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Comment by mannykannot | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this argument is that it would be self-servingly naive for the recipient of the images to assume that the source of the data had obtained the appropriate permissions. Of course, the people creating this policy are not that naive; they are simply adopting the attitude cynically, as cover for what they know to be unethical.

To be clear, this does not absolve the supplier of the data for their responsibility, but the supplier’s culpability does not absolve the recipient.

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Why should the recipient/platform be culpable if the supplier is already acknowledged as being both culpable and dishonest as far as the ToS? It might be sexier in a David vs. Goliath sense to go after Facebook but Facebook isn't the party creating and uploading all of this content. If the risks of supplying a platform without consent aren't sufficiently high then suppliers will never have an incentive to verify consent. And if the suppliers were already verifying for consent then this would be a non-issue because consent would be implied as far as the platform was concerned.

The ToS might as well force people to promise away their firstborn and people would still upload photos.

Platforms have ToS that are non-negotiable and almost nobody reads them. The plaform knows this and that users upload photos without proper permissions and instead of warning users, they make it very convenient to agree (or even preselect it), otherwise it couldn't use the data in an almost-cover-your-ass way.

Note: I don't use these services, please correct me if I'm wrong.

In any worthwhile system of ethics, willfully ignoring very reasonable doubts about the provenance of something is itself unethical, separately from what was done by others. Similarly, it is unethical in itself to take advantage of another’s indifference to a third party’s rights in order to do to that third party something they would object to.

As for the question of what the platforms can do, it is simple: treat third parties as if they have refused permission. There’s nothing difficult about it once you filter out the self-serving attitude of the platforms. This has nothing to do with what’s “sexy” and everything to do with what’s right.

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