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Comment by martin1975 | Hacker News Reader

martin1975

Unless laws are passed to make filming others in public, this is unlikely to ever stop. Chances are, such laws will not get passed as it will intrude on civil liberties and free expression of many. I also recommend against swatting away, as the author in the Verge concludes he/she will do, at someone's phone if they don't consent to being recorded. You run the risk of breaking someone's phone that way, giving potential rise to increased conflict or a small claims suit. Best response is to walk away or ignore.

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> Best response is to walk away or ignore.

I think this is a good take, but I'd suggest the best response is to address the human being that is addressing you and say "no thanks".

Have you actually tried this? Most of the time the people filming you are not exactly pleasant to deal with and will laugh at you.

Then you can proceed to ignore them and/or walk away. Obviously.

And yes, I live in Manhattan and before that downtown SF, so I'd wager I've been confronted by strangers far more often than the average person.

One time I was in some sort of "soap opera" student project where I had to read some lines on tape. Another time a partner and I were confronted coming out of the Museum of Sex to be interviewed about our sex life. A video I was in at a park after Biden was announced the winner went semi-viral. One time at the corner of Polk x Post a man in a car tried to pick me up for sex work! I could go on.

Absolutely not. People who take advantage of social mores to force interactions for commercial purposes are not entitled to the same grace and kindness you'd extend to a normal person.

This is why it's entirely okay to just shut the door on salesmen, or just hang up on cold callers. Indeed, that is actually the BEST way, because anything you say or do besides that will be used, by a skilled salesperson, to try and pry open a longer interaction.

These people are operating in bad faith, and should be treated accordingly.

If the cost is too high for you to treat strangers like human beings for a brief moment before brutally judging them, then you can follow the ignore/walk away advice.

The cost is too high. And there’s nothing brutal about quickly stopping an unwanted, unsolicited, bad-faith interaction. Every person on the planet isn’t automatically entitled to my time.

The cost is too high to say "no thanks" instead of completely ignoring someone? And why assume they are acting in "bad faith" before you even know what they have to say? If you want to hide from the world, go for it, but don't pretend the people engaging with the world are the problem.

> but don't pretend the people engaging with the world are the problem.

They are not the problem, in my opinion, but they are also entitled to nothing that I do not choose to give of my own volition. Expecting a response, particularly a polite one, to an unsolicited interaction is on the same level of telling someone that "you'd look better if you smiled."

People are free to be in public but must also be aware of the consequences of their actions. One of those consequences may be that they are brusquely ignored.

If they want to be out in the world, go for it, but don't pretend the people engaging in their own activities are the problem.

Yes.

If someone is approaching you in public with a mic in their hand, you don't owe them anything.

If someone cold-calls you for sales, you don't owe them a moment more of your time once you realize what they are.

If someone knocks on your door to sell knives or pots and pans or Jesus, you especially don't owe them anything.

If you want to hide from the world

This is a bait-and-switch; you're saying that the person intruded upon has a responsibility to conform their behavior to suit the person who intruded upon them. The poster above said nothing about wanting to hide from the world, you just made that up and ascribed it to them. You might want to review your approach to discourse.

"Engaging with the world" is an extremely euphemistic way to frame "invading others' privacy". Not all forms of "engaging with the world" are positive ones, and holding boundaries about who has your consent to interact with you is not shameful.

If the film goes viral and that person has that is being filmed has to endure doxing, swatting and other forms of online abuse, then yes the cost could be too high... Frankly the person doing the filming should be asking permission before even filming... They are not treating the other person with any respect.

If someone unilaterally sticks a camera in my face and forces their company on me, I feel no obligation to passively refrain from judging those actions. They initiated the situation, so they've waived their right to be be left alone.

Encouraging rudeness is not polite, no matter what words you use. You've made yourself feel better, and made it easier for the intrusive human being to continue to rudely intrude on others.

Ignoring them is best, responding with swear words is second best, and pretending it's a normal human interaction is far, far down the list.

Politeness is not a supreme virtue. These people have already proactively disrespected others by invading their privacy - they simultaneously sacrificed the right to be treated politely. Would you respond to a home invader with a polite request? If not, then we've established that there are situations in which politeness is not required or justified, and now we're just quibbling about which actions justify which responses.

> You've[...] made it easier for the intrusive human being to continue to rudely intrude on others

If you have made them feel uncomfortable - perhaps forced them to stop and confront the discomfort that they are selfishly causing - then this is not, in fact, true. And if this happens repeatedly, they will stop.

The correct response is "fuck off cunt" because then they're going to have to spend a bunch of time bleeping you before any advertising-friendly platform will let you become a meme for their own profit.

There are laws. A quick search for "laws about photographing people in public" brings up a bunch of articles including, of course, one on Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law