
We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online - mashmac2
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/data_mine_1/2013/09/facebook_privacy_and_kids_don_t_post_photos_of_your_kids_online.html
======
roc
This seems incredibly odd to me.

On one hand, they indicate strongly valued privacy with the "no posts about
the child" rule; seemingly recognizing the hidden costs of permissive
'oversharing'.

But, on the other hand, they place a very high importance on reserving
(vanity) domain and user names, securing the right for her to sharecrop out
her personal information in as-accurate-a-means as possible; reinforcing the
_value_ and importance of being able to overshare?

e.g. Reserving JaneAnnSmith.com at birth to ... what? Spare her the
inconvenience/indirection of someone else buying that domain in the
intervening years and her having to instead register jasmith.com or (heaven
forbid) jane-ann-smith.com ?

Securing facebook.com/janeannsmith to spare her facebook.com/123456789 or
something?

And does anyone even think for a moment that it's likely for today's real-
name-based social networks will be relevant, years from now?

Reserving a Facebook name today is akin to having reserved a geocities name,
at birth, for a child who will graduate high school next year -- and that's
for the earliest of early adopters. Were the name registered for a child born
around geocities peak, that child may still be in _junior high_.

The ephemeral nature of these networks (over such time frames) only further
underscores the apparent importance the parents are placing on _precisely_
identifying her online history. (getting that facebook username _just in case_
it's still relevant...)

It seems rather than teaching their child to value privacy, to understand the
power/benefit dynamic of these networks, to hopefully avoid her growing up
forever linked to juvenile mis-steps, they're instead raising her to be a
narcissist.

That is: Not to value her privacy and personal identity in and of themselves,
but to value privacy and personal identity as a tool to 'spin' her public
identity in the most-favorable fashion.

~~~
blah32497
People keep saying facebook will disappear... but maybe it won't? Maybe it
will become like email, less used but ever-present.

~~~
pstack
Unfortunately, I believe Facebook toed over that critical mass that has moved
it into a long-term dominator of social networking. It has long since passed
the point where it's going to just go away and be replaced by something else,
like Myspace and other past social sites were. They may not be around forever,
but it seems unlikely they'll be unseated any time soon. We are no longer in
an age where a bunch of geeks moving on to something new changes the dynamic
of the internet. We are now in a time when the average Joe Sixpack and his
grandmother don't look for new things, don't try new things, and don't care
about new things. They will stick with Facebook indefinitely, the same way a
lot of people still stick with the big three over the air networks for their
sole television entertainment.

~~~
ratscabies
AOL is still around, and my sister still has, and uses (infrequently)and
aol.com address. Though she would prefer I communicated via facebook.

------
rayiner
I'm a new parent and my wife and I are not taking any measures to minimize our
kid's Facebook exposure.

As a general rule, it's pretty safe to "do what everybody else is doing." If
Facebook albums parents made for kids when they were little come back to haunt
this coming generation as a group, the ills will be remedied either by making
or using certain sorts of analysis illegal (the college application
hypothetical) or society will adapt by adjusting perceptions of certain
information (the prom date hypothetical).

It is illustrative to note how the national reaction to youth drug use in
presidential candidates changed from Clinton ("I didn't inhale") to G.W.B. to
Obama ("maybe a little blow"). Similar adaptation will happen when it comes to
information on Facebook and the like.

~~~
epoxyhockey
_As a general rule, it 's pretty safe to do "what everybody else is doing."_

I noticed this rule after the housing crash. If one person was underwater on
their mortgage, no one would blink. But, when hundreds of thousands of people
become underwater, Congress started to get involved to (attempt to) provide
relief.

It seems impossible to limit someone's exposure on Facebook, especially when
any 3rd party will happily post a photo of your family member online. I also
suspect that untagging a person on FB is analogous to FB's soft-deleting of
statuses. The damage is already done.

~~~
coldtea
> _I noticed this rule after the housing crash. If one person was underwater
> on their mortgage, no one would blink. But, when hundreds of thousands of
> people become underwater, Congress started to get involved to (attempt to)
> provide relief._

Considering that hundrends of thousadns still lost their houses, it's not much
of a comfort -- or good advice in general.

"Do what everybody else is doing" will at best lead to mediocre results (by
definition).

Consider the effect of such an advice to someone in a slum neighborhood where
"everybody" is dealing drugs, to get the worst case scenario.

