I feel like if someone internalized “treat every conversation with people I don’t know as if they may post it super publicly—and all of this is fair game”, we would lose a lot of commons, and your quality of life and discourse your would go down. I don’t think it’s “charity” to [EDIT: not] increase the level of publicity of a conversation, whether digital or in person. I think drawing a parallel with in person conversation is especially enlightening—imagine we were having a conversation in a room with CCTV (you’re aware it’s recorded, but believe it to be private). Me taking that recording and playing it on local news is not just “uncharitable”—it’s wrong in a way which degrades trust.
I don’t think it’s “charity” to increase the level of publicity of a conversation, whether digital or in person.
Neither do I: as I said, I actually think it’s charity NOT to increase the level of publicity. And people are indeed charitable most of the time. I just think that, if you live your life expecting charity at every instance, you’re in for a lot of disappointment, because even though most people are charitable most of the time, there’s still going to be a lot of instances in which they won’t be charitable. The OP seems to be taking charity for granted, and then complaining about a couple of instances in which it didn’t happen. I think it’s better to do the opposite: not to expect charity, and then be grateful when it does happen.
I think drawing a parallel with in person conversation is especially enlightening—imagine we were having a conversation in a room with CCTV (you’re aware it’s recorded, but believe it to be private). Me taking that recording and playing it on local news is not just “uncharitable”—it’s wrong in a way which degrades trust.
I don’t think it’s inherently wrong. It may still be (and in most cases will be) circumstantially wrong, in the sense that it does much more damage to others (including, as you mention, by collaborating to degrade public trust) than it does good to anyone (yourself included).
Apologies, typo in the original, I do think it’s not charity to not increase publicity, the post was missing a “not”. Your response still clarified your position, but I do disagree—common courtesy is not the same as charity, and expecting it is not unreasonable. I feel like not publishing our private conversation (whether you’re a journalist or not) falls under common courtesy or normal behaviour rather than “charity”. Standing more than a 1 centimeter away from you when talking is not charity just because it’s technically legal—it’s a normal and polite thing to do, so when someone comes super close to my face when talking I have the right to be surprised and protest. Escalating publicity is like escalating intimacy in this example.
I feel like not publishing our private conversation (whether you’re a journalist or not) falls under common courtesy or normal behaviour rather than “charity”.
I feel like this falls into the fallacy of overgeneralization. “Normal” according to whom? Not journalists, apparently.
common courtesy is not the same as charity, and expecting it is not unreasonable.
It’s (almost by definition) not unreasonable to expect common courtesy, it’s just that people’s definitions of what common courtesy even is vary widely. Journalists evidently don’t think they’re denying you common courtesy when they behave the way most journalists behave.
Standing more than a 1 centimeter away from you when talking is not charity just because it’s technically legal—it’s a normal and polite thing to do, so when someone comes super close to my face when talking I have the right to be surprised and protest. Escalating publicity is like escalating intimacy in this example.
This is an interesting pushback, but I feel the same reply works here: failing to respect someone’s personal space is not inherently wrong, but it will be circumstantially wrong most of the time because it tends to do much more harm (i.e. annoy people) than good.
I feel like if someone internalized “treat every conversation with people I don’t know as if they may post it super publicly—and all of this is fair game”, we would lose a lot of commons, and your quality of life and discourse your would go down. I don’t think it’s “charity” to [EDIT: not] increase the level of publicity of a conversation, whether digital or in person. I think drawing a parallel with in person conversation is especially enlightening—imagine we were having a conversation in a room with CCTV (you’re aware it’s recorded, but believe it to be private). Me taking that recording and playing it on local news is not just “uncharitable”—it’s wrong in a way which degrades trust.
Neither do I: as I said, I actually think it’s charity NOT to increase the level of publicity. And people are indeed charitable most of the time. I just think that, if you live your life expecting charity at every instance, you’re in for a lot of disappointment, because even though most people are charitable most of the time, there’s still going to be a lot of instances in which they won’t be charitable. The OP seems to be taking charity for granted, and then complaining about a couple of instances in which it didn’t happen. I think it’s better to do the opposite: not to expect charity, and then be grateful when it does happen.
I don’t think it’s inherently wrong. It may still be (and in most cases will be) circumstantially wrong, in the sense that it does much more damage to others (including, as you mention, by collaborating to degrade public trust) than it does good to anyone (yourself included).
Apologies, typo in the original, I do think it’s not charity to not increase publicity, the post was missing a “not”. Your response still clarified your position, but I do disagree—common courtesy is not the same as charity, and expecting it is not unreasonable. I feel like not publishing our private conversation (whether you’re a journalist or not) falls under common courtesy or normal behaviour rather than “charity”. Standing more than a 1 centimeter away from you when talking is not charity just because it’s technically legal—it’s a normal and polite thing to do, so when someone comes super close to my face when talking I have the right to be surprised and protest. Escalating publicity is like escalating intimacy in this example.
I feel like this falls into the fallacy of overgeneralization. “Normal” according to whom? Not journalists, apparently.
It’s (almost by definition) not unreasonable to expect common courtesy, it’s just that people’s definitions of what common courtesy even is vary widely. Journalists evidently don’t think they’re denying you common courtesy when they behave the way most journalists behave.
This is an interesting pushback, but I feel the same reply works here: failing to respect someone’s personal space is not inherently wrong, but it will be circumstantially wrong most of the time because it tends to do much more harm (i.e. annoy people) than good.