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acdha 12 hours ago

Yes. There’s also something about the sheer volume of recorded media & ease of distribution which feels like we crossed a qualitatively different threshold. The laws around photography were set in an era when it cost money to take a photograph, the cameras were easier to notice and slower, and when someone took a photo it was highly unlikely that they’d share it widely. Now it’s basically impossible to avoid cameras, people take far more pictures than they used to, and anyone’s photos can reach large audiences and often easily linked back to you. There was nothing like the way random people could see someone having a bad day, post it, and half an hour later a million strangers have seen it - a newspaper or TV station could do that, but their staffers usually ignored things which didn’t have a legitimate news interest.

This feels kind of like the way you could avoid having extensive traffic laws & control systems in 1905 when only a few people had cars.