~~~
sopooneo
Yes. Something about bridge jumping.

~~~
dylangs1030
I hate it when people say this as a response.

If I'm on a bridge, and people are jumping off en masse, then one of two
things is happening:

1\. They've all been mentally affected, in which case, I almost certainly am
too, or;

2\. They know something I don't.

It's disingenuous to throw out a contrived example of a herd of people
nonsensically jumping off a bridge. If that many people are jumping off a
bridge, _you probably should too,_ because they probably know something you
don't (yet).

~~~
ceejayoz
There was a great Dilbert that had his mum asking him the "if everyone jumped
off a bridge, would you?" question. His response was along the lines of "if
they all came back and told me how awesome it was, yes".

~~~
emiliobumachar
Also, this:

[http://xkcd.com/1170/](http://xkcd.com/1170/)

"Imagine reading this on CNN: 'Many fled their vehicles and jumped from the
bridge. Those who stayed behind...'"

~~~
dlhavema
Thank you, this puts a great twist on the situation.. basically saying that if
all of his generally smart, sane friends all of a sudden jumped off a bridge,
most likely there was a REALLY good reason behind why they did it

------
drdaeman
> When we think she’s mature enough (an important distinction from her being
> technically old enough), we’ll hand her an envelope with her master password
> inside.

Let me guess. She'll probably reject that envelope for the following reasons:

1\. The account is known to be compromised (being under a third party
control). Even if parent credentials could be removed, there's still a
possibility they could gain access with social engineering with support, as
they know detailed history of the account.

2\. Unless she's completely monitored and barred from any network access,
she'd probably already have another set of accounts by that time. Otherwise
would signify she doesn't need any.

3\. By that time she'd have her own perception of her own identity, that would
be likely (but not necessarily) different from her parents' view of the time
she didn't have much of personality - which is enough of a reason to reject
the mismatching accounts and create ones to her own tastes.

~~~
bsenftner
I imagine it being pretty funny and old fashioned thinking when she is
presented with the envelope.

"Ya, rite M&P. I'll get rite on this and... whatever..." rolling her eyes as
her attention returns to the table top augmented reality reality show where
she virtually lives with all her favorite Disney, Nickelodeon, Fox, ESPN,
Democrat, Republican, Tea Party, and Occupy celebrities.

------
mbateman
> We turned to KnowEm.com, a website I often rely on to search for usernames,
> even though the site is primarily intended as a brand registration service.
> We certainly had a front-runner for her name, but we would have chosen
> something different if the KnowEm results produced limited availability or
> if we found negative content associated with our selection.

> With her name decided, we spent several hours registering her URL and a vast
> array of social media sites. All of that tied back to a single email
> account, which would act as a primary access key. We listed my permanent
> email address as a secondary -- just as you'd fill out financial paperwork
> for a minor at a bank. We built a password management system for her to
> store all of her login information.

> On the day of her birth, our daughter already had accounts at Facebook,
> Twitter, Instagram, and even Github. And to this day, we’ve never posted any
> content.

While I can definitely understand the sentiment and have thought about doing
similar things, seeing it all laid out like this seems very strange.

1) Is your twitter/gmail username really that important? Is this sort of
personal pre-SEO really that much of an issue? And if it is, won't that just
put enormous pressure on new services every generation as people want the
slate (username and searchability) wiped clean for themselves?

2) Shouldn't setting all of this up be something your kid eventually does (or
that you help them do)? Isn't the presumption that your kid wants a Facebook
and Github account a pretty specific one?

