We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online • Hacker News Board

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#11

Post by rayiner » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:07 PM UTC

I'm a new parent and my wife and I are not taking any measures to minimize our kid's Facebook exposure.

As a general rule, it's pretty safe to "do what everybody else is doing." If Facebook albums parents made for kids when they were little come back to haunt this coming generation as a group, the ills will be remedied either by making or using certain sorts of analysis illegal (the college application hypothetical) or society will adapt by adjusting perceptions of certain information (the prom date hypothetical).

It is illustrative to note how the national reaction to youth drug use in presidential candidates changed from Clinton ("I didn't inhale") to G.W.B. to Obama ("maybe a little blow"). Similar adaptation will happen when it comes to information on Facebook and the like.

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#12

Post by DanBC » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:12 PM UTC

Most sites close accounts if they're for someone under the age of X. (18, 13?) So, these accounts are really the parents accounts, just in the name of the daughter, right?

> The process started in earnest as we were selecting her name. We’d narrowed the list down to a few alternatives and ran each (and their variants) through domain and keyword searches to see what was available. Next, we crawled through Google to see what content had been posted with those name combinations, and we also looked to see if a Gmail address was open.

Wait, what? Surely calling your daughter "Jane Doe" would be best, because then you could claim "Oh no, that's not me!" when presented with articles about drunken rampages or whatever. It'd be hard to find out if you were Jane_Doe_9297376 or Jane_Doe_91919229191.

For some reason I feel sorry for the child named with a pleasing combination of name and TLD.

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#13

Post by kenjackson » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:13 PM UTC

Admirable, but naive. Facial recognition of baby pics is useless for the most part. By the time their daughter is 18 she will have plenty of tagged pictures of herself. Cameras are already everywhere and their use is accelerating. Google Glasses like devices are coming. And your picture ID is already used for facial recognition.

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#14

Post by ef4 » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

The author is wrong because she assumes social customs are immutable. They aren't.

In 2028 there will be nothing embarrassing about appearing in thousands of online photos dating back to your birth. Because almost everyone will be in the same boat.

In fact, it may be considered weird and suspicious if there's not much online content about you.

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#15

Post by petercooper » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

mashmac2 wrote: post #2

Does anyone else do this (or something similar)? I'm curious to see how people introduce the Internet to their children in a relatively-responsible way.

My 3 year old daughter has been actively using an iPad in some form or another since around a year old. I don't plan on censoring or controlling her access but would review this based on changing circumstances.

Her use is (casually) monitored in case any issues do pop up, though I consider this unlikely for a few years as she's only into Disney-style apps and a handful of toy unboxing subscriptions on YouTube. I've not noticed any opportunities for offensive or inappropriate content coming up so far, although this could change when she can spell and type! :-)

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#16

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#17

Post by epoxyhockey » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:15 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #11

I'm a new parent and my wife and I are not taking any measures to minimize our kid's Facebook exposure. As a general rule, it's pretty safe to "do what everybody else is doing." If Facebook albums parents made for kids when they were little come back to haunt this coming generation as a group, the ills will be remedied either by making or using certain sorts of analysis illegal (the college application hypothetical)…

As a general rule, it's pretty safe to do "what everybody else is doing."

I noticed this rule after the housing crash. If one person was underwater on their mortgage, no one would blink. But, when hundreds of thousands of people become underwater, Congress started to get involved to (attempt to) provide relief.

It seems impossible to limit someone's exposure on Facebook, especially when any 3rd party will happily post a photo of your family member online. I also suspect that untagging a person on FB is analogous to FB's soft-deleting of statuses. The damage is already done.

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#18

Post by hablahaha » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:18 PM UTC

mbateman wrote: post #4

> We turned to KnowEm.com, a website I often rely on to search for usernames, even though the site is primarily intended as a brand registration service. We certainly had a front-runner for her name, but we would have chosen something different if the KnowEm results produced limited availability or if we found negative content associated with our selection. > With her name decided, we spent several hours registering…

Fast forward twenty years on her Github account - I think I would get an odd impression of her if I saw "Joined on [the day she was born]". Same goes for any site that prominently displays the sign up date as a badge of honor...

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#19

Post by wmf » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:23 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #11

I'm a new parent and my wife and I are not taking any measures to minimize our kid's Facebook exposure. As a general rule, it's pretty safe to "do what everybody else is doing." If Facebook albums parents made for kids when they were little come back to haunt this coming generation as a group, the ills will be remedied either by making or using certain sorts of analysis illegal (the college application hypothetical)…

I agree that society will adapt, but I wonder what will happen when people from different generations compete for the same jobs. To some extent we're beginning to see this with various hand-wringing about millennials.

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#20

Post by drdaeman » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

> When we think she’s mature enough (an important distinction from her being technically old enough), we’ll hand her an envelope with her master password inside.

Let me guess. She'll probably reject that envelope for the following reasons:

1. The account is known to be compromised (being under a third party control). Even if parent credentials could be removed, there's still a possibility they could gain access with social engineering with support, as they know detailed history of the account.

2. Unless she's completely monitored and barred from any network access, she'd probably already have another set of accounts by that time. Otherwise would signify she doesn't need any.

3. By that time she'd have her own perception of her own identity, that would be likely (but not necessarily) different from her parents' view of the time she didn't have much of personality - which is enough of a reason to reject the mismatching accounts and create ones to her own tastes.