Quote Originally Posted by Illusions View Post
Well this is an easy question to answer. Who would you rather have be able to see pictures of you drunk? An audience of millions or an audience of hundreds? The number isn't so much a problem, but instead it is representative of the possibility/probability that someone you know/may not know, who can affect your life, is going to be part of that audience.
Except that once images of Dread's drunken debauchery and hairy ball sac are uploaded to the internet, the audience is half the planet and growing, regardless of whether or not it gets touched Google's analytics or automatically tagged by Facebook's algorithms or what have you. In fact, you'd have to suspect that Facebook's facial recognition algorithms are unlikely to work on a picture of Dread's hairy ball sac, and that it's much more likely his "friend" who uploaded the pictures in the first place will provide the context, so that we know that this is Dread's hairy ball sac, and not someone else's hairy ball sac... like my hairy ball sac, of which I'm sure there are more than a few pictures floating around the interwebs.

So, what to do? Impose a futile ban on Facebook using algorithms that are largely available to anyone who wants to employ them? Ban the algorithms themselves? Arrest Dread's friend? The problem is, once it's out there, it's out there, for anyone to use as they see fit. Going the Luddite route and banning one big company from using an automated tool doesn't put the genie back in the bottle... or do much of anything, except cause more problems. Such as, for example, creating a violation of German law by uploading vacation pictures taken in public places. Ultimately, if they go all Luddite on this, they'll get left in the past and only serve to stifle innovation in their countries for no good reason, while the rest of the world passes them by and codes automated tools to do whatever we damn well please. Reminds me of the self-defeating ban exporting on "strong crypto" under Clinton (by classifying it as military munitions)... ultimately, all that did was inspire people whose products were based on strong crypto to pick up stakes and go to another country (ironically, one of the best countries being Germany) where they were free to code their software and sell it to whomever they damned well pleased.

Quote Originally Posted by Illusions View Post
You don't ban it. What would be nice was if you could opt out without being part of the service, and not be auto-opted in if you are a part of it. How would you feel if I wrote a server side script so that every time you posted, your current IP address was publicly appended to your post, along with your current GPS location (if available), claimed that you opted in with whatever you agreed to whenever you originally signed up for the forum, and that this feature was to make the forums more social and streamlined? I don't think you'd like that very much.
And, of course, Dread is forced to post here, and has no ability to terminate his association with an organization whose terms of use he no longer likes? And, actually, isn't this very thing you propose an actual service offered in conjunction with social networking crap? FourSquare, or something like that... allows you to embed your GPS location into your FaceBook posts or tweets, or something, just in case you're worried that you're not encouraging stalkers enough with 80 status updates a day.

Well, point being that the solution ought not to be a ban, or government interference in what consensual agreements can be offered or entered into, based on someone disliking one particular voluntary arrangement. Don't like it, don't participate. And if your objection is that someone's posting pictures of you without your consent, that's an issue between you and them, not the government and every internet company or user out there, so deal with it at that level, rather than imposing your particular tastes on the rest of the world through sweeping legislation.