~~~
WalterSear
On the other hand, it's never too early to start helicopter parenting.

~~~
snowwrestler
Exactly. This article is a great compliment to the discussion yesterday about
how society is increasingly risk-averse. This seems like a crazy amount of
parental effort to resist what will seem like totally banal cultural norms to
their daughter.

------
ef4
The author is wrong because she assumes social customs are immutable. They
aren't.

In 2028 there will be nothing embarrassing about appearing in thousands of
online photos dating back to your birth. Because _almost everyone_ will be in
the same boat.

In fact, it may be considered weird and suspicious if there's not much online
content about you.

~~~
coldtea
> _In 2028 there will be nothing embarrassing about appearing in thousands of
> online photos dating back to your birth. Because almost everyone will be in
> the same boat._

Or you know, those that aren't will have it as an advantage.

Like how everybody is nearly overweight, but still those are aren't have a leg
up.

~~~
ef4
I'll grant that it's logically possible.

But I don't really understand why people think it's disadvantageous if others
can find out whether or not you were cute when you were two years old. I think
it has more to do with fear of what's new than any logical argument.

Putting my money where my mouth is, here is my son:

[http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7402/9525304181_8da5d48e22_b.j...](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7402/9525304181_8da5d48e22_b.jpg)

In what future dystopia will the presence of this photo on the public internet
harm him? "Ooh, I see here that you once looked at the ocean as a child.
You're fired."

~~~
gnaffle
Simple example: Your pretty child is also quite a bit overweight. Or fell and
got a big bruise that you for some reason just treated yourself and failed to
bring up in some health insurance form.

Less trivial stuff (like having acne) has been used to deny people coverage
when they've been diagnosed with cancer.

This is just of the top off my head, which is the point: We simply don't
_know_ what might happen in the future. Most probably (and hopefully) not
much, put we don't know.

~~~
bad_user
(1) that kid is not overweight and (2) it's actually OK from a medical
perspective for a child to be a little overweight, as children grow in bursts,
have a much better metabolism and their day is filled with plenty of exercise.

And in fact, if a kid doesn't have some meat on their bones, that's a reason
for concern.

~~~
gnaffle
Agreed, but you're not making the argument that a potential health insurance
company would (like the acne case I mentioned). And again, this is just off
the top of my head. One specific case, one specific instance of "I didn't see
that coming", while there may be lots and lots of other such cases.

[Edit: To make it clear, I haven't even looked at the picture previously
posted, I was providing an unrelated example.]

~~~
dgreensp
This level of fear and worry about what an insurance company might try to
argue seems too high, and not because insurance companies don't deny people
for silly reasons, but because it literally isn't worth the years of fear and
worry next to how little it will probably help. There are better sources of
reasons to deny people, anyway, than pictures of chubby kids.

~~~
gnaffle
Again, this was just _one_ example of the top off my head. I could probably
have come up with lots of others. My point being that we don't know how what
we post today might be used in the future. Saying that it's not going to have
consequences because everyone else will also do it is a very weak argument.

------
billybob255
Just to add some context, the author also wrote a quantified self article
about documenting every thing her daughter did [1] (time, food taken, diaper
wetness, color of urine, thickness of poop, sleep habits, etc). These are not
your standard parents.

1:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/data_mine_1/2013/07...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/data_mine_1/2013/07/data_driven_parenting_tracking_baby_sleep_eating_and_pooping_on_spreadsheets.html)

~~~
roc
To be fair, many 'new parent' classes urge people to record a good bit of that
information, in the event that the child is having trouble gaining weight, has
an illness, etc.

Mix that 'good advice' with the 'quantified self' band-wagon that rolled
through and it doesn't seem too crazy for a journalist to have taken up that
torch -- at least long enough for an article or three.

To have continued well after it became clear that their child was properly
growing/healthy -- and other article subjects presented themselves -- would be
something different though.

------
brador
It's not you who uploads the pics, it's your friends and family, then they tag
the faces. Then fb steals your friends address book info using the facebook
app/email connections and builds out a network and ghost profile just for you.

You might never use facebook but you're on there. All of us are. Because your
friends don't give a damn about privacy and screwed the pooch.

And Zuck knows. That's why he said on stage we'll all eventually have a
profile, with his weird all-knowing nerd giggle (youtube 'zuckerburgs 10 evil
seconds'), because even a ghost profile is still a profile, it's got data.
It's verified. And you'll never delete it. Ever.

This ain't going back in.

