good luck arguing otherwise.

If you look at the rules here, they are quite sensible. You can't just publish photos or videos with recognizable people in them unless it's clearly a public event (like a demonstration, concert, etc.). Taking the photos is mostly OK (up to a point). And there's an exemption for private photos. But you can't just publish photos with people recognizably in them unless falls under the narrow set of exceptions to that rule.

Photos of people actually count as personally identifiable information under GDPR. So, people can object to that being stored by companies, ask for it to be removed, and companies need valid reasons for storing such photos.

In this case, the person is in the UK where people simply have less protections against this. Which is something the tabloid press there tends to abuse by trying to get photos of famous people in private / embarrassing situations by all means possible. That would be a lot less legal in Germany and expose you to lawsuits if you were to do that. The German tabloid press has a rich history of that happening.

I found this frustrating to read. First the other airsoft participates he seems to seem to be okay with people filming. There is clearly no expectation of privacy.

> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.

>

> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.

I don't like it that things are recorded around the clock or by anyone and be broadcast anywhere, but the ship on this has sailed long ago.

> In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby). > > But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conferences, with people saying “Of course I’m free to take photos of identifiable individuals without their consent and publish them online”.

Again is there an expectation of privacy? Are people told that they are not allowed to use their cameras?

It is whether the is a expectation of privacy. A McDonald's or a Burger King is "private property", but there is no expectation of privacy. I would not expect privacy at an airsoft, paint-balling or any other outdoor activity even if it is on private property.

A public toilet cubical is a public place with an expectation of privacy.

> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me

It depends whether there was an expectation of privacy as whether it should feel wrong. If there isn't an expectation of privacy. Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".

> This isn’t about what is legal (although, in some cases, claims of legality may be poorly conceived), but around my own perceptions of a private life, and a dislike for the fact that, just because one can publish such things, that one should.

How else is this supposed to be tacked if not by what is legally permissible?

> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.

> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

In the US the legal doctrine is no privacy at all in public spaces (a lot more expansive than that actually), that's probably where those comments come from.

It’s frustrating when there’s a problem and you know any solution to it is worse than the problem itself.

For instance, in my area we’ve recently had a couple Nazi demonstrations. People with swastika flags and “Hitler was right” signs. I’d like that to go away.

But to attempt to use law to do anything about it would mean allowing someone to choose what others can and cannot say in public. That’s worse, or at least at some point it will be.

This is very much like that (though of course far less nefarious) and you just have to let people take paintball videos. Imagine if we didn’t let people video anything they want in public. How many instances of police brutality would go unpunished. That’s worse.

My advice: start a paintball league and make that the rule. And yeah, it does suck to have to suddenly become an event planner just to not end up on YouTube but welcome to the future I guess.

> vim over emacs

Hell Yes lol

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He acknowledges the issue in the article, but doesn’t seem to grasp it fully.

Public means not private. What you do in public is not private. In presumptive free societies, when in public, one is allowed to notice what others are doing in public. Secret is the opposite of public.

The paranoia around being seen feels a lot like the other reptile-brain based phobias like fear of poisoning with vaccines.

> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.

> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

Sorry, that's not clear to me at all. If you're going to accuse other people of "nonsense", you should probably avoid circular reasoning yourself.

It's clear that "privacy " in public spaces requires a fair bit of entitlement, why can't we all just love one another and let it go? What harm comes from being in someone's cool AirSoft video? Is it just a matter of principle that bothers you or something deeper?

This. Im a dick and straight up demand people exclude me or stop filming. Consumers are ravenous for money making content and have no clue what a media business privacy, consent, and compensation legal framework even remotely look like. As someone who produced a few short documentaries in the early 2000s related to "hobbies", I would have never done so without full consent and compensation...

I disagree. Filming Airsoft is no more intrusive than filming football matches or paintball. It’s a public-facing hobby where documenting the experience is part of the culture, and that’s a big reason the sport grows and attracts new players.

UK law already strikes the right balance: you’re free to record in public or semi-public spaces unless there’s a specific ban, while also having protections against harassment or misuse. That’s a sensible framework we should never dilute with “consent-by-default” rules, which would only stifle creativity and community sharing. If you join a hobby where cameras are standard, it’s fair to expect that presence, not to restrict others’ enjoyment because of hypothetical discomfort.

If you don’t like that, nothing stops you from setting up your own private games with different rules

> well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces

That's the correct answer. End of the story.

It is our consensus of what "public space" means and one can do with it (which varies depending on where you are) that forms a lot of our social norms and society. It is why hang drying clothes is acceptable/normal in many parts of the world but not in the US. It is why people are expected to wear at least some clothes. It is why you can take photos of random people, including kids, without their/their parents' consent in the US in public space.

If you think you are so special to never show up in a photo, don't be in the public in the first, or wear a mask, a hat plus sunglasses or something else. Celebrities have been doing this for forever.