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by avar 1047 days ago
The European perspective is broadly to have the "freedom from", whereas the American one is the "freedom to".

You've got the freedom to aquire an arsenal, I don't, but I prefer the freedom from other people gunning down my kids, which by extension limits the narrow personal freedoms of myself and others.

Likewise, the American perspective is to draw a hard line on "in public", the European one is more nuanced.

Yes, you can film your vlog without fear, but a random pedestrian in Berlin also has the freedom from being associated with your public vlog.

Therefore you have a responsibility to either get their permission to broadcast it, or to anonymize them.

A useful way to think about it is to shift your view from "can I do X?" to "will I bother anyone else by doing X?".

1 comments

A useful way to think about it is to shift your view from "can I do X?" to "will I bother anyone else by doing X?".

I don't think that's particularly useful, because the answer to the second is trivially Yes, regardless of the value of X.

Are you suggesting that someone could shut down all human activity on the European continent by declaring that everything bothers them?
There is a lot of leeway to be had between "will I bother anyone else by doing X" and "will anyone else be bothered by me doing X": it's active interference versus passive objection-taking. Socially aware people can learn the difference.
>the answer to the second is trivially Yes, regardless of the value of X

then don't do it?

There are still many people bothered by the fact, that I as a men have long hair.

I am sorry to dissapoint you and those people, but for now I keep my hair.

You cannot please everyone and I think it is a path into madness to even try it. There are maaany things people feel bothered about …

Your response to "by that metric, essentially almost everything is disallowed" is "well yeah, just don't do it". I don't think that stance would sit well with most.