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Comment by NotYourLawyer | Hacker News Reader

My wife took a hard line early on—no pictures of the kids on social media. I thought she was being a little silly but went along with it.

Really glad now.

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What was the timeline, if you don't mind me asking? When and why was your wife skeptical of social media, and when did you truly start understanding her concerns?

Same here. Both decided against that. We only share pictures to our relatives and we specifically tell them not to share them.

Why? I mean what event made you glad?

Facial recognition, and also just the general enshittification of social media and the internet at large.

My wife and I have been pretty strict about it from the start. We allow ourselves a posted photo every birthday.

We have thousands of photos and videos. When he's old enough he can post them everywhere if he wants. But that's his business. Not ours.

Same here. In terms or privacy it's one of the easiest things you can do to give your kids a fighting chance early on. We still do regular photo updates over a messaging app not owned by Meta.

How do you deal with family and friends wanting to post photos of your kids? The societal norm sadly seems to be that privacy invasion of this form is completely acceptable.

I keep an eye on it, if a photo of my kid pops up I get in touch with them and say do you mind not putting that up, we're not putting him on social media until he's old enough to choose for himself. It's been received well so far, people seem to understand our objections even though we don't offer any more explanation than that.

This is one of those things that will annoy people but they won't say so. But I would do the same if I had kids, and be that annoying parent.

Unfortunately almost nothing is deleted any longer, so once shared it is done.

Thankfully, Facebook said they have stopped facial recognition. Here’s hoping it wasn’t a lie.

It doesn’t really come up. Most of my family isn’t active on social media, and the ones who are know the rule and don’t mind.

Well, I certainly wish this was my situation. I hope it stays the same for you. Your friends and family sound more tech-literate and -disciplined than mine

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