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nodata

I find it very interesting that there is only one photo of Snowden, and that nobody has seen him.

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Yeah, I can answer that. Here in Hawaii they showed interviews with his neighbours (since he worked here).

Here, quick Google search found this:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nsa-leaker-edward-s...

and this:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/06/girlfriends-blog-...

That photo is a still from a video interview he had with The Guardian.

But always _that_ photo. Never a different photo. Seems odd to me.

It's simply become memetic. Why bother combing through the video for a different still when you can use the same one everyone else is?

I'm not sure if you're being ironic because you answer your own question. A newspaper wants content that is different from its competitors. It takes little effort to "comb through the video" to grab another screenshot. I also find it odd that everyone is using the same still.

A newspaper wants content that is different from its competitors.

Except in this case the Snowden image is not "content". It is an icon: visual shorthand that catches the eye and identifies the topic. In a story about a corporation, they would use that corporation's standard logo rather than a unique picture of the generic corporate campus.

All of the pictures of Snowden's girlfriend in various poses and states of undress? Now that's content.

Snowden is privacy conscious. I'm sure after seeing all the information regarding PRISM and other NSA spying initiatives, he wasn't too thrilled to make a Facebook profile and show off pictures of him drinking beers with his buddies and what not, haha. He's probably tried to keep as minimal a web shadow as possible.

I kind of hope that it's making SV types realise that some people just don't appear online.

I guess there's a bell curve. At one end are the extremely privacy conscious with no-online presence and at the other are the people plugged into everything. Do start-ups want to grab the hump of the curve? Or do they want to target the careful users at the lower end?

Coincidentally, since mid-May I've been on an online scrubbing spree. Any post/photo/comment I might have made under my "real" handle, I'm trying to delete it. 13 year old me was way stupid if I see what I've written online over the course of the past 15 odd years. Of course, I'm just trying to reduce my google-footprint, it's not like the data has gone forever.

[Sites such as Hacker News don't allow you to edit, much less delete comments once a certain time has elapsed].

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