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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people don’t care about fire safety either (until their house is burning down) which is why we have regulations, building codes, mandatory sprinklers in offices, etc.

I am starting to look at privacy like it should be treated as a public safety concern, since it’s invisible to people until it’s not.

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can social media kill you though? I mean all this talk of regulating social networks is under the assumption that it's something you need to have. I would argue that safe shelter is a true human need, but posting cat gifs or pictures of drunken escapades or political musings does not seem equally comparable and thus I do not see how regulation does anything other than hamper competition.

> can social media kill you though?

Yeah, it can and it did. Not only did the Ashley Madison leak led to a few deaths, check out what happens in countries where homosexuality is punished by death when private information goes public...

The States killed those people not Ashley-Madison.

It can be both. Responsibility is not a conserved quantity. Entities who take on private data should be considering the effects of that data becoming released, including what others may use it for.

“It could kill” is a pretty high bar for accepting that something needs to be regulated. We accept regulations on other data collection / storage activities, like financial data and health data. We also have licensure for occupations where public safety or wellbeing is a concern but lives are not necessarily on the line.

> can social media kill you though?

I assume you're aware of this: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/13/un-says-facebook-is-accele...

I don't think it's an equal comparison... the effects of social media on societies is a somewhat subjective matter. It's more likely that social media is just another tool that exposes the underlying human nature.

That said, if a fire occurs in my shelter and I don't have sprinklers installed, I could die.

> A lot of people don’t care about fire safety either (until their house is burning down) which is why we have regulations, building codes, mandatory sprinklers in offices, etc.

We don't have mandatory sprinklers in home offices and undeveloped land and buildings that are still under construction.

The problem with the equivalent distinction in software is that there is no clear point that software is "finished" like a building is. The architect doesn't come back and make changes a year after the occupants move into a building.

If there is no exception for new code still under testing then there is no way to test new code. But if there is, everyone will live their lives inside of it.

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