There's established precedent in the United States that photos of you aren't "yours." Any other circumstance means that journalists and others can't expose bad behavior without getting litigated.
I'm most familiar with that in Germany, where it's completely prohibited to publish somebody's photograph without their consent (which can be implied, e.g. by receiving payment or posing for a photo, or explicitly given), for both the press and general public, whether for commercial, personal, or journalistic purposes.
On a related note, it's still quite jarring for me to read the full name of perpetrators, victims, or witnesses involved in more or less newsworthy events in American media – the culture and (informed by that) law around what personal information is considered acceptable to be published is very different.
On an EU level, this concept even goes as far as being explicitly confirmed as a "right to be forgotten", which has implications for e.g. web search engines.
No. In the US if you take a picture of me in a public setting, you own that photo and all rights that go with it. Unless you do something so distasteful and unwarranted that I can claim material harm, I have no recourse against what you choose to do with that picture. See, for example, the paparazzi.
My expectation is that if someone takes a photo of me, I maintain some level of control over that photo. That is NOT the current situation.
That may be the case in the US, but here in Germany I could sue you if you made that picture public. Here people have the right to decide whether pictures of them can be made public or not (with some exceptions).
The photos often aren't selfies. If they are, the process for getting them removed is still onerous, and their publication remains malicious and (in this case and others) extortionate.
No. At least in the US you have no rights to photos taken of you in a public place except for certain specific situations. For examples, photos used for commercial purposes (e.g. ads, marketing materials) in which you are clearly recognizable (not part of a crowd shot) require model releases. However if I take a photo of you on the street and publish it in a personal blog, article, etc. you basically have no recourse. If you hold your breath and turn purple, I might take it down to make you go away but I have no obligation to do so.
Publishing private information of other people, not just those who "traffic in those photos", is forbidden because it the past it has led to real-life harassment. It's a pretty old and established rule.
And it's worse than that - if it's a photo of both you and them, there's an immediate impasse. Does their right to take their data trump your right to keep a hold of it? Does it depend on who took the picture, or who uploaded it, or when it was taken or how embarrassing it is?
I'm not saying these aren't answerable questions, but I'm very skeptical that the answer is so obvious and non-controversial that we should legally enforce it against all social media platforms.
Only in the US. In most developed nations, this isn't the case: even in public you have a certain amount of privacy allowed, so for instance, people aren't allowed to take your photo without permission. Of course, there's practical limits here, but usually it comes down to whether the person is the subject of the photo or not. If a person sees themselves in a public photo, but they're in a crowd off in the distance, then that's ok. If someone is following them around and taking fairly close photos of them, that's not.
That doesn't apply here because they did do something wrong. Taking explicit photos of themselves. That's something they want to hide. If you doesn't want to hide them who cares.
But it’s not yours. You don’t own your “image”, just like you don’t own your DNA.
It’s not reasonable to expect to require permission for someone to use your image that they captured. What if it’s for news purposes? What if it’s related to, say, and insurance fraud investigation? If you keep trying to draw the line, it gets harder and harder to draw.
So what’s reasonable? If you have an expectation of privacy that’s violated, that seems far. But if you do not, i.e. you are in public, you have no such expectation.
Now, photographs shot through a window? Close your blinds or shut up. It’s all up to you.
I remember hearing in South Korea about some US Soldier being imprisoned over a dispute where he repeatedly photographed a young woman, explicitly against her consent.
Some countries give you a right to your own image. This comes up often in Germany, where privacy law is very different from the US.
Not for all purposes, no. You don't have an unlimited right to publish other people's imagery for commercial purposes absent permission, even if they are photographed in public, and they would be able to recover damages from you for doing so.
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