[daenz]

>But the damage was done. Afterwards, everyone was afraid of being filmed without consent again.

Devil's advocate, but isn't the point of being nude in public that you are destigmatizing it? I know you mentioned this was a "private lake" but it is unclear of if you mean legally private or de facto private. In case of the latter, even creepers have a right to be there and film.

I used to visit a nude beach and there was always some clothed weirdo with their phone out. They would get unfriendly looks by everyone though, and I think the ostracization kept them on the outskirts of the community.

[fxtentacle]

The lake was on private property owned by the parents of one of the participants. But there's an "open to the public" hiking trail at the border of their property. So legally, I'd consider this similar to looking over the fence into your neighbor's garden.

I'd estimate that for most participants, the point of being nude was to feel free. I mean this was students drinking, swimming, and playing beach games for relaxation, not some political rally.

[aqme28]

That’s not the point of being nude in public. For some people sure. Others like the freedom of it.

In either case, most just want an ephemeral experience, and don’t want permanent recordings.

[jrockway]

I don't think people really like permanent recordings even when they're wearing clothes. One of my favorite things about the pandemic is the sense of anonymity in public that wearing a mask offers. Less likely to get messages like "hey I saw you slip on that ice on r/all". Instead you're just some rando slipping on the ice!

[daenz]

You can enjoy the freedom of being nude on your own private property then. No need to add "in public" unless you are trying to a) destigmatize or b) be an exhibitionist

[aqme28]

No.

I like to be nude swimming at the lake, but I don’t have a lake on my property.

There’s a whole culture of this in Eastern Germany, where I currently live.

[daenz]

Your choice to swim nude in a public lake outweighing the choice to be more prudish is destigmatizing.

[aqme28]

Of course, but that’s not why I’m swimming nude.

[daenz]

Sorry but I just don't buy it. There's no functional difference between swimming in undergarments or swimming nude, so if you choose nude, it's because you don't think it should be stigmatized.

If you think it feels so much nicer, consider that it's because it's a mild rebellion against a social norm.

[_trampeltier]

I think you have a wrong understanding of nude beaches. People are usually very friendly and relaxed. Most have not a model body and are a bit older. When I was younger I also could no imagine I would go to there, but it's just so a much nicer experience. I feel much more calm on a nude beach than on a normal beach.

[Jon_Lowtek]

Guess you are from the USA, where no digital age concept of privacy exists, and the word still has a 17th century meaning of "behind closed curtains at home" instead of the modern interpretation of "requiring consent of the data subject". I am from europa, our laws, culture and philosophy are different. More specifically i am german, and we have a nudist tradition that has nothing to do with making statements.

Not everything "in public" is a statement made with the consent to be recorded, shared over the internet by bystanders, exploited by corporations and archived for eternity. A public nude beach, and take note that this thread is actually about a private nude beach but let's argue the weaker point, is a place for people to be nude, not a place to be exploited to make porn. The fact that it is physically possibly to exploit a nude beach for softcore porn does not mean it is acceptable. In the same way that being nude at a shopping mall is physically possible, but socially not acceptable and mostly also not legal. Please note that nudism and exhibitionism are not the same.

For most participants Nudism is about freedom of self and a return to nature, it is about oneself, not about society or making statements, and not about pushing ones own nudity into other peoples faces. That would be exhibitionism. Many nudists are quite shy and not interested in becoming someone else wank material, or an actor on national television, or instahub. They do not wish to be recorded. They just want to be nude at the beach, there is no larger meaning or implied consent. Let me repeat that: being nude at a nude beach does not automatically imply consent to be filmed by anyone for any purpose. And we can argue this finer detail of "privacy" as being different from "privatly/publicly" and how it hinges on consent, without looking at nudism in particular:

Imagine every time you leave the house a national television crew follows you around. It doesn't actually matter what you do, they will cut and manipulate the footage to fit their narrative. You are not getting paid and are not consenting, and you have no influence on what the show is about. But it is going to be degrading, let's call it "americans most stupid". You should have stayed inside if you don't want to be exploited like that. This is the american idea of privacy: once you step outside, you have none. The usa does not differentiate between "being seen on the street, at a bar, at a beach" and "being published on national television, on instagram, on pornhub". If you want to use the former, you must accept to be exploited by the later and their endless supply of unpaid content creators. The european interpretation says that these people are not content creators, but creeps that are violating your human right to privacy and self determination by recording and publishing your activities without your consent.

