to think parents videoing school assemblies and posting the video on facebook is wrong

[mamabanana]

Just noticed a post from a friend on facebook with a video link to a class assembly. I honestly don't think the person posting has thought through their actions, but surely it is against most school policies? If the school record something, they have to get every parent to sign to say they agree to their child being videoed. I have no problem with parents videoing their children to watch back, but posting it on social media????

What do you think and what would you do? Am I overreacting? I need a second opinion before I speak to friend or even the school about it.

Thanks GoSakura, I do have my settings to friends only and hadn't appreciated that would restrict the sharing as well.

In your example if I have settings as friends only there is no point in friend A sharing the photo as her friends (who aren't mine) won't be allowed to see it so in fact she hasn't shared it at all. Have I got that right?

Just to complicate matters I actually only share photos with a subset of friends so if friend A and I share a mutual friend D but D isn't in my subset would she see it on the share?

If you see someone has posted a photo/vid of your children without your permission, report it to FB and they will nearly always remove it. You can also do it for children who are not your own, ie a school performance where policies have been broken, although that isn't as clear cut as to removal.

But you are much better off doing that than simply telling people not to do it. You can't stop them, whether or not you are in the right. Report it after the fact as a usage violation (when you upload vids or pics you are telling FB you have full permissions, if you don't they will remove)

Marquesas, yes thats true.

Subsets is more complicated. If you share with "close friends" say and A is in that subset and D is not, will D see the share? I think yes, since the subsets are not recognised in privacy terms as such, so I think A could share your photo and D would see it.

I can't swear to that though so I will check and come back to you.

But Go if you post a picture and tag someone in it, then that photo will be seen by all of that person's friends, even if you are not friends with them? And that will happen even if you have that picture/album set to 'friends only'?

But I guess that is differenct because, as you say, you have chosen to tag that person.

Yes, tagging over-rides your own security settings. In essence tagging makes it as much their picture as yours, and FB then treats it under their settings.

YANBU. Well done for informing the school, and the head's response sounds exactly right.

Can I check the impact of tagging, though?

I post a photo and tag Friend A in it (either because it's them, or because they know someone in it and I want to alert them to the photo)

Friend A can view the photo

Friend B can see that Friend A has been tagged in a picture, is my friend too and can see and share the picture

Friend C can see that Friend A has been tagged. She isn't my friend, but she can also see and share the photo (yes??)

Friend D is not my friend, but is a friend of C, and she sees the photo when C shares it. And she can share it further if she so wishes. (yes??)

Which is how a photo seemingly shared just with 30 Facebook friends actually has a potential much wider audience.

x-post with file!

Can you tag children though, and people who aren't on Facebook? Genuine question; I don't have a Facebook account and don't know how it works, so apologies if it sounds desperately thick.

Yes thats true Families.
But as I said you CHOOSE to tag people, and widening your audience, possibly exponentially.

But I don't tag, and don't have any facility for tagging, so my photo is not seemingly shared with 30 people, it is only shared with 30 people.

YOU are in control of your privacy. If you CHOOSE not to take it seriously, that is up to you, but don't assume everyone is the same. There is no need for anyone's info/media to be public, unless they want it to be.

So say, for example, that someone puts a picture on facebook of their child with someone else's child and tags their aunt/sister/mum in the picture. That picture is then available for all of the tagged people's friends to see and if one of those people tagged has a public profile, then that picture effectively becomes public?

Yep.

You can tag anyone, but it doesn't show up as a link to their FB account if they don't have one (for obvious reasons!). Ditto if they are on Facebook but you aren't their friend.

I see quite a lot of baby photos tagged with their parents' names, presumably so that they get a prompt that the photo has been posted. I think that's why Couthy, for example, tags her family members in the photos of her DC that she has posted. It's a shorthand way of letting people know that there's something online that they will want to see, but also then allows the photo to be treated according to the tagged person's settings (which may be tight, or wide open)

So I could post a picture of David Cameron and annotate it so people know who it is. I would have to be his Facebook friend to tag it so that he - and his friends - knew it was there.

But Go, I dont think many people are quite as savvy as you when it comes to facebook, and many people dont realise quite how far their photos are going. Yes, it is the personal responsibility of those using facebook to learn about how it works, but it is quite scary that people might be tagging pictures willy nilly with other people's children in.

The 'tagging a child' as their parent thing really makes me fume. A lot of people I know do this with photos taken at parties. If the photo has several tags, then all of those people's friends will see my child tagged as me. Total lack of privacy and damned rude!

Go, I don't want my media to be public, and am pretty uptight about it (for good reason, as set out upthread). But I don't get to CHOOSE if other people take photos of me or my family, post them on Facebook and tag 10 other people in them. No choice at all that it has been sent to potentially a very large audience. Hence the simplest approach is for schools to not allow parents to post photos of school events online, and for parents to follow them.

I know that. But people should learn. Or not, if they don't want to. I only get annoyed when I see people telling others things that are totally untrue.

If you want to share personal things online, learn about privacy and security. If you don't you only have yourself to blame. It's very easy to learn all this in the FB help centre.

Families, no, but you can choose to click report and get FB to take it down.

Schools can ASK parents not to post online, but how do you imagine they can actually stop them? Of course they should do as asked, but you can't make them.

This thread is bizarre. Though possibly because some people have never had cause to worry about their children being identified by people who want to find them.

Why does the view of a foster carer/adoptive parent trump the view of the parent who took the photos? Because the ramifications are more serious than not being able to show Johnny in a wide angle shot in his school nativity play to grandma. If you want to share photos then take photos of your own child. It may not be illegal to put whom-evers photo you like on FB and not give a stuff about the others but its hardly polite.

When I made photo montage of DS for my blog I consulted every parent of any child in the photos, explained where it would be shown.

And yes we adoptive parents do take our children out in public - I would be very concerned with anyone obviously photographing or videoing him though. Social media is one of the most concerning developments for adoptive children and many of the older children are themselves extremely cautious about identifying themselves online.

But Go, I would have to be friends with the person doing the posting to see that they had put something inappropriate up there in order to report it. Hence why self regulation is the only realistic approach, which means parents have to follow the school policy even if they personally find it a PITA. Because it would be a real shame if schools felt that the only option was that they had to ban all photos and filming of school events by parents

I'm pretty sure there is a Facebook setting where you can disallow you being tagged..

"If you want to share personal things online, learn about privacy and security" - I know plenty but what at issue here is people who know very little, posting photos of my child who tag third parties or don't have good security settings that I have no control over.

In fact I have few issues and would generally give consent but I know people who wouldn't - for extremely good reasons.

you can tag anyone even someone who isn't on facebook - you just type n whatever name you like. Obviously it won't link to you if you're not on their friends list.

I found out I was "tagged" in a photo and I don't even use FB

and facebook isn't akin to people looking at your child in the street but to printing out photos and handing them out in the street to all the people you know and some of them dropping them in the bin, on the floor, passing them around at the playground etc