this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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Everyone does know that the front of your house is visible from the street, right?
Yes, but with google maps it's visible from anywhere. And some folks might prefer that it not be π€·π»ββοΈ
IMO the same concept as Cris_Citrus makes here, applies when ppl say "your address was always in the phonebook". Or how a film photo stuck in a drawer in Joe Sixpack's house is different from a digital photo analyzed by sophisticated machine learning algorithms by dozens of data brokers to build a dossier of your life. Even if in both cases "someone could always take your picture in public."
Scale, and ease of access, have real impacts. Even if technically, the data was "always available."
False equivalences, all of 'em. But pro-surveilence advocates love making them.
Yes and some people would do away with the 1st amendment right to public photography entirely. That doesn't make it right...
EDIT: Yes - my comment about 1st amendment only applies to U.S. I have no idea if other countries protect public photography in the same manner.
Not everyone's in the US...
Fair - added a note to my comment. Thank you.
Good edit. Thankyou.
I'm not from the US so care little for the constitution. What is in the constitution and what is right are two different things.
Okay this one has always cracked me up.
The constitution people always love talking about the amendments like they're gospel. But like, if the constitution was so great, why do you care about the changes to it? If we make a new amendment does it instantly become as sacred emotionally to them?
Your questions aren't horrible and the do have actual answers. However, your tone suggest that you don't actually give a fuck so it's not worth wasting time answering them. Let me know if you were actually being genuine...
I omega don't give a fuck, so good call! It was definitely rhetorical.
I think worshipping a 250 year old document is weird as heck.
Oh shit! I never knew we had access to the first amendment in Europe. (I also have no fucking idea what the first amendment is).
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution is a part of the US Constitution that prohibits laws violating certain specific rights, two of them being the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Many other countries have some equivalent to this too.
The relevance here is that taking photos of public spaces is part of freedom of speech and of the press.
Every days a school day and thankyou (no /s here) but as politely as possible I really don't care about the US Constitution, even less it's amendments.
Are you sure? You'd fit right in with a lot of proudly ignorant Americans... "Duh... I don't know which I'll proudly declare a badge of honor and commit to remaining stupid."
Very sure thanks.
I have enough things to learn, live and experience from a European perspective (as the culture and the language changes a shit load more than across the USA from geographical perspective)
I wouldn't call you ignorant for not knowing information from some arcane document over x years old from a European country. Why am I ignorant not knowing it from your culture?
Why not? I almost certainly would be ignorant about it. Ignorant just means I don't know something... there's all kinds of things that I don't know.
The U.S. 1st amendment actually does have some implications for your speech even though you're in Europe and (presumably) not a U.S. citizen.
Hahahaha. I think I laughed so much I dropped my French baguette from the London red bus im sitting in. /s.
Exactly how does it have have implications in a country it's not a law of?
Because it had, and continues to have, a significant bearing on the development of technologies that are used internationally, many of which shape the society you live in.
So do the laws of China but I don't know much of their laws. So also does the EU but I assume most yanks don't know much about those ones either.
I don't judge but I do get annoyed at USdefaultism
Getting annoyed is a form of judgement.
Yes, U.S. defaultism is problematic.
Still, as long as companies, especially US-based ones like Google, are exporting their US-centric products & practices, people outside the US will be exposed to products & practices shaped by US law.
Because enforcement is rarely watertight, the above holds true even if the importing countryβs laws forbid those products & practices.
Therefore, unless you wish to live in ignorance, itβs worth being aware of the laws that most strongly shape the technologies that in turn shape your society - even laws from jurisdictions outside your own.
And which ones from China or the EU are you planning to investigate and learn about? It works both ways.
Not knowing the miniature of laws from other countries is not ignorance, there is only so much a person can learn and take in.
'Getting annoyed is a form of judgment' is an incredibly flipant response.
When you're in tech or in schools, you learn about this and also about EU and Chinese copyright because some of them can sue the pants off or block your site/material from getting money. If you want to use certain tools, including me using this nonUS website, I need to be aware of their rules so I don't mess up the terms and services. US apps have something for EU users for this purpose.
The US Constitution is fucking stupid.
...How? It's made for the government not to take away rights. Like it's bad, but it's the bare minimum. It could be worse. There's a 14th, 19th, first 10 amendments for a reason. I don't like the US harming my privacy and the constitution, even though it takes a lot of effort to force, still prevents even more exploitation from happening...
Theres a little bit of a difference between doing away with the first amendment right to public photography and people using a massive corporation's own take-down process for removing a publicly hosted images of their house π
You switched gears in the middle of your statement. Either photography from the public spaces is legal or it isn't. The only reason I don't consider these take-downs a first-amendment violation is because Google is providing the mechanism to do it. They legally have every right to take the picture of your house and tell you to go pound sand if you don't like it.
I mean.... Sure. I'm not in disagreement with that. And people are welcome to not appreciate a corporation doing that, and use the takedown to remove it if they dont want it there
I do understand that Google can legally take pictures of whatever is public