Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

48 pointsbandrade54 comments

I'm looking for something private and easy to use to share pictures and videos with my family. My extended family uses Snapchat and Instagram but we're concerned but privacy and tracking. Text chains? Whatsapp? What works for you and your family actually use?

View on HN

I set up a Mastodon instance and a Peertube instance on my own server and got all everyone onto Mastodon. They all get how to use Mastodon, including the seniors, so that's what most people engage with. Peertube videos can be easily embedded into toots so both pics and videos are shareable.

I also have a Nextcloud instance and have all photos and videos auto uploaded, then recently Nextcloud introduced some workflow features that I used to auto upload all videos from Nextcloud to Peertube, making it really easy to go pick the video link and share.

What I've found is that better quality photos and videos tend to make it into Mastodon and Peertube, while other content will still be shared in the Signal group chat.

It's all running in docker, making it easy to upgrade, backup, and/or move around.

that's a lot of redundant unnecessary job you have done, could have sticked to something simpler, no?

I'm surprised that only 2 comments mention using iCloud shared album. I myself use that too and I have no complain. Zero assistance required for elder family members.

All my immediate family have an iPhone. I have a public album for sharing family pictures. It allows for comments and 'likes'.

I have talked to my family about my privacy concerns and that I don't want pictures of my kids on Facebook unless I approve or my kids approve. I think it is important to respect children privacy requests (my son sometimes don't want pictures being shared) but it is a way to share memories with close family members that would enjoy the moment.

Yeah iCloud is really nice for this.

Within my family I use Peergos for sharing photos and videos. Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder. Individual files or entire folders can be shared securely in band, or via a secret link. Everything is E2EE including metadata. e.g. here is a secret link to some media files:

https://alpha.peergos.net/#%7B%22secretLink%22:true%2c%22lin...

I use my own nextcloud instance for that. I can either get a share link, or set a password for access.

Print out pictures on my printer and mail them.

What kind of printer do you have?

We use Tumblr in a custom domain + custom theme and I’m really pleased with the setup.

My wife and I can easily post from the tumblr app on our phones. Password protected site so only family can see it. Easy backups to Wordpress just in case.

It’s easy for family to check the site whenever they want rather than putting it on social media. We turned off commenting so there’s never pressure for anyone to leave a comment and we don’t have any sense of needing affirmation for every picture we put up. It’s all just there if family wants to see it. Grandparents living far away especially appreciate it.

For our own usage, it has been invaluable too. I made some theme updates so we can go back in time and look at specific months easily. It’s been a great asset of curated family photos we can go through to see the kids at different stages. They’re 7 & 4 now.

I’d be happy to share my custom Tumblr theme with anyone who’s interested.

Is there an appetite for something like an instagram/snap, but closed/paid/private? I'm working on something _similar_ for the education, but I also use it for my extended family. Wouldn't be hard to spin up a group if you're interested (unrulr.com). I'm will@ if you want to chat.

Beaker browser[1], previously Tox[2], previously Opera Unite (dead)[3]. Sharing content with competent, but not expert, computer user(s). On desktop only; while seemingly a downside, privacy and tracking concerns may lead to exclude major mobile OSs.

[1]: https://beakerbrowser.com/

[2]: https://tox.chat/

[3]: https://maqentaer.com/devopera-static-backup/http/dev.opera....

Signal, and I’ve gotten nearly the whole family and friends on it now and it is glorious!

I burn pics to cds and hand them over in person. It's nice to also be giving them a backup imho.

I used to use firefox send but that's gone now I think.

I have used a self hosted buddypress - upload and only share with "friends" and with that user account the only "friends" are one or two people.

I've considered trying to deploy a buddypress with added plugins to harden it and offer it as a SaaS hosting for family circles and friend circles just to share stuff like private pics and such.. I still think about it. Pretty I know how it can work and people will use it and some will pay for it.

Do you mean USB drives? Who has CD drives anymore?

I try to only use usb drives if they are brand new, and have never been inserted into another system.

I actually do mean burn CDs / DVDs.. I know they are not the best backup medium.. but they are better than trusting 'the cloud' imho.

You are right that more and more systems are coming without cd / dvd drives... I have a couple of cd readers (that I think are also burners) that attach via USB - I happily lend or give one away and get another, they are like $25... to use for importing and accessing hard media backups which can be priceless, with bonus privacy.

iCloud shared albums is what we use. Easy and I believe it to be as private as you can reasonably get with a cloud platform.