The public is facing the tragedy of the commons as "public spaces" have become freely and easily exploitable by corporations in the age of surveillance capitalism and social media.

Note that european style privacy law is differentiated in the finer details: a person who films at a nude beach can claim to do so as a technological extension of their own personal memories and with no intention to publish the material and that is not in violation of privacy laws. This is the case in the thread starter. For the law it is the exploitation of the material, turning personal data of unwilling subjects into commodities without their consent, which is illegal. This is a detail most people at nude beaches do not like: they find the act of filming itself to be as creepy as a wanker sitting in the bushes.

[daenz]

Thanks for the detailed reply, but I disagree with almost every point that you made. You took the extreme version of "no privacy" with the "America's most stupid" example, so allow me to take the opposite extreme. Imagine every conversation and every form of public interaction going through real-time government censors to decide if it is appropriate. If it's not appropriate (for some subjective definition of 'appropriate'), you're arrested or fined for offense. Sounds dystopian right? I'd much prefer being followed around by a malicious film crew in public all day.

[aqme28]

You’re arguing between two absurd extremes that have nothing to do with reality. Maybe a more grounded analogy would be more convincing?

[withinboredom]

Can you explain your argument better? I don’t follow it. How does requiring consent equate to dystopia?

[livueta]

Well, consider the grandparent's example:

> Note that european style privacy law is differentiated in the finer details: a person who films at a nude beach can claim to do so as a technological extension of their own personal memories and with no intention to publish the material and that is not in violation of privacy laws.

This would be reasonably clear-cut if images were being published on a professional pornography site or whatever, but what happens when the voyeur changes their mind and sends a pic to a friend who never re-shares it?

There are two possibilities here: either the law is unenforceable in cases like these and acts more like a security blanket than any sort of protection to be relied upon, baiting people into a false sense of privacy where they're open for exploitation by creeps - or you've got mandatory on-device image scanning / no E2E / etc, as compromising private communications is required in cases where the material would never hit public services.

Btw, I don't even really see this as a US vs. EU philosophy-of-law thing - the US has plenty of dumb unenforceable laws that do more harm than good as well, but imo does at least get the privacy in public issue roughly correct.

e: downthread, this is at least anecdotally a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32673402

My uncharitable take is that this is the result of this style of privacy protection's unenforceability problems. If it works so well, why the decline in participation / increase in electronic voyeurism?

[Jon_Lowtek]

I agree that such a government agency would be dystopian, but not that it is a logical extreme of a consent based right to privacy. Quite the contrary such an agency would be in violation of the right as it spies on all public interactions. Yet I am not surprised you radicalize a negative liberty of freedom from harassment by a malicious film crew, towards an intrusive government agency that ensures their absence. Consider the right to not be subject to violence, which you hopefully agree we have, and tell me, where is my government issued bodyguard ensuring absence of harm 24/7? I can claim a right, demand others limit their actions in respect of it, sue them if they violate it, and likely win, without needing a totalitarian surveillance state. But you can't win trial against a malicious film crew, if you have no right to privacy in the first place.

Let's meet in the middle, at "freedoms end where rights begin". For most interactions this balance is kept not by a government agency, but by the people respecting each others rights. The censor that decide if it is appropriate in real time is not part of some government agency, it is the little voice of moral and reason in your head that says "don't punch him in the face" and, if you get my drift, "don't film at a nude beach". The government steps in after people sue.

