Post #1704997

Let's talk Be My Eyes for a bit because there are two big things that have been all over my various social media spaces concerning the company. Thing 1: There was a guy who supposedly ran a marathon with BME volunteers connected via Meta glasses. I saw someone on my facebook feed post about this and while the press could have sensationalized the story and there could have been other factors at play, why is this even allowed? I know I might not have all the facts, but I'm Pretty sure BME has it in the terms of service that getting navigational help is a no no, especially considering the volunteers are just regular folk who don't know how to assist with that sort of thing. I think I read that the volunteers in this case were just being cheerleaders for the guy running but still, the fact this was even published makes me question a lot. This reminds me of that incident a few months back where someone said they used Be My Eyes to help them get to their mailbox without their cane. I'm sorry but that's careless and that person is lucky they didn't get hurt. Why publish a feel good story that could potentially cause problems and make people think that trying to navigate with a service that's volunteer-based is okay. If it's a feel-good story, stop it... and speaking of feel-good stories... Thing 2: Why do volunteers think it's okay to record their calls and post them to their social media? Where is the privacy? It's common sense not to use Be My Eyes for sensitive things; you wouldn't catch me using it to help me with reading my mail, but now with this new info coming out I feel like there's a lot more pressure on the users of the service itself. I myself feel like I would have to stage a call even more than I already do because now there's the potential for me to be recorded without my permission and be used as someone's inspiration porn on their TikTok or Instagram which means I'd really have to be careful about what the camera sees and hope there wasn't anything that might have even a small chance of giving something away. Even thinking about the idea of having to really stage a call like that makes my head hurt. I have never had an issue with written posts that describe the experience of helping someone. Change the names or don't mention names at all and just tell a story if you want, I'm fine with that, but the idea that I could be recorded because I asked to have a label on a can read or something equally simple and then have that posted because someone is looking for views? No. Stop it. I am not your inspiration porn. Also, there are videos that are circulating that show this actual thing happening, and to those people who don't think that that's enough evidence, I ask you, what more do you need? I'm not sure what can be done to prevent this or discourage it but something should be. This isn't a great look and it makes me a little more hesitant to use Be My Eyes in the future. Edited to add: I just got asked how I felt about someone talking about their experience with volunteering and helping someone in a video after the fact. I'm 100 percent fine with that. I get it, writing isn't everyone's thing, so if you want to make a video saying "hey, so I did this thing today" I'm all for it. What I'm not okay with is posting the actual call to your TikTok or whatever platform you use because you want views. Take that somewhere else.