The essence of our platform lies in true stories, stories about people who want to better their lives and make a contribution to their communities. It also relies on those who want to support projects by giving of their time, money and know-how in order to realize them. Our platform is a place where they can meet each other and establish contact. Photos and videos play an important role in bringing the stories and projects to life in a way that words cannot.
This new means of communication provides many opportunities, but it also entails some risks and new responsibilities. If people want to promote better living conditions for others and publish other people’s personal stories on the internet, it must be ensured that personal rights and privacy are protected. Even the best-intentioned of us working on behalf of other people must still request our subjects’ permission for their lives to be publicized in words and images on the betterplace.org website.
Betterplace project managers undertake to only publicize information about others once such permission has been granted. If an organization collects money for African children and writes about their project on betterplace, we will assume that permission has been granted by the children’s parents or guardians, and that it complies with our Terms of Use, which state:
4.2 The user is fully responsible … for all content publicized by him/her. Before … publicizing any content on the platform the user shall ensure that his/her … content does not violate any legal provisions, moral or ethical standards or the rights of third parties (including but not limited to copyright and trademark laws, rights of name, author’s rights, legal data protection, laws protecting minors, etc.). In particular, the user undertakes to obtain, before publicizing any texts or images, the required consent by any third party concerned, such as the photographer or the persons shown in images or named in text.
But when I look at the projects on betterplace.org, the world seems to be divided into two factions. There are many projects in Western industrialized nations canvassing for support on behalf of individuals in need; most of them do so in an anonymous fashion without naming or depicting the people concerned.
By contrast, the projects promoting campaigns in the South will show images of the people concerned and in some cases, provide rather graphic descriptions of their circumstances. Are those involved aware that their mother is described as a prostitute and their father as a drunkard?
The division of the world into one part where personal rights are adhered to and another where they seem to be less significant has a long tradition. It reaches back to the very first contact between the New and Old Worlds, later peaking during the eras of imperialism and colonization.
No matter where they live, people have an equal right to privacy.
Today we know better: people around the world have equal human rights and they have the same right to privacy. There is no clear definition in this regard, however: in some countries (e.g. the USA and Australia) it is common practice to ban photography on public beaches because otherwise scantily clad ladies might find themselves in someone else’s photos – a complete overreaction, in my opinion. Obviously, perverts should be prevented from taking photos of naked children on the beach, but to put all photographers under a blanket suspicion is absurd.
A platform like betterplace.org intends to enable a dialogue between people from different parts of the world and from different societal strata, allowing them to communicate on a par with each other. It should be a matter of course that the same rights should be accorded to all people here more than anyplace else.