Discord for sharing and multi-person audio/video. Content is accessible to Discord itself, of course, but not to the uninvited. Don't need an email address. Works on desktop, tablet, phones.

https://discord.com/ about: https://www.protocol.com/discord

We use WhatsApp, which I don't really trust but if I'm sharing a picture to my family I don't expect each member to keep it in a vault.

Have you considered using Signal instead of WhatsApp for secure messaging?

Yes, and also Matrix. But WhatsApp is very popular in my family's country and everyone was already using it.

Why do people trust signal isn't it as black box as everything else? Or did they add reproduceable builds already?

Encryption on Signal is all client side, the server can't see the plain text, says Signal.

say WhatsApp too

Signal is open source: https://github.com/signalapp

We use a private Facebook group, since most of our older relatives are on FB already. There are some privacy concerns, but frankly, the ease-of-use for us and our relatives just outweighs that.

For relatives who don't have Internet access (just one at the moment), we use NanaGram.co for sending a monthly batch of photos by mail.

Thanks for sharing NanaGram. :)

Are some of your older relatives not on FB? I've been looking at a way to subscribe people to a digital delivery of photos — we have a loose version of this via a weekly Saturday morning email you can subscribe yourself to (to see what siblings are uploading). It seems like it'd be nice to subscribe additional recipients to emails like these (weekly, monthly) maybe with a way to order their own prints. Do you think that's something you'd sign someone up for?

Sorry, missed this comment somehow!

> Are some of your older relatives not on FB?

Just one right now: my elderly grandfather who's 90-something now and losing his eyesight. He's the one we use NanaGram for. Digital delivery would not really work for him, since he doesn't own a computer.

For relatives that are on FB, that's how they get their photos. They don't request prints too often, but when they do, my wife usually uses Nations Photo Lab.

There is Syncthing of course [0], which is quite easy to set up. Also if you need your storage to be always online, there's rclone [1].

Some privacy focused mail providers (like mailbox.org) have cloud capabilities too.

[0] https://syncthing.net/

[1] https://rclone.org/

Google Photos with shared albums, works great for my family & friends.

It used to be impossible for everyone to get all the photos after a vacation / trip / event. Now we just create a shared album and everyone upload everything.

Edit: WhatsApp biggest flaw is the aggressive compression. It takes pictures down to an unacceptable qualify.

second this - google photos makes it super simple to share pics and videos with select people

You can attach images as documents in whatsapp in which case it would just send the image unaltered.

That's correct. I use it occasionally, but it's pretty inconvenient for more than a single photo. Also, since we're talking about sharing, this requires 'educating' the people you're sharing with.

same here

Didn't know that about WhatsApp. How far down to they downsize? I've been testing the new Twilio/WhatsApp integration and when I last checked like 6 months ago it looked like the images were full resolution.

Not sure if it answers you question, but WhatsApp takes most full-size photos down to 200-250kb~

For full privacy, compress the files with password enabled and share it using your mail. That should do the trick.

23snaps. Great for keeping extended family up to date with photos of the kids while being far more privacy oriented than other options. I've been using it for 5 years and highly recommend it. https://www.23snaps.com/

What about a self hosted nextcloud/owncloud server? It will be easy to manage on all devices.

Mastodon is good, as suggested by others, but I also use XMPP (jabber) for real-time chat, sending pictures, files, video. You can easily host your own instance of both of these with YunoHost.

This might be what you are looking for if you are into self-hosting or at least have trusted host.

https://pixelfed.org/

Linphone. Works on cell phones, and desktops. You can text, telephone, video, with security. (Iphone, Android, f-droid.) (Signal had too many intrusive updates.)

SMS. Ruins the quality but they don't know or care. I'll ask them to email it to me if I really need the high res.

Yes, they're just good enough to print on a 4x6. If you send 1-3 photos at a time, the resolution tends to be better. If the sender is on an economy cell carrier, they also tend to be more aggressive with downsizing. iCloud sharing albums are decent but there's an upload lag.

https://mediagoblin.org/

https://app.ardrive.io - ArDrive

We use WhatsApp with family groups

Self hosted on a Synology server. Custom domain, ddns, Letsencrypt certificate.

Mainly email/whatsapp/iMessage

I use pendrive

iMessage and iCloud Photo Sharing

Signal

Reply on news.ycombinator.com