~~~
pilom
Can they create profiles for children under 13? Can I sue them if my 10 year
old child has a ghost profile?

~~~
brador
How would you know?

------
LordHumungous
> I adore Kate’s parents, and they’re raising her to be an amazing young
> woman. But they’re essentially robbing her of a digital adulthood that’s
> free of bias and presupposition.

Oh god, these types of smug parents annoy the crap out of me. This is the
digital version of the mom who lectures you for letting your kid watch Sesame
Street or eats Frosted Flakes, because don't you know sugar/TV are going to
destroy his mind and body.

~~~
subpixel
True. Also, her daughter is going to be plenty embarrassed by her mom's high-
anxiety-parenting (including, but not limited to the poop-tracking) when these
articles are dug up by her friends in middle school.

~~~
LordHumungous
Yeah. "We don't want any information about our kid online, that's why we are
writing articles about her pooping habits on Slate."

------
uptown
So they're not posting anything about her online, but she's got more social-
media accounts than the average American? How does proclaiming her existence
to the digital world's user lists protect her from "facial recognition,
Facebook profiling, and corporate data mining"? Like any human - when she
reaches the age where these things become relevant, she'll either use the ones
these companies have known about for a decade, or she'll create her own
account that Mom & Dad aren't monitoring.

------
snowwrestler
I think this is, digitally, fighting the last war.

Kids grow up in their own world, not ours. The idea of checking domain names
and Instagram account names _before_ choosing the child's name is hilarious to
me. Like domain names and Instagram are going to matter to teenagers 16 years
from now.

~~~
incongruity
Domain names are about as close as you can get to infrastructure digital world
- so, they may matter - but perhaps not.

Instagram? Who's to say - but my hunch is you're right.

We purchased a few name related domain names for our firstborn - if they're
useless or unwanted, so it goes, but the downside risk seemed minor enough
that I decided to go for it. I mean, when you compare it with all the other
kid gear that gets used for 2-12 months before it's outgrown, domain names are
a cheap extravagance. (Even when considering the holding cost)

~~~
snowwrestler
I'd argue that domain names don't matter much right now, for people. How many
teenagers have their own name as a domain? How many even want one? Heck, how
many adults have or want one? Even with the .name TLD, I don't feel like it's
ever really taken off. And there might be a ton of new TLDs in use 15 years
from now.

------
cromwellian
You live life, you leave a trail, this hasn't changed in the digital world,
only made more convenient. For your kids to live in the world of the future
and interact with others, they will need an identity, it is unavoidable unless
they want to live off-the-grid in bush country.

We can see grade school and high school pictures of famous celebrities because
pictures were taken with analog film cameras once. We can see old baby
pictures of people who are 65 years old today because photography has existed
for over a century.

Maybe you're not taking pictures of your daughter, but someone else will, and
they can tag her with metadata for their own purposes.

I don't post my kids pictures publicly (I do to close friends), not for
hyperbolic fears that someone might profile them and show them a targeted ad
(The Horrors!), but because honesty, I've seen enough weirdos doing stuff with
people's pictures online that I don't want them showing up on some jackass's
website, especially ones people fap off to. Especially true for young girls,
as there are people who steal portraits from other sites and they end up in
spammy popup ads or worse.

But even that is a losing battle, as again, photos are taken everywhere by
everyone. As the cost of cameras goes to zero, they will be omnipresent, and
as networking becomes more and more ubiquitous, a world where you are always
being filmed and classified is inevitable. It won't even require centralized
governments or corporations to scale, just ordinary people filming
decentralized.

~~~
jonknee
> Maybe you're not taking pictures of your daughter, but someone else will,
> and they can tag her with metadata for their own purposes.

The article didn't mention anything about not taking photos, it was simply
about not sharing them publicly in any fashion. That's pretty much how it has
been until the past few years--most photos were kept private.

