Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

How about this analogue:

You come to a restaurant to eat dinner with your friend, who arrived early. Unbeknownst to you, your friend arranged for one of their acquaintances, who you don't know, to sit at the next table and secretly record the whole conversation.

View on HN

I'd go a step farther, because I think it's what should really be relevant in this case.

You come to a restaurant to eat dinner with your friend, who arrived early. Unbeknownst to you, your friend arranged for one of their acquaintances, who owns a business, to observe and document your arrival, from a concealed location, behind a sign for that business.

What's relevant in this case should be that a reasonable person, upon observing a Facebook "Like" button on a page, comes to the conclusion that "that button exists for me to interact with, and interact with Facebook, related to this business."

More specifically, a reasonable person would not come to the conclusion that a Facebook "Like" button allows Facebook to load arbitrary code into your session with the business, the purpose of which is to track you and compile information on you.

It's unreasonable to expect people to choose to opt out of what they don't even understand.

Since we are stretching to find analog analogies, the Facebook case is more like:

You are communicating with your friend, but instead of talking directly, you write a note, hand it to Mr. Facebook, who opens it, reads it, then closes it and hands it to your friend, who in turn writes back, handing it to Mr. Facebook first. That’s more how communication happens on FB. FB acts as the mediator of the communication, a middle man whom both of you interact with to have the conversation. They are not spying from afar—you are directly giving them your communications.

Add to that:

If you write something on your note, which Mr. Facebook doesn't like he takes the liberty to alter the note before handing it to your friend.

Are you sure?

If I write “A” is it possible that “B” arrives?

Or are you talking about censorship, so if “A” is unlawful, then it does not arrive at all?

A lot of links are on Reddit, which I can't access. But have a look at [1] and more specifically [2].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+censoring+messages

[2] https://linustechtips.com/topic/912936-facebook-private-chat...

This is perfectly legal in most of the US.

Famous people and their paparazzi followers probably know all too well that when you are anywhere an eye can see from a public location you can be recorded.

Famous people have different expectations of privacy than ordinary people.

Citation?

Public Figure Doctrine in the US. According to it, if you are a public figure libel and defamation have much higher burden's of proof whereas if you aren't a public figure you don't. And there are concepts like "Limited Purpose Public Figure" (as distinct from 'all purpose public figures'). All purpose public figures- people who are in "positions of such persuasive power and influence that they are deemed public figure for all purposes"- like movie stars, sports stars, and politicians, have essentially an impossible time winning any court case bringing libel or defamation (they need to prove "actual malice" on the part of the person doing the defamation). LPPF's are people who make themselves public figures on a single controversy or issue, and have a hard time proving defamation on that topic, but are still private citizens for other purposes. Say, an otherwise unremarkable person who is the named defendant in a Supreme Court case- for the issue that went before the Supreme Court they will have a hard time proving defamation but in terms of the rest of their life they have the same protections that anyone else holds, and a lower burden of proof for damages.

All of this was worked out in the 1960's and 1970's, and I don't keep up on it so I'm not sure how courts have mapped Limited Purpose Public Figures onto modern social media: is an Instagram influencer a LPPF or a all-purpose public figure or a regular person?

I found this:

> My understanding of the rule that has emerged from prior decisions is that there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable."

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States

As I understand it (and IANAL) there is a pretty well-established legal distinction between people whose job or avocation inevitably involves being famous and noticed, and just ordinary citizens. If you become a politician, singer, actor, etc. it is assumed that your expectation of privacy is different than for most people. Again IANAL, but my understanding is that just because photographers are allowed to hound famous actors, doesn't mean they can do it to someone who isn't newsworthy or otherwise in a public profession. IANAL.

And your friend might or might not know that the acquaintance is recording.

and the acquaintance is paying for the free restaurant food.

For doing that, he feels entitled to share his notes with anyone who pays him.

In this already murdered analogy, they aren't even paying all of the rent. There is a rumour they paid a server once but nobody has ever seen them. You have to bring your own food and wine and cook it, but you're encouraged to share with other tables. Some of those tables were paid to be there. There is also a stream of bored looking people wandering round, occasionally one of them will drop a snack on your table.

The only people you can see that your friend hired are interacting with these snack droppers, telling them which tables to go to. It's unclear if this is very effective.

This seems to be getting out of hand, but unfortunately the accurate analogue representation is even more complicated.

The country/world leaders are probably still thinking in analogue terms, so it might be important to find an accurate representation.

They might also be disincentivized to change anything, so it might also be a fool’s errand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com