Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pc86 13 days ago
No - someone dropping a picture to your phone when you have the ability enabled is not violence by any definition used by people with functioning frontal cortexes. Maybe it's good to remove the "Everybody" option, maybe it's not. Maybe it's good to make it auto-disable after 10 minutes, maybe it's not. Irrelevant.

But absolutely nothing will make a photo popping onto your phone a violent act.

2 comments

Someone walks up to you and stuffs an ad for local prostitutes into your shirt pocket before you react.

Don't like it? Should've worn a T-shirt.

Your wife founds another one in your back pocket later that day, and has questions.

What, you practically asked for it. Should've zippered that pocket. An open pocket is practically an invitation for everyone to put their stuff into it.

Violence, violations and other similar words have the same root, meaning to pursue, to suppress, to overpower. Quibbling over exactly where the boundary lines are drawn misses the larger point about unwanted incursions upon your person, whether physical or psychic.
Referring to someone airdropping an image over a protocol you specifically opened up as "psychic violence" is even worse than referring to it as simply "violence."

Words mean things. I know it's popular to pretend they don't and anything can be anything as long as we say it long enough and loud enough, but that's simply not true.