------
michaelfeathers
People talk about stealth candidates in politics. I suspect that phrase will
take on new meaning in the future. We'll have candidates whose histories will
have been protected from public knowledge in this way.

~~~
greenyoda
Or maybe even candidates who have meticulously constructed fake histories for
themselves from a young age.

------
kenjackson
Admirable, but naive. Facial recognition of baby pics is useless for the most
part. By the time their daughter is 18 she will have plenty of tagged pictures
of herself. Cameras are already everywhere and their use is accelerating.
Google Glasses like devices are coming. And your picture ID is already used
for facial recognition.

------
salmonellaeater
This approach is doomed to failure. From the moment their daughter starts
spending time with people outside her immediate family, she will start showing
up in others' photos and her face will be linked to those people. Given that
there's some unknown person who repeatedly shows up with certain people, the
second her name leaks somewhere it will be easy to reveal her history.

Even without face recognition, disparate 'anonymous' accounts on different
sites can be linked to her, as long as a few associates can be linked to real-
world people [1].

[1]
[http://www.academia.edu/1518346/Link_Prediction_in_Highly_Fr...](http://www.academia.edu/1518346/Link_Prediction_in_Highly_Fractional_Data_Sets)

------
DanBC
Most sites close accounts if they're for someone under the age of X. (18, 13?)
So, these accounts are really the parents accounts, just in the name of the
daughter, right?

> The process started in earnest as we were selecting her name. We’d narrowed
> the list down to a few alternatives and ran each (and their variants)
> through domain and keyword searches to see what was available. Next, we
> crawled through Google to see what content had been posted with those name
> combinations, and we also looked to see if a Gmail address was open.

Wait, what? Surely calling your daughter "Jane Doe" would be best, because
then you could claim "Oh no, that's not me!" when presented with articles
about drunken rampages or whatever. It'd be hard to find out if you were
Jane_Doe_9297376 or Jane_Doe_91919229191.

For some reason I feel sorry for the child named with a pleasing combination
of name and TLD.

------
codegeek
Sorry this article has everything wrong about it. Reading this article makes
me feel bad for the daughter of the author. I mean seriously ? A classic
example of bad parenting in my opinion. So you are not going to post anything
online. great. What about offline ? What about living life ? Everything has a
trail, everything. This online post by the author itself has a trail that can
be tracked to their daughter if someone really wants to.

Kids are not some kind of machine or algorithm that you can program in certain
way. Seriously, what's wrong with some parents. Teach your kids the value of
privacy by taking a balanced approach and not doing crazy things like
reserving domain names and what not. Just because you are not posting anything
online does not mean there is no trail. There always is and who knows what the
digital world will be like in 20 years.

------
nihaar
Disclaimer: I am working on a project in this space with the goal to give
parents more control on how to share pictures of their baby
(www.getbabydigest.com)

While the author of this article seems to take things to a certain extreme, I
think this is a legitimate concern for parents today. Being a new parent, I
consider my wife and I to be the average facebook "parent" users. We have a
need to share pictures of our kid with close friends and family and since
facebook most easily meets that need, my wife and I do post pictures of our
kid there. We try to limit it to things we think would not be too embarrassing
for him when he looks back them years from now.

It's hard however to know how he is going to react to them 10-20 years from
now, let alone any impact it may have on his identity as he gets older. For
now, sharing on Facebook, seems like the best alternative to email since its
so easy to post and get feedback. I've looked at other alternatives (23snaps,
kidfolio) but they all require re-creating my network from scratch which has
been a non-starter for me. I think we're lacking a more private, secure
alternative to Facebook that still makes sharing & commenting as easy as
Facebook. And more importantly does not sell your data.

------
fistofjohnwayne
I think these are outsized reactions to the problems described. I also don't
believe there aren't any photos of their child online. As a new parent I can't
imagine not using the Internet to share updates with my family whether it's
