I'm surprised yours is the only comment from this perspective. I get the draw and innocence of such videos, but I agree spreading them knowing they were most likely uploaded accidentally seems a violation of these people's privacy.

Why on earth would you assume that most of these are an accident?

Even the OP has this to say:

> In fact, many were likely uploaded by accident or with a misunderstanding that complete strangers could see it.

Throughout the article, there are reasons why one would think that (like most having zero views, no descriptions, no engagement etc).

It's from a time before the internet became full of people trying to hurt you.

FTFY - It’s from a time when those people weren’t as brazen about it.

If you upload a video and set it to public, you're responsible for that. End of story.

It is not the responsibility of others to guess your intentions.

> and set it to public

That's the issue. These people likely didn't affirmatively do that.

IIRC at least for a while it defaulted to unlisted and then at some point YouTube changed all unlisted videos to private which removed a lot of videos from view where the original uploader was no longer around to set the video to public.

Do you know for sure they agreed explicitly to it being public?

This is what I don't get about historians reading old people's letters to each other. Most of Alexander the Great's letters that are read are fake, but for the ones that are real, did anyone ask for his consent first? What makes anyone think that we should be privy to their inmost thoughts put to stone? Even if he did, is it informed consent if he did so not knowing that billions could one day consume this idly? People really need to learn consent.

People need to learn consent for people who've been dead for hundreds or thousands of years? Why? In the end, everything we leave behind belongs to our species' history and culture. There's no moral obligation for privacy under these circumstances the same way there is for somebody who's alive now. It just makes it unnecessarily difficult for future historians to put arbitrary restrictions on what they're allowed to read and share.

I think a case could be made that it’s fair that a person of his influence on the world loses a bit of his privacy a couple of thousand years after his death.

To future historians: once I'm dead for 2+ generations, feel free to consider any information of mine as public domain.

This is even true for "celebrities" today: there are different rules about where they still get to keep their privacy, and even then the society's thirst for the most intimate details is unrelenting. I am not saying this is "fair", but that it's recognized that "celebrity" has quite some downsides too.

OTOH, people featured in these videos are not going to hold a press conference when they start a new job (eg movie filming, sport team changes, winning elections), or even about a terminal illness they might be facing, where all of those are quite common with celebrities.

I feel exactly the same

It’s more like you’re continually checking hundreds of windows, just in case it happens…

I think that is neither a normal situation to be in nor a normal thing to do.

Please define normality, in the meantime I'm giving a try :

Normal men have balls, balls make man attracted to women -> normal men get their attention grabbed by inadvertently looking at pretty naked woman.

True but I would probably not share her naked video on HN

i mean i personally look elsewhere, bc getting caught looking would feel really shitty for them probably.