I bring the european understanding of a human right to privacy based on consent into this discussion, as a consideration about limiting the right to film, as a counterpoint to your "even creepers have a right to be there and film.", which you made as the devils advocate and which is true, but ignores the creepers disrespect for the right to privacy of those they film. The american interpretation is that humans have no right to privacy in public spaces, at all, that the creepers freedom to film is unrestricted in such a situation because privacy only exists behind closed doors and drawn curtains. This further means the creepers right to sell the content to distributors is unrestricted and their right to edit and frame this material is unrestricted, without any consent of he people filmed, because in an american public space their human right to privacy is non-existent. In the post I answered to, you reinforced this by claiming a person going to a public space makes a statement, implying consent. I reject that. There is a fundamental difference between using the commons and consenting to be exploited. I think the american threshold of where one sides freedom ends and the others sides rights begin in this matter is unfit for postmodern times where cameras have become cheap and omnipresent and publishing of the filmed material turned into a big market.

The american understanding of privacy comes from a time when the discussion was about being seen by neighbors, not about being filmed and published on the internet for millions to gawk at. Had the founding fathers bathing nude in a public lake not only implied that some fellow people present there could see them, but that pictures and videos were being made available on the world wide web, the concept of privacy in the bill of rights may be very different. Times have changed, technology changes possibilities and the evaluation of the freedom to do whatever you want in respect to other peoples rights to not be subject to whatever someone else wants must change with that as well.

As a moral and constitutional framework, i prefer consent based privacy above curtain based privacy.

[sph]

> Devil's advocate, but isn't the point of being nude in public that you are destigmatizing it?

Destigmatizing doesn't mean people are free to stare or film you. It's the same if someone were filming on a regular beach because they find people's bodies in bikinis attractive (or to have a wank, as admitted by that old creep). You probably wouldn't like that very much.

[daenz]

Assuming we're talking about the US, if you are in public, people absolutely are free to stare or film you.

[sph]

I assume they're also free to film in a nudist beach, or are there special laws?

Still, free or not, I can approach the guy with the camera and complain, like OP did with the nudist beach creep.

I'm in Europe, not sure how this works to be honest.

[daenz]

In the US, basically any public place (nude beaches included) is open for people to film. I believe there are some exceptions like public restrooms, where there exists a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

But yes, people are also free to complain to the person and make them feel uncomfortable for the scumbag behavior.

[LoveMortuus]

In Europe (Slovenia) you can't film people without their consent even if in public, unless if there's a huge number of people. Thus you're filming the crowd and not just a select few.

[ghaff]

And I'm pretty sure that even in European counties that theoretically require consent for publishing identifiable pictures of people in public, many thousands of such photos are posted every day.

[phaer]

Same in Austria, and I believe, in the whole EU.

[nibbleshifter]

Not the whole EU, just the sensible parts.

[b3morales]

There's the law and then there is etiquette. They do not necessarily match up. In this case the law is a lower limit, and you may face social counter-action: a person standing to block your camera, angry words, etc.

[lrvick]

There are indeed plenty of legal ways to be an asshole.

[LinuxBender]

Not to mention a drone operator can be pretty far away from a drone nowadays and the stability/video quality is increasing with every passing year.

[throwawaylinux]

No, but people being free to stare at whatever they like in public means that they are free to stare at you.

[afiori]

Just because there is physical distance it does not mean it is not harassment.

[throwawaylinux]

And just because something upsets you doesn't mean it's against the law.

[kelseyfrog]

And just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right. They're orthogonal dimensions. What's your point?

[throwawaylinux]

That it's not illegal.

That's the thing about going about in public, you have accept that others will be there and tolerate what they do even if you don't like it.

Try go acting the clown in public and see if people won't stare and record you.

[afiori]

We can make a very long chain saying vaguely related truism forth and back.

Or I could recommend reading https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap... instead.

[throwawaylinux]

It's not a truism that people are not free to cast their eyes in any direction they like in public.

[tremon]

isn't the point of being nude in public that you are destigmatizing it?

Context matters. The act itself can be destigmatizing (doesn't have to be the goal), but recording it and displaying it out of context usually causes more stigmatization.