via tumblr or something less public like email or an Apple Photo Stream. Most
of these services have facial recognition.

Finding a balance between privacy and ease of sharing is something parents are
going to wrestle with from now on. And, In the event you trade in your privacy
to Facebook, you don't even get a worthwhile service. Facebook albums aren't
designed with children in mind -- they don't care about a child's growth, they
makes no notes on a child's milestones.

I've started trying to solve this problem with some fellow parents. At the
very least I hope we can give people one less thing to worry about. If you'd
like to chat about the possibilities and challenges in this space or what my
research has uncovered so far, please find me on Twitter: @conceptualitis

------
Vivtek
So if I'm reading this right, they don't post _pictures_ , but they made sure
her name was easily Googleable?

My name is Michael Roberts. Go ahead. Try to find out who I am from Google. I
mean, sure, throw in my username here and you get my site since that was meant
to be findable, but still - from my name alone, I'm effectively anonymous.

------
joe5150
The biggest problem with this I see (beyond the general creepiness of it and
the huge impression I get that this is less about privacy and more about
wanting to preemptively micromanage your kid’s potential future “brand”) is
the futility of it. I’m lost as to how squatting handles and URLs and profile
names and domains on a dozen internet services somehow protects someone’s
identity or anonymity or would actually prevent them from being impersonated,
which are the stated goals according to the article.

I’m not inclined to believe that this is an effective long game, either. A
small fraction of these services are going to be relevant in five, ten,
fifteen years. If my parents had tried the same thing before I was born (not
long after web browsers were invented), they would have been worried about
reserving BBS login names for me. I have to expect that the broad majority of
people my age now don’t even know what a BBS is.

------
R_Edward
I did just about everything wrong by this author's lights--posted plenty of
photos and updates, gave them their own e-mail and social media accounts, etc.
It didn't even occur to me to weigh their poops or do any sort of qualitative
analysis of their urine! Somehow... _Somehow_ , I says, they managed to turn
out all right.

------
mooreds
What a great idea!

I haven't done the 'sign up for everything' piece, but my wife and I have made
a conscious effort to minimize what we post about our daughter online. We
don't refer to her by name, we don't tag her in photos, we minimize photos of
her. Now, we both have active online lives, so we talk about her online, but
hopefully in a respectful manner. Sometimes it is really hard to resist
sharing that cute photo, simply because sites, FB in particular, make sharing
so easy, but I think we've found a path that works for us.

I think a lot of parents, especially less privacy aware and/or tech savvy
ones, are not aware of what they are doing for their kids when they post
photos online. (Just as few non technical folks I have talked to know that the
links at the top of Google search results are ads.) They just want to share
information (mostly pictures) with friends and families.

------
ryansan
Provocative article, but as with many things, the answer lies somewhere in the
middle.

I think it's cute people think social networks (in their current form) will
still be around in 18 years. Technology will be in a place that probably very
few of us can fathom at this current juncture. I like one of the users'
comments on here that the act of registering all of these accounts for their
child is akin to registering a geocities name back in the day. We all laugh at
it now.

Like I said, the answer is somewhere in the middle. You don't have to do all
or nothing. Just be judicious, as you would in your non-digital life (I would
hope). Anything in excess can become problematic.

When my partner and I have a child some day, we'll probably be very careful
about what we post online. It won't be excessive, but we won't be hermits
either as unexisting can be just as odd/problematic as superexisting.

------
hoopism
This is dumb beyond belief.

Amazing how important some people believe themselves and their little angels
to be. If my 3 month old daughter grows up to be significant enough that my
bathtub picture of her somehow has impact on her future then I hope to have
raised her well enough to recognize the humor in that situation.

------
lotsofcows
The services you sign up for are unlikely to exist in 10 years time let alone
20.

