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Comment by sharperguy | Hacker News Reader

The venues for these things are private and so they can set their own rules. The author proposes a rule: A simple purple lanyard indicating that you don't wish to be included in the published film.

This doesn't necessarily need to be an article, because the author could have just handled it with each venue individually, but this just gets the conversation going about general sentiment and wider applicability.

My guess is that early on this kind of youtuber was relatively rare and so being captured occasionally wasn't a big deal, but that now the trend is catching on, a it's happening regularly and becoming a concern for some people.

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The author is a tech lawyer. I think the article is there to start discussion. I agree with him that if private venues allow people to record like this they should offer, at the very least, an opt out. "Purple lanyard" seems like a good way. It's also a pretty easy spot in post production where you can either blur or cut as appropriate.

There is a super obvious opt out that doesn't require people to take special actions.

Don't go to places that allow recording.

From the article:

I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.

This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.

In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby).

It's all about balance. Private venues want their customers to have the best experience they can so they will want to come back. The purple lanyard solution MIGHT work, depending on the ratio of people wearing them and the number of people filming. Or it might be that lots of people want to film and the one guy with the purple lanyard keeps getting in the shot and ruining it. Or it might be too many people want to film and end up ignoring it. But in the best case, it allows youtubers to make their videos while not requiring those who don't want to be in them to stay home, as non-customers.

Aren’t these venues small businesses that very much appreciate whatever publicity someone sharing their venue on social media gives them?

I guess they can weigh that against their customers desire for privacy.

In many hobbies, recording footage and reviewing it later is very valuable for improving. Think about football players reviewing game footage as a team to discuss what they did well and what went wrong.

Many hobbies are like this. The majority of footage people record on their GoPros is for themself. It's rare for someone to edit it into a YouTube video. Even more rare for someone to go see it.

The AirSoft example is interesting because players where so much protective gear and face masks that it would be very difficult to recognize anyone's likeness anyway.

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