Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

How do you feel when a stranger in public know is holding their phone as if they are filming and pointing the camera right at your face? Now transpose that feeling onto someone wearing these glasses simply looking at you. Because you won't know if they are filming or not.

It's not similar to someone just having their phone out in their hands looking down at their screen. It's similar to someone with their phone camera pointed at you.

View on HN

About how I feel whenever someone's holding up an actual camera, filming. It's obnoxious, but it's not the end of the world, and it's not going to make me want to punch someone.

It's kind of funny to listen to people get over-dramatic about this stuff. It'll be really funny to watch them get arrested for assault if they do actually get themselves worked up enough to punch someone.

The impression that I get from comments like yours is that you're almost picturing someone following you to film you, or getting in your face, or something. That would piss me off. But seriously, someone hanging out with friends and posting pictures online where I happen to be in the background? That already happens almost daily. I don't think it's worth getting worked up about.

I actually did partially witness something like that back in 2007. We were a group of students and visiting a historic site. One girl (probably) started recording while eventually, a rather fat man (which wasn't that common here) walked past her. She was talking with her friend, found something amusing and the man jumped to the conclusion that she had filmed him and laughed about his weight. So he walked up to here and slapped her phone out of her hands which fell to the ground and broke. In the end, he walked away while she remained on the spot, crying.

What I want to say, this actually does happen...though, probably more back in the day since nowadays, pretty much everyone has their phone out all the time. And you can't slap that many phones out of people's hands.

There's always the potential for misunderstanding. The world's a wide place, and there'll always be the exception that proves the rule. We'll get early stories about situations that blow up bigger than they should've, and then things will settle into a new normal (whatever that turns out to mean).

I think you're saying the problem is that the camera is pointed straight at you, and you're taking this as having the intention to film you. But phone cameras can have a wide angle. You can film people without pointing the phone straight at them. Someone walking around with a phone simply pointed vaguely in your direction could very well be filming you, and you won't know. Plus, CCTVs certainly are filming you, and like I said, I don't see the parent poster complaining about that.

With Glass I feel it's a matter of interpreting their intention. Someone with a camera strapped to their head will naturally be pointing it straight at you if they talk to you, but this isn't necessarily the same as them having the intention to film you.

Plus, you know, there's no law against filming in public. Maybe that's just the goldfish bowl we're all living in now. Maybe Zuckerberg was right and privacy is dead, or at least a luxury most of us can't afford.

This will take "it's just a prank bro" to a new level.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com