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I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

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Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#141
post #83

This seems to me (albeit as a probably completely unqualified person to have a real viewpoint here, as a 50ish male without children) to be much ado about nothing. Somehow, perhaps because of the pervasiveness of social media, the sense of self has expanded quite a great deal. In a family, and later in public life, we don't have the right to control how we are perceived in the public. (I know some countries in the EU…

> Just as the daughter has the right to not share herself or her life on social media, I don't believe she has the right to demand approval of her mother's or sister's posts. A legal right? Absolutely not. A moral right? Absolutely. Knowingly disclosing information about someone that that person has expressly confirmed they would like to remain private is certainly not a friendly act. When the parties involved are in…

> > Just as the daughter has the right to not share herself or her life on social media, I don't believe she has the right to demand approval of her mother's or sister's posts.

> A legal right? Absolutely not. A moral right? Absolutely.

Depends on your jurisdiction. In some regions, the subject of the photo is the legal owner, and absolutely has the right to control distribution.

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#142
post #44

Kids realizing they already have an online presence made by the people who were teaching them about being responsible about their online presence is becoming A Thing. Two other stories with similar circumstances: "When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-... "My daughter asked me to stop writing about motherhood. Here’s why I can’t do that." htt…

That Washington post author is quite the narcisstic scumbag. I feel disgusted reading the writing of someone so extremely self-absorbed.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way. That article was horrifying.

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#143

I'm more surprised by the story telling and narrative of the 14 year old author! Impressed. Pretty sure the only thing I was worrying about when 14 was how to get past the min. word count and not use "however" so much.

She definitely didn't write this as-is. No 14-year-old writes this well. It feels as it if was the result of an interview, transcribed by an adult into the first person. "How did you feel? Did you feel betrayed?" "Yeah I guess. It's embarrassing." => "I felt utterly embarrassed, and deeply betrayed." Also this... > I feel like I’m being spared from what could potentially be dangerous for me at such a young age. ... i…

I as a soon 16-year old definitely still consider myself a child, it's ignorant to disagree with what is practically proven. I'm definitely not as wise as this 14-year old, makes me a bit jealous, have to admit.

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, it would be trivial to default content be shared to friends only. If Zuck gave a true shit about privacy, that change could happen instantly, and years ago.

It was the initial default before VCs have came in.

Yup. I remember the “vote” they held that essentially gave away any further say in how those kinds of decisions are made. “We heard you loud and clear–you didn’t vote, you must not care, so we’ll do whatever we want with your stuff now.” (Paraphrasing) of course they never actually intended it to be a democratic platform and knew full well what the results would be before even announcing it.

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercialise a shiny black box that plugs into the power (like a Wifi Extender), that: 1. Connects to the internet 2. uPnPs silently port 80 to itself 3. Registers a name with a dynamic DNS service (remember those?) 4. Has ~4GB local storage 5. Runs a 'newsfeed' type web portal or API. 6. Has a Phone app for easy sharing/creation of content. Make this 100% turnkey for non-technical people and you MAY have a chance a…

> uPnPs silently port 80 to itself Besides the fact that in the post-Let’s Encrypt world we should start expecting port 443 by default for any web service, for many ISPs running a publicly accessible server violates the terms of service unless your contract with the ISP is their business tier. To make things worse, a lot of people are issued a router by their ISP where uPnP is disabled, and they do not have access to…

Yeah my bad - should have said 443, with auto-cert from XYZ provider.

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#146

I cannot imagine posting so much about a child of mine without them being aware of it at all. I talk a lot about my sons. They know. If I feel it is a story with sensitive information, I run it past them to see if they are okay with me saying that. I can't really comprehend the thinking here of the family members who did this. They talk about her but not to her? That's the opposite of "social" behavior. That's treati…

[deleted]

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#147
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet from 10 years ago was also less likely to remember everything you do forever. Messaging between friends happened using services that didn't save conversation history server side, public chat rooms including IRC were rarely logged, blog posts had a minimal reach, and were largely pseudonymous anyway, making the connection with a real person more difficult. Perhaps this kind of lack of consequences drove p…

In fact, young me didn't think that websites, mostly forums and early microblogging sites, would ever go away. I wish I could see those posts today. It may be a fabricated memory, but I remember always being aware of the lack of privacy in those services. And never using your last name or sharing your location.

True. I meant to say that websites, while seeming permanent, didn't enforce a connection to more private parts of one's identity.

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#148

My wife and I recently had our first child, and we decided we didn't want her to have any kind of social media presence until she was old enough to make that decision for herself. It's been a challenge ensuring friends and family don't post stuff about our daughter, but reading this reinforces that we're making the right choice.

We've got a very similar scenario. Our daughter is nearly 6 now. She participated in some community events that ended up with her attributed photo on a local newspaper website (which I'm okay with-- we knew the "danger" when she wanted to participate in the events). Aside from that we've managed to keep attributed photos of her off the Internet. A couple of family members have posted photos of her but have been kind enough to avoid attribution.

(I do wonder how facial recognition will deal with ex post facto attribution of photos of children, given how our faces change as we age. Up to about age 4 my daughter was nearly indistinguishable from one of her cousins in photos-- a testament to the power of my wife's family's genetics, I guess...)

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#149
post #127

Why quit? Why not just tell your parents to make their accounts private, or remove the images that you're not comfortable with? I feel like there are solutions here that don't involve delaying the parent's participation in social media until the child is old enough to choose to accept it. As much as this concerns the child's social media life, it's also a matter of the parent's experience. Parents post this stuff to…

People have been sharing wallet photos of their kids for generations now, no one has a problem with that because you are basically saying "here's what my kid looks like these days" or "didn't he look like uncle dave in this picture? same nose," all very benign and also maintaining the kids privacy on their daily life, their feelings, and embarrassments and failures that can be so demoralizing when you are a kid. When…

I don't think it's (always) about being obsessed with social validation though, it's a new societal norm brought about by social media. In fact it's the _hook_ it's why people use social media at all, because you can _share your life_ with people in a way that wasn't possible before. The raising of children being a major part of that life. I would go as far as to say that the children aren't actually the subject in these posts, the real subject is the parent's life and the posts containing images and anecdotes of their kids are a side effect.

Maybe this is an opportunity for some social media company to get ahead of this and use facial recognition to tag people across ages. If the user decides that they don't want their image to appear on someone else's account, they can go through the images granularly and take them down.

I think what I'm getting at is that this is _new_. It's as new as is the ability of a 14 year old to express their frustration with something and have an audience of millions. I don't think the solution here is to tell parents that it's inappropriate to post about their children online. I think the real solution has more to do with finding a comfortable balance and set of controls so that everyone's interests can be accounted for.

p.s. I shuddered while typing "14 year old to express their frustration with something and have an audience of millions". The next 50 years are going to contain some _hard_ times.

Re: I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me

#150
post #91
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how that changed within one generation in many cases. Millennials started using the Internet when conventional wisdom was to not use your real name online. Don't reveal your age or location. Don't post your photo. Use an anonymous name. We went from that to the complete opposite.

The internet from 10 years ago was also less likely to remember everything you do forever. Messaging between friends happened using services that didn't save conversation history server side, public chat rooms including IRC were rarely logged, blog posts had a minimal reach, and were largely pseudonymous anyway, making the connection with a real person more difficult. Perhaps this kind of lack of consequences drove p…

are all your gmail and facebook messages from 10 years ago not still available? I think youd have to go back more than 15 years to get to services where communications are now faded.
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