MIL put photos of my baby on Facebook without permission

[sasscass]

Do any of you think this is really cheeky and disrespectful?
the day after my baby was born, my partner and I asked his parents to drop us off home from hospital and his mom slyly took a picture of our baby in her car seat and put it on her Facebook. It is set to friends only, as all her posts are, but that doesn’t mean anything since she has hundreds and hundreds of friends … none of which who I know or ever heard of. About 100 different people congratulated her on the birth of my baby and it made me uncomfortable.

im such a people pleaser and I find it hard to say no. It’s something I need to work on. But she didn’t even ask, and if she had then I would’ve told her no, not in a million years. She posted a picture of my partners little sister holding our baby when we went to visit a few days after she was born… yet again, no permission from me or my partner. My MIL and FIL live online, what they eat, what they are currently doing is ALL plastered on facebook. This is concerning since it’s a safety concern for my newborn, what about when (or if, at this rate) I FINALLY trust them enough to have her for the day and they post sensitive information about her?! Or they post a pic of her in her school uniform?! It is NOT okay.

my MIL and FIL are basically strangers to me so I’m not even okay with going round to visit them. They don’t address me, if they want permission to hold the baby they ask my partner. There’s no consideration or respect for me and my feelings. I feel pushed out and I feel like my baby isn’t even mine when I’m around the in laws.
i got pregnant, stupidly, 3 months into our relationship and I didn’t have time to get to know his family. They kept saying they would arrange something for us all to go out together and they never did. I’ve exchanged several sentences with his parents, never spoken to his siblings and that’s it.
i am very protective over my baby and I find it hard to share her, especially with people who I don’t know.
it’s damaging my mental health and I told my partner, he saw how upset I was and he said that he doesn’t have a problem with the pictures being posted online and so i need to say something if I have a problem with it. I understand that but I just know if I say something to his mother about the pictures then she will hate me… and if she dislikes me then I won’t be ok with leaving our baby with her. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of people, but I want and need to protect my daughter.

im not okay with it and I need to speak up. I don’t know why I find it so hard, as if I’m demanding too much for asking her to take the pictures down and to never post on social media about MY baby.

i just had to vent before I go ahead and send the message to her.
i wondered if anybody else had a similar issue with in laws being overbearing and/or doing things without permission? I feel so alone. This has caused arguments between me and my partner, I guess he takes it personally since it’s his family but I feel like my feelings don’t matter.

Wow people really need to educate themselves. It's not only about paedophilia. There are massive issues with copyright, licensing, (you're handing over inewrship of those photos to Meta or whoever) data (your child's data being sold and algorithms targeting them from toddlerhood with advertising) facial recognition technology being abused, and geotagging where location services can pinpoint your child.

Not to mention human respect towards a child who has no choice in the matter. I'm so glad I'm too old to have had social media when I was a small child. I'd have HATED to have reached 18 and have thousands of photos of me on the public domain just because my granny thought it looked cute or whatever.

We said no pictures online at all. This included us not posting about pregnancy, birth or pictures after DC's were born. You have to set the boundaries but you can't be hypocritical to post pictures of your own baby if you're going to stop the grandparents doing it.

You need to get your partner on board if you're going to ask them not to post pictures otherwise it's you Vs them as well. Perhaps find some research online about internet safety and make sure you explain your point. We have set up a Google Photos album of each DC and we email invite who we are happy to see the pictures- perhaps if the grandparents want someone to see the pictures you can ask them to send you names and email addresses of their close friends that they want to show off to. You can control these pictures more because you own the shared album.

Personally I'd never post a picture of someone else's child so why people think it's ok is totally beyond me. I've even asked friends to remove pictures from their social media if my children are in the picture but thankfully they've apologised and removed them.

I think this is conversation you need to have with them in person and immediately otherwise it will continue.

Stealing pictures of a baby for paedophilliac reasons? So shes given out babys name, address, when the child is alone, with promises to send more naked ones? There are millions of baby pictures on the internet, why would a paedophile pick your newborn in a blanket? You are really being OTT about this. Its one picture. No point getting upset. Ask her to take it down and not put further pictures up.

However babys dad also gets a say, and if he's proud of his child, then you need to compromise.

you're not being unreasonable at all, i have the same viewpoint as you in regards to pedophiles and people stealing photos. there are vast amounts of pages on instagram etc that just repost photos of people's babies and even accounts where they pretend that it is their baby, who knows who's behind them. it's scary

I want to be kind to you because you’ve just had a baby but YABU.

MIL ‘slyly’ took a photo of her own grandchild. I mean WTF?!

Gosh, OP, I hope it's just hormones and exhaustion in action or you're in for a bumpy ride with parenting.

Your baby's grandma shared a photo with her friends. Learn to pick your battles; this isn't one.

I disagree and you say you are very niave about internet safety.

OP it’s fine to decide you don’t want your child on social media. My DH and I made the same decision and we don’t post any pics of our daughters. It’s a little bit about safeguarding but mostly about their privacy and makes sense to us - but we aren’t big social media users anyway.

However, I think it’s still quite an unusual decision and given that you say your ILs live their whole
lives online I think the odds are they genuinely haven’t considered that this would bother you. So just tell them, clearly but politely that you’ve decided not to put your child on social media and you’d like them to take the pictures down please. We told our families this, they’ve all completely respected it. Hopefully your ILs will too.

