So the case below is interesting — basically a brouhaha over someone tweeting the blow-by-blow of a loud marital argument overheard at the local Burger King.
On the face of it, the tweeter was a bit rude. But if it was anonymized, it's hard to see the harm here, aside from that done to the social fabric. After all, the couple was arguing, loudly, in a Burger King. There was not, as they say on Law & Order, an "expectation of privacy."
Indeed, arguably they were at least as rude by imposing their squabble on their neighbors.
If the tweeter here had simply gone home and related the tale to his friend ("Man, you should have heard the couple at the next table over, they were really going at it!"), would that be such an offense? If the tweeter had simply summarized the contretemps in a couple of tweets, would that have been as bad? If a couple were arguing on Twitter itself, rather than in real life, and the tweeter stumbled across it and RTed it … would that be unacceptable?
There are a lot of concerns over privacy, and the privacy that people give up online willingly. But, people — when you're in public, you're in public, not in private. The boundaries of propriety and privacy are a lot thinner, and if you step over them, then don't expect folks to plug their virtual ears and not pay attention. #ddtb
Reshared post from +Les Jenkins
This sort of thing is only going to become more pervasive. I'm already stunned at what some people voluntarily share on Facebook/Twitter/G+ about their personal lives. Those folks aren't going to think twice about sharing something like this.
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The Day Privacy Died [Twitter]
The other day, while sitting in our car with the windows down, my wife and I had a heated argument. Bad words. Yelling. A fist or two slammed into our Volvo's center console. Though we both received nominations, we never reached consensus on which one of us was wrong, and the whole thing blew over by time we pulled into the garage.
I tell you this story because I figure you'll probably hear about it anyway. So it might as well come from me.
That seems to be the lesson offered by Andy Boyle. B…