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Comment by stevewodil | Hacker News Reader

A filter that displays your current speed has no inherent danger and does not encourage anything in and of itself. Idiots that decide to drive over 100mph in a car not designed for high speeds, on public roads, and with no proper training just to capture a cool number on a screen are the ones who should be put in jail.

Should we jail the person that invented the speedometer as well?

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A speedometer does the opposite of encouraging unsafe behavior by alerting you to the unsafeness of that behavior. The filter in question encouraged unsafe behavior by incentivizing such behavior for social engagement, however absurd you think that incentivization is personally. This is a bit like saying a frat house hazing isn't wrong because no one actually makes the kids drink, the social incentive remains dangerous.

A speedometer is completely neutral in the same way the filter is. It displays speed. It does not indicate to you that what you are doing is safe or unsafe.

If it wasn't the filter then people would be sharing pictures of their speedometer while going fast thinking it's cool. What's the difference?

This is not at all like frat hazing, no one is forcing you to take a snapchat to be a part of their organization.

It's not the filter or the speedometer, it's the social incentive. If Twitter created a #highspeedometer hash tag, that would also be encouraging dangerous behavior.

Having been a teen not that long ago, I've definitely seen camera photos of 100+ mph on a physical speedometer posted to social media. I don't see the difference here.

>This is a bit like saying a frat house hazing isn't wrong because no one actually makes the kids drink, the social incentive remains dangerous.

Frats typically do force/heavily encourage members to drink... especially as part of the hazing process for new members.

If it's just all people drinking without being forced into it, that's truly no different than a regular college party, which also provides social incentives to act dangerously but is pretty different from hazing with alcohol.

> A filter that displays your current speed has no inherent danger and does not encourage anything in and of itself.

To anyone with a passing acquaintance with the male teenage mind, it is entirely predictable what anything that captures your current speed and broadcasts it to your friends will encourage.

I feel like the crucial difference is context. A speedometer built into a social media app based around sharing video clips/photos is vastly different from a speedometer built into a car.

Context matters as hell. But context can also add layers of discussion. Say I've created a filter showing how many meters underwater I am. Should I be held accountable for people who drown using it? How this is different from the speed filter? If the difference is "because people don't dive with cellphones" then you are putting the intention (and responsability) on users by default. Why not do that in the case for the speed filter as well?

For me the difference is in the main utility of the app. If all it does is measure, there's no issue IMO, but Snapchat is specifically for sharing content with others. It'd be like having a speedometer or depth meter with a load of 'share your speed/depth to twitter/fb/etc buttons. I would see that as just as bad.

A filter that broadcasts your speedometer to your followers live is different though. Almost like watching a live race car driver.

No because snapchat doesn't have live features, so it's only captured at one point in time via a photo or video

Agreed. In fact, some dashcams have built-in speedometers (via GPS tracking I believe). Should manufacturers be forced to disable them and/or face liability in case someone uses a dashcam to capture their dangerous driving?

We have speed limits on e-scooters and e-bikes, it's only path dependence that means we don't have them on cars, despite the obvious difference in risk.

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