You’re wrong if you think people don’t understand these issues or are naive to them. Many of
us understand these things perfectly well and yet in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter. The internet is huge. Things that seem important one day disappear off the radar the next. Kids in the future won’t care a jot about having their stuff out there because it’s all become so boringly normal. And can anyone recognise anyone from their childhood photos? If anyone is genuinely THAT bothered they can always change their name and then no one can search for their old photos.

My child who has special needs has been in the local papers because a charity grant awarded him some specific equipment. If you search up his name quite a few articles come up with a big smiling photo of him - and me- in it. I agreed to the article because it was part of accepting the grant, which we needed. All in a good cause etc. I won’t spend my life worrying about random paedophiles coming across it or whether in the future Ds might hate me for it. Life is too
short.

Give me fucking strength.

100% agree with this - it's her grandchild!

Yes it's your child, but come on. Think how you would feel if when your son has a baby of his own, his wife tells you that you can't take a picture of it, or that you've done it 'slyly', or tells you that you can't share the happy news with your friends.

It's really not all about you.

@MolliciousIntent caring about my child’s safety is not “excessive”. So I’d rather you didn’t insinuate that I’m mentally ill for protecting my baby.

@Spottybluepyjamas she is my child, so it is about me and my baby. If I’m not happy with something then it’s not okay.
you’re reading too much into it. She took a picture with the sole purpose of posting on social media. That’s literally it. And it’s NOT ok.

I agree with @GreenQueen80. I don’t post pictures of my children’s faces on Facebook/Insta etc because I don’t feel I have the right to share potentially thousands of images of them over the course of their childhood. What if they don’t want those pictures available on the internet when they are 18? I feel like we are all still finding our way in our digital world and there is a generation of children who have much less privacy than I had. And I don’t feel like I have the right to take away any more privacy than necessary.

I do send pictures via WhatsApp, so that’s where my line is. But otherwise you’d never know I had children if you looked at my Facebook.

That being said, you do sound anxious Op. How old is your baby? Are you feeling okay?

Anyway, I do think you need to raise it because otherwise it’ll become a life-long issue. Do you have a family group WhatsApp? I’d probably just put a message in there saying “we’ve decided not to post pictures of the baby online, just to give him/her some privacy as she/he grows up. Would appreciate if everyone else also avoided posting pictures of him/her please on social media please!”

Totally agree with @GreenQueen80. I have not and will not put pictures of my children on SM until they are able to give informed consent. It's not that radical an idea.

@sasscass - you'll find the attitudes on this thread pretty standard. If you haven't asked your ILs not to post, you can't really get in a tizzy about them doing it. You need to have that conversation (first with your partner so that you are on the same page or have found a compromise position) then let the wider family know your position. It can be awkward but most people will comply when you make your boundaries clear in a calm and sensitive manner.

@Bubbafly my MIL also posted about how her son (my partner) was going through puberty. Do you think that is okay? For a child to grow up with that information online?
gtfo.

I would be annoyed if people posted pictures of my son with out permission as it goes I don't like Facebook but I do use Instagram and have put pictures of him on there but even though my family and my in-laws know I have posted they always still ask me before they do it. It's just common curtesy.

To be honest if you don't have a relationship with your in laws I'd set boundaries with them now so what if they don't like it you won't lose anything

Now you have a baby you have to be a voice for them too

Well to announce it before you was bad. Otherwise get used to it coz she's a proud grandparent . It's not worth the row unless she's bad in other ways

@Spottybluepyjamas if his wife were to say that then I’d respect her and her decision. Taking pictures for personal use is fine, to have in photo albums for example. But she took it to post online. That’s it.

it's not about a big scary pedophile coming and snatching your baby from their cot. video and photo editing capabilities have vastly increased in the last 5-10 years. what's an innocent photo to you and i, is something that a pedophile would relish in editing to whatever vile thing they can think of. the internet has allowed them to not even need to be in the physical vicinity of children.

I think you're being a little precious and honestly sound a little immature. I'm sure she's just excited to be a grandma and means ho harm. I personally don't see any harm or danger for a baby photo to be on Facebook but if you dont like it then you need to say something. As to them not knowing you, what efforts have you made? Why can't you reach out to his siblings and arrange to meet up. It's a two way street.
Finally, in reference to another post you do mention 'my' baby more times than 'our' including in capitals.

You sound excessively anxious and completely out of proportion reaction to proud new Grandparents wanting to share a picture of their lovely new Grandchild with their friends.
Something that the baby's father is perfectly okay with.

If you have unusual demands, then you need to make them clear upfront. You have said they share lots of things on FB, so if that is something you have a strong objection to you should have asked up front that they didn't, as it was fairly predictable. Still comes back to the fact the baby has two parents though and your dh is happy with it.

@justasking111 im really not going to “just get used to” something that I’m not okay with. I don’t care at this point if it causes a row.
this mentality is what creates people pleasers.

She put up a pic of her grandchild in a car seat on a private FB page and you have the dark web underground peado's trawling her account for a fully clothed baby in a car seat. Gtfu yourself, you sound absolutely ridiculous.