Most gyms it shouldn't be that hard to take useful pictures without people in them though? Do pictures of classes add anything?

> Most gyms it shouldn't be that hard to take useful pictures without people in them though?

Or much simpler: when the photos of a class are taken, simply ask beforehand who disagrees with being photographed and/or photos containing him/her made public, so that for those few minutes where the photos are taken, these people can get out of the picture.

Better yet, offer a free class to people who don't mind being photographed (of whom there are many). 'Being part of a company's marketing' isn't something that should be included in the price of a product or service.

I feel like if you announced your "picture day", you'd also get a subset of the gym members who wanted to show up that day looking their best. (And a subset of jokers who want to see if they can sneak their way into the marketing material so that there's a picture of someone exercising in a tuxedo or whatever if you look closely enough.)

Better still, pay people for the use of their image in advertising

Always

Right? Somehow we've let corporations (which arent even a real life thing! They are just groups of people!) be entitled to huge swaths of our lives. You want to use my image for your marketing because you don't want to pay models? Gtfo of here! What an insane thing to do to customers.

It's almost like eroding privacy is a shared goal of corporations and government, and that both are fine with endlessly tormenting and selling out their customers/those they represent. It's as if they are the common person's adversaries rather and aren't helping or providing a service as they claim.

I wonder how much of the government sponsored erosion of privacy is driven by the over empowered private sector still.

The general understanding is that we do not live in fascism. However, I disagree. Government and corporations are clearly working together.

> Better still, pay people for the use of their image in advertising

There exist sufficiently many people who love to have pictures of them being available publicly. Just look at basically some arbitrary Instagram page. Thus, there exists no need to pay (at least until, say, 95 % of society is really reluctant to have pictures of them publicly accessible).

Maybe text back with the reason you aren't coming back and they might learn to be accommodating.

The gym I go to explicitly forbids both taking unsolicited photos/videos or staging any permission videos.

Good idea