To find it annoying when parents choose to put their children on social media but cover their faces?

[yellowpinkbluegreenlilac]

I don’t mean parents who for whatever reason decide they don’t want their children’s images on social media: that’s a totally valid choice.

But why share photos of your child and then stick a smiley face or similar over their image? Quite a few pages I follow on instagram do this, mostly those with a small business. They’ve evidently decided to share images of their family life but are so secretive about their child.

I find it irrationally annoys me, as if their child is so special in some way. I just can’t understand why, you know, you just wouldn’t share images of the child at all, or ones of the child looking out at a view so only back of head or similar. Or am I being petty and disagreeable?

😂

But how could you ever get past option 1? If option 1 is ‘no photo of child’ then there’s never a need for subsequent options. Just don’t upload a photo of your child, if your first option is ‘no photo of child’. Make it make sense!

@AudHvamm ??

Yeah but you aren't answering the q - if you don't want identifiable photos of your child online (because they can't consent - fair enough) why put photos of your child up at all?
e.g. if you want (for example) to share that you had a family day out at the beach, just take a photo of the beach, or of you at the beach, or of your DC from the back going into the sea, or their hand holding an icecream or whatever.

for your husband's 'milestone' whatever that was, just take one photo of the full family and then one with just you and DH and put the second one up, or crop DC out of the first one.

Who are you 'protecting their privacy' from? People whom you see in RL know what they look like anyway, people whom you never see in RL don't care. It seems weird that you wouldn't want an old uni friend to never see your child's face, but hundreds of complete randoms see their face every single day of his life, and can take as many photos with him in as they want (there's no law about photographing people in public places).

It doesn't annoy me, as such but there doesn't seem to be much logic to it.

It's clearly a cascading list based on preference

I don’t do this but could they be concerned about images of their child being used for training AI models by the social media platforms?

I pretty much stopped sharing pictures of my 2 on instagram once they got past the "generic white baby" stage. Not entirely stopped. I tend to do one post a year for their birthdays, but that's it. My instagram is public, but I'm a nobody. Just a school teacher from the midlands. I've got about 50 followers.

I do post their pictures on my FB, but that's tightly locked down, and restricted to people I know in real life.

Well exactly. The preference is no kids photos on SM. So don’t do it. No one is making anyone upload photos of their kids?

Yeah this really annoys me. Just don’t post photos with their faces on, those heart stickers really grate on me.

Sorry @pearbottomjeans that was a rude response - I thought you were one of the other posters I'm afraid. Edited to add - ah you were one of those posters!

1 is the baseline. Sometimes I have pictures that fit under 1 or 2, and sometimes not in which case I'd weigh up how strongly I wanted to use a picture, most likely not and on the handful of occasions I have, I cover their face. I'm not an absolutist, just trying to be respectful to my child.

I also don't spend events or holidays taking pictures with a view to posting or sharing, I take pictures of things that catch my eye. Sometimes I like to share these.

I understand the uneasiness over it. It can sometimes seem like they want to do the done thing and protect their kids' privacy but they still want the attention of SM and so it ends up with this bizarre compromise that doesn't really achieve either aim.

Because they want to share photos of their life, but not specifically their kids faces. I don't think it's that difficult to understand.

Everything on MN is 'performative' these days. Navigating the world must be very tiresome and miserable.

Very fair points being made. I has made me think about it. For me, the benefit of social media is seeing updates from people I like but don't really keep up with. I see someone I once knew at uni getting engaged or on holiday and its nice to see.

I fondly remember my grandma and her round robin letters and family newsletters, its a version of that.

For me its striking a balance between updating people on my life, of which my children are a huge and lovely part of while not unnecessarily exposing them. As I said in the last year I posted twice lol. For me I'm perfectly happy seeing just baby toes or a lovely family photo to celebrate a birthday even with faces covered. Arguably any post on SM is performative and 'look at me'.

I think AI and webcrawling is a concern. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/104241988 (link to ABC news article about Ai using childrens faces on their generated images). This is a rapidly developing area that we are all just guessing at.

It was someone talking about that, that first started me doing it and I suppose I've never thought about it since. I've never been bothered by it and always thought it sensible.

Yup. Basically it’s “I don’t want to share pics of my kids but I must join the social media bandwagon to prove I’m keeping up with the Joneses”

I don't do emoji's over pictures of my childs face but have uploaded a few of the back of the head type pictures. They are few and far between though, once a year on his birthday or on a family holiday at the beach in front of the sea or something.
I'm just not comfortable with sharing more than that, but want to acknowledge him occasionally. I'm hoping my child will thank me for not over sharing his childhood pictures, it's more about his rights as a person than thinking others are nosy/wanting to see him.

If it annoys anyone so be it 🤷‍♀️

Why do you care?

I agree, OP. I think it’s utterly wanky when people put stupid hearts or other emojis over their kids’ faces. We’re not that interested; just leave them out of the frickin photo.

There are AI bots that can take a handful of images of a kids face and make any image you want. I post pictures over my kids faces to protect them from that - and because they're not able to consent to having their pictures out there.

I still like to post my family on social media tho, so I just stick something over their face. I'm not going to deliberately exclude the kids from all photos we take. That's even weirder imo

You don’t have to, just not share those photos on social media.

Maybe you’d think differently if your children s photos get taken by a pedophile or by someone with nefarious intentions

Yes, but say it's a picture of Christmas dinner - decorations, everyone round, and you want to post it. Seems a shame to basically never post anything because your kids are there

No, I think less weird than emojis. However, your choice.

They aren’t there with a big yellow face stick over them are they!

Honestly I don't care if it annoys people - there are AI bots that can create horrific things with kids photos, and they don't need many of them. It's not worth the risk to have your children's face on social media. And it's too much effort to try and exclude your kids from every photo taken from you or friends and family

Right….. I and many others still not getting it! If you’re covering their face you may as well choose an alternative picture that doesn’t have the child in it (that’s what I’d do!)

A friend of my dd had a baby last year and she covers his face in all photos. When I asked my dd why, she said it's because of AI bots taking the photos and using them, but also apparently the faces can get used in child porn so she doesn't want to expose her child to that, but does want to share his various milestones with her family and friends on fb.

When we saw her friend recently I took several photos of the baby with my dd and her friend didn't say a word, but then she knows we wouldn't share them on social media.

If it annoys you scroll by or stop following them.