Saturday, September 20, 2014

[cvbynbyu] Privacy of the Fappening

What is wrong about The Fappening?  Even precisely formulating the question was surprisingly difficult.  Here's an attempt.

Why do people consider important being able to keep private naked pictures of themselves?  What harm results from the privacy being violated?

For other realms of privacy, it is easy to answer these questions.  Privacy about financial authorization (e.g., PIN or password) prevents your money being stolen from you.  Privacy about your vote in an election prevents voter coercion.

Two possible harms: 1. Withholding nudity allows it to be used later as a bargaining chip for negotiations in courtship rituals.  2. Having naked pictures of you published, or even allowing such pictures to be taken, affiliates you, however faintly, with the sex work industry, a very low, untouchable class of society, carrying a permanent taint which one can never be absolved, affecting future employment, salary, and mating prospects.  (For celebrities in the business of selling their image, the decrease in salary might be quantifiable, though entangled with the Any Publicity Is Good Publicity positive effect.)

These reasons seem weird.  1. Should we really have a society in which nudity carries (or is perceived to carry) such a high value in courtship negotiations?  I suspect such a social convention leads to many other types of harm.  We could allege that the decision to put a high value on one's nudity is a personal choice, so victim is complicit in the harm the privacy violation causes (moral hazard).  Then again, one might not have much free will in that personal choice.

2. Should sex workers suffer such denigration?  Who participates in their shaming?

Given these mechanisms that are causing the harm, who should bear the blame for the harm caused by the Fappening?  It strongly suggests the hacker should bear very little of it.

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