Facebook wants you before you are born | Hacker News Reader

Facebook wants you before you are born

thepowerbase.com

10 pointsbigmetalman18 comments

Creepy, but brilliant.

I'm imagining what it would be like to be born into this world already having a facebook account, to already have begun being tracked, to already have a web presence. Your parents would manage the account until you came of certain age, then a present on your birthday could be control of your facebook account...

I imagine there would be a permanent record of baby photos of you floating in the ether... the horror... forget about ever working in politics (would you want to be governed by someone who can't even keep their lunch down?).

Then, once you're old enough, you could delete your FB account like a big girl, or maybe instead use the fact that your parents signed you up as a convenient excuse to now spend every waking minute of your tween life using that site as payback.

A lot of people grow up with baby photos all over the place. While we try to avoid it with our son, I just had to think: I am pretty sure the opposition of a political candidate would be capable of finding your baby photos no matter what (like getting them from a friend of the family or whatever).

Sorry, that was an attempt at humor on my part. I don't think having your baby photos out would be a serious concern, unless maybe your parents dressed you as baby hitler.

And then you hit your teen/tween years and push back against everything your parents gave you or stand for, including that Facebook account.

not everything is pushed back by teenagers. Cars, internet, cell phones - people tend to refute the ideologies of their parents (as well as the clothing style, it seems)... but items of consumerism tend to "pass from generation to generation" :-)

A legitimately terrifying prospect. Then again, imagine how comprehensive your Facebook timeline would be!

Sounds unlikely. How would that reconcile with their minimum age requirement? 13 years for COPPA compliance, as I understand it -- though I only think about it when danah boyd brings it up.

COPPA only matters if it's the child the one giving personal information, and even then, it's legal as long as the parents/legal guardian consent. Pretty sure unborn children won't be giving out personal information themselves ;)

You are not able to set your relationship status with someone as expected child. The image he references is not an accurate representation of facebook today.

Yep, I just looked and I can't see this either. It's not true.

Big sites, and FB in particular, are known to roll-out new features to limited groups before expanding them to everyone. It may be fake, but the fact that it doesn't appear in your profile doesn't prove that.

Facebook has apparently allowed married couples to announce expected children for over a year now.

http://mashable.com/2011/08/01/facebook-expecting-option/

Face book has allowed ...

The mind wobbles.

Facebook is a digital representation of people's real-world friend connections and social graph. It only makes sense to include people's children in that graph, as they're usually a pretty important part of people's lives.

Of course you should secure a Facebook vanity URL for your unborn child.

I know I'm not the only one - I bought a few domains on variations of my son's name, which I'll give to him when he turns 18, or earlier if he wants them.

Big brother!

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