~~~
justinhj
It's quite likely that the content itself may well be mirrored to an archive
as has happened with geocities. It's likely that any truly embarrassing or
interesting picture will be pretty much immortal online.

------
pmiller2
I think it's great that the parents are at least putting some thought into
protecting their daughter's privacy online, even including the choice of her
name. My name is so dirt common that unless you know something else about me,
there's no way you're going to be able to zero in on articles about me, and I
like that. One of my brother's children is named after one of our great
grandparents, OTOH, and I'm reasonably sure there's nobody in that age group
with that name. (Probably nobody under 70, even.) I'm not sure how I feel
about that.

------
enscr
This article is written by a parent and being debated by pseudo-teenagers (~
15-25 age group). Of course it'll be ripped apart just like my comment :) Who
needs privacy until you are a parent yourself.

~~~
jlgreco
There is something like twice as many people using HN who are older than 25
than there are younger than 25, if the most recent age poll is to be believed:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6058598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6058598)

The old _" you wouldn't understand if you aren't a yourself parent"_ line
really is tiresome.

------
j2d3
I don't post (much, though not nothing) about my son online, but for different
reasons. The idea that you're going to realistically provide some kind of
anonymity capability by not posting pics of your kid of FB is a fantasy.
Facial recognition is going to be part of reality due to state, private, and
personal facial recognition capabilities. At school, in public, at work,
facial recognition technologies will track everyone - there will be no opting
out and it won't matter what you did or didn't post on FB.

Resistance is futile.

------
samgrover
I'm not sure how they intend to police photos of their daughter as taken by
cameras not under their control, or on accounts not under their control, or
other information posted about her by friends and family. Given the
technologies involved, it would not be terribly hard to infer the daughter's
photographs and personal information (name, etc.) and connect the two. There's
also the very real possibility that she may not be interested in their idea of
her personality and identity by the time she's grown up.

~~~
desas
You write articles about how you want your childs privacy to be respected and
hope some of your friends pay attention.

I have a young child, it's normal for most people to ask my permission before
putting photos of him on facebook. Generally, the people who live their lives
on facebook over-sharing everything don't tend to ask, though I don't know too
many people like that..

------
digitalsushi
I know this is smarmy but, check out this screen shot with a google ad in the
article: [http://imgur.com/dB9cyeQ](http://imgur.com/dB9cyeQ)

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cgtyoder
So glad my parents signed up for my own personal ARPANET node before I was
born. (Unfortunately, they were only able to snag a class B address space.)

------
brunorsini
Whatever happens to their daughter is going to happen to the entire world,
pretty much, and thus is going to have to be addressed collectively by our
future selves anyway. We just have to stand up to those who misuse the data in
discriminatory ways, sure, but simply refusing to take part in the future of
the collective human experience is hardly a real solution.

------
teekert
We also don't post any pictures of our kid online. But for the simple reason
that I know that it would be mostly for my own ego, I feel immense pride and
have to hold back the pictures/videos on my phone frequently. Who genuinely
likes to see hundreds of pics of their friends kids? I wonder...

------
PrashantPansare
The key takeaway is to avoid creating any content on internet that can be used
for any indexing / linking back for anyone apart from yourself. Of course I do
not like the idea that facebook is scanning your pics/info and using that
further up.

------
mashmac2
Does anyone else do this (or something similar)?

I'm curious to see how people introduce the Internet to their children in a
relatively-responsible way.

~~~
debacle
My son (9) has a Minecraft account, a Steam account, and an email address
which he doesn't know the password to (because he wouldn't remember it).

His main interaction thusfar has been chatting with people in Minecraft and on
Steam, which concerns me only over the language.

~~~
dgabriel
Mine, too (he's 11). He's also got an XBox live account for Portal 2, a
youtube / gmail (mostly for videos about Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program),
and an account here: [http://scratch.mit.edu/](http://scratch.mit.edu/) .

None of these things _existed_ 11 years ago, and I expect there will be a new
set of things 11 years hence.

------
tlrobinson
I wonder if marketing your encrypted p2p social network to paranoid parents
would be a good way to get users.

------
therandomguy
1\. The kid's face is going to change over time

2\. Facebook might not be around by the time she is a teen

------
ape4
Put the photos on your own domain and link to them from Facebook.

------
bestest
are. you. fucking. serious. I think you're trolling, and we're victims of some
sort of social reaction experiment.

------
smutticus
So just stop using FB. Problem solved.

~~~
MarkTee
Er, not really. Choosing not to actively use Facebook doesn't protect you from
shadow profiles or the actions of people that you know.

~~~
smutticus
You are correct, sir. I was being snarky and you called me on it. Thanks. I
genuinely appreciate it.

