Sure, but my question isn't whether you can expect perfect privacy in a public place or not. Obviously you can not, but we live in a trust-based society. My question is whether you think it is socially acceptable to abuse that trust. If it isn't in public, then it shouldn't be on social media either.
> If it isn't in public, then it shouldn't be on social media either.
That is exactly what I'm saying so I'm not sure we disagree. Don't put things on social media you don't want people to see, or at least make your profiles private, because people can and will look and you can't expect otherwise.
I think you're still answering a different question than I'm asking.
We certainly agree that social media and in-person conversations in public spaces have the same expectation of privacy, but that's not the point I'm getting at.
What I am asking is, don't you think it would be considered inappropriate to spy on such conversations even though it's technically and legally possible to do so?
Our judgments as to what is considered socially acceptable behaviour aren't strictly ruled by what is technically or legally possible, nor should they be.
No, I don't find it inappropriate, nor would I call it spying at all. I wrote in another comment that I consider social media searching more like yelling in a public square and thinking that anyone who overhears your shouting is "spying" on you. That is essentially exactly what one is doing when they post publicly on social media.
And if social media users in general broadly disagree with you about that (which seems to be the case, given the confusion), who's to say who is right about this totally subjective standard by which we judge appropriateness? Isn't it society at large which gets to decide societal principles?
Sure, but I don't believe they do disagree though, as I stated in my initial comment that it's generally only those on HN who disagree, a vocal minority. The article shows how regular people don't care, they find it even better service than normal to be catered to. So if that's the case, by your logic, we should agree that it is appropriate, right?
You might be right that this isn't a particularly good example, but I'm not convinced that finding this to be inappropriate is an opinion that's just limited to technologists. I would be interested to see the reader comments on an article like this (but it seems they don't have those on sfgate).
