Human obs used for cyberbullying

[jasonhernandez74]

Here is an example of a “legitimate” and “official” trail cam observation being used for cyberbullying.
When wildlife surveillance tech ‘watches’ people (mongabay.com)

As I have mentioned in several threads about trail cams, I have long had a problem with them. The sight of one actually makes me doubt myself – I thought this was a place where it was okay for me to be, but now I’m not so sure. I get nervous about whether there will be adverse consequences for what I thought was innocent. I really think that this quiote from the linked article says something very important:

“More importantly, they urge researchers to evaluate who benefits from the tech and who gets harmed; and deploy the tech only when there are no alternative, less-intrusive ways of collecting the data.”

The times I unexpectedly come upon a trail cam, I am not at all confident that these points have been adhered to.

[pisum]

@pisum

but then even when staff remove the underlying image record, the image files still remain on the media servers , accessible to all. so this means that if bad actors linked directly to the image files, then removing the image records would still not be enough to totally resolve the problem. so any complete solution would need to address this as well.

seems like this is now resolved.

[tiwane]

I think this is a bit out of scope for a discussion about iNaturalist observations being used to bully someone. Whether the photo is from a trail cam is not particularly relevant, it’s the posting of the photo to iNaturalist in addition to the intention of the poster and effect on the human subject in the photo.

Not saying the issue the article brings up aren’t real, but I’m not seeing the relvance to iNat.

[insectobserver123]

@tiwane

I think this is a bit out of scope for a discussion about iNaturalist observations being used to bully someone

That’s what I thought at first, but then I thought of my original list of 6 reasons a human photo should be considered for removal (see below) and realized that any trail cam photo of human should probably be assumed to meed the first criteria, “Main object of the photo is a human who is not intending to be photographed”

@insectobserver123

Main object of the photo is a human who is not intending to be photographed (appears unaware, angle suggests person is not trying to be in frame, ect)

Photo includes a human along with negative comments in the observation notes or comments related to said human

Photo is of a patient inside a medical facility

Photo is of a student at school (not counting photos targeting non-human organisms where a student is holding, posing with, or is incidentally visible next to the organism)

Photo includes a human with observation notes or comments containing personal or gossipy claims about the person (“this person is dating so-and-so”, ect) I thought of this one based on a real world incident I know of where rumors about who was dating who were fabricated and spread widely with malicious intent

Observation of human that the original observer intentionally misidentifies as somthing else, especially something with offensive connotations