Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

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It's high time for government to act and regulate social media platforms more - and not just TikTok, but also YouTube and Instagram, where similar content isn't moderated either unless it generates public outrage.

The list of "internet challenges" [1] alone should be enough to warrant serious crackdowns across the board, and that's just dangerous challenges and doesn't include other noxious effects of social media like hordes of Instagram followers ruining flower fields [2][3] and tourist destinations [4].

And hell, not just the platforms should be held accountable. Track down and arrest every single one of those utterly vile people exploiting the suffering of fellow human beings. Just because they're doing it "on the internet" shouldn't mean immunity from the law.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_challenges

[2] https://mashable.com/article/instagram-ruining-california-su...

[3] https://matadornetwork.com/read/instagrammers-destroying-sib...

[4] https://qz.com/quartzy/1580867/all-the-tourist-destinations-...

Which law does this violate?

I know it's not the US, but here in Europe you'd run afoul of GDPR - filming or photographing people is an activity regulated by it. In Germany, there's an explicit criminal code protecting "helpless" persons from filming (§201a Abs. 1 Nr. 2 StGB [1]).

In the US, there are numerous states who require consent for recordings, so that may be another avenue.

[1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__201a.html

In the US you have a constitutional right to photograph people in public. Laws only regulate what you do with those photos. Sharing on tiktok doesn't seem to violate the laws I'm familiar with but I don't really know.

> If you are seeking to photograph for commercial purposes you may be required to gain permission from anyone who was involved in the film or photograph. Commercial purposes usually means that you are photographing for financial gain or to promote goods or services.

When your income from Tiktok is tied to stream views etc., and you provide little journalistic content, you might have a hard time demonstrating that your stream wasn't "for commercial purposes".

The ASMP (American Society for Media Photographers) who work to protect the rights of photography among other things recommends that property and other releases be obtained if used for commercial purposes and states that in some situations, a release may be "required".

Not obvious to me, since the person in the article took money for it. There clearly is an economic transaction thus consent is implied.

This again, the exploitation of someone in a dire situation, would be a crime in many countries.

Here the reference for Germany: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__291.html

In the EU, hate crime laws. (Just to be clear, I think it's unfortunate that it's likely illegal - I disagree with the parent post)

How does it violate hate crime laws? This just seem a privacy problem.

This is not in the EU

I know, but TFA says that some of the people recording are coming from Europe.

People from the EU still have first amendment rights within the US

Yes but if they post the videos and then go back to the EU (since they live there) I assume they can get in trouble.

Can they? If a person from France uses weed in California, will France get mad?

Seems kinda silly to enforce a country's laws on someone even when they're in another country. I guess social media makes it kind of a gray area though, since the violating act might be the upload itself (which can happen anywhere and is essentially 'continuous' even when the uploader returns to their home country).

It depends on the law where you're from. US citizens are sometimes surprised that they can be prosecuted by the US for crimes they've committed abroad, even when it's not a crime in the place where it happened. The term for this is "extraterritorial jurisdiction".

> Seems kinda silly to enforce a country's laws on someone even when they're in another country.

It's relatively common these days. The US assumes global jurisdiction for anything that touches the US Dollar (as e.g. Kim Dotcom of Megaupload has been fighting for years now), and most Western nations assume global jurisdiction for a select few grave crimes (mostly murder, war crimes and sexual exploitation of underagers).

They could. An American could say unsavory things about the Thai monarch in New York and end up getting into trouble when she travels to Thailand years later.

I am pretty sure Pakistan has this for blasphemy too.

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