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Comment by snapplebobapple | Hacker News Reader

While I find parents doing this extremely concerning I am personally really hesitant to change anything because I can't think of any way to change it that doesn't seriously hinder normal and not creepy parental uses of images/videos of their children. We are already running into overreach problems trying to curtail the stuff we clearly need to curtail (i.e. that guy having to deal with the police for sending his kid's pediatrician a picture of some problem) I can't imagine what that would end up like if it happened on a large portion of videos shared with your kids in it.

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I like the (for some reason downvoted) reasonable suggestion by someone else to simply not monetize videos containing children. Doesn't YouTube already have some kind of classifier that finds children in videos, which lets them turn off commenting on those videos? Just extend that to also de-monetize them.

Sure, it doesn't solve the problem of child videos using other monetization channels like product placement, sponsorships and so on but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Will this apply to Hollywood movies which star minors? Or AMA winning musicians who are minors?

If we exempt them from your new rules, why?

We need to be very careful about Well Intentioned rules (or worse, laws) because they will be applied selectively and in ways the authors didn't intend.

I don't know--those are edge cases, let the legislators figure them out later. Too often we give up with "it can't be done" because we can't find a perfect solution for every little edge case. Instead of at least taking an imperfect but vital first step, we do nothing.

> While I find parents doing this extremely concerning I am personally really hesitant to change anything because I can't think of any way to change it that doesn't seriously hinder normal and not creepy parental uses of images/videos of their children

Ban the commercialization of videos and images containing kids. No more child actors, singers, models, etc. Remove the child labor law exceptions which have been given to these industries.

> No more child actors

it'd make movies better, anyway

That guy had to deal with the cops, because Google spied on him and didn't even bother talking to him first to find out why he took those pictures, but immediately assumed the worst. Thankfully the cops investigated the case and concluded that it wasn't a crime.

I think it's a relatively easy line to draw.

If you're posting content to the public (i.e. random strangers), you're on one side of the line. If you're posting content in a controlled manner to people consisting of friends and family you actually know, you're on the other side of the line.

This would made half summer family albums on Facebook illegal. People share fotos of swimming kids on public spaces all the time. And no, those fotos are not sexy nor meant to be.

Do people really post their family albums publicly?

Posting privately for your extended family yes, but that should never be posted publicly.

Yes they do. Internet if full of it. Usual intention is to show it to friends and family. In 99.99% of case, no one outside of family cares at all. The photos of kids posted on public albums nobody cares about are massively outnumbering youtube starts earning money on making their kids into internet stars.

The issue is trying to ban an innocent thing - photo of a kid in state normally seen in public vs "making kids perform for camera, encourage them children to form participate in parasocial relationships with the audience".

No kid ever build parasocial relationship by having photo in family album, even if public. And photos of kids are as old as photography.

One could make regulations about monetization of such things I guess. Monetization does not just happens randomly. You have to enter into contract with social network to send you money, you fill taxes. That could be workable, theoretically.

If you post something on Facebook for "friends", and you have 5,000 friends, then is that really any different from posting publicly? And who counts as "extended family"? Like are third cousins in or out? And if you tag anyone in your post then it's also visible to all of their friends as well.

It's important to protect the private lives of our children. But it's very challenging to draw clear, enforceable lines in criminal laws and social media terms of service.

For starters, zero monetization of any social media content involving children.

Second step, zero public posts involving children, maybe with some narrow carveouts.

Yes, let's narrow even more the kind of content allowed in platforms with draconian laws.

"I'm sorry mister, but we can see chidren playing in the park at 44:28 in the hour-long documentary you've produced, so we had to remove the video."

I think it is entirely reasonable to totally ban any media that has any person who haven't given explicit release on their likeness. It isn't too much to ask for valuing everyone's privacy.

In the US, there is no general expectation of privacy in a public place.

Implementing your proposal is also unreasonable: before one took a photo of their spouse in the park, they would have to clear the background of all persons or get their explicit consent.

Maybe allow private use, but to publish anywhere for example in social media or other media absolutely.

Would this also apply to journalists? Only uncredentialed journalists without a government license?

If there was a protest outside my business, could I post a photo of the crowd online? What if it were a riot?

What if, as I and a large crowd were peacefully leaving an event, I lifted my camera above my head and blindly took a photo of the mass of people shoulder to shoulder?

Many places have laws which would prevent someone from taking a photo of an individual and selling copies of that photo without the subjects permission; but these laws don't usually apply to someone in the background or a crowd shot, and they don't apply to non-commercial use or some commercial uses, including journalism.

That wouldn't have knock on effects like utterly destroying investigative journalism or anything.... There are tons of things that people would censor if the above were law that are not in the public interest to be censored.

Is the aim to pathologise children as such or to pathologise any interest in and interaction with them?

In theory is already illegal, because it is child work. So I guess it is illegal in most countrys anyway.

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