We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online • Hacker News Board

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#141

Post by petercooper » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 1:32 PM UTC

milsorgen wrote: post #21

petercooper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> she's only into Disney-style apps and a handful of toy unboxing subscriptions on YouTube Has she found the egg videos yet?

Haha, yes, that's the first thing she got into and she still watches them. Mostly http://www.youtube.com/user/FluffyJetProductions who is quite entertaining. This has now fuelled a rather expensive Kinder Egg habit..

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#142

Post by roc » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 3:01 PM UTC

wonderzombie wrote: post #114

roc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the spoken lesson is: be careful what you share, there are risks. But the article isn't about privacy conscientiousness, it's about brand conscientiousness. The author isn't talking about how she might construct rules to effect a safe space for her daughter to grow and learn and internalize these values, separate from known pitfalls that might cause her harm. The author talks only about how she constructed a sa…

Disingenuous how? I genuinely don't understand. The idea is to get out ahead of all the social networking bits, and create a deliberately blank slate. All of that stuff is placeholder, neutral, for as long as the kid wants it to be so. The kid's free to fill all that in, or not, but the child won't start with a bunch of their personal data filled in. That last part is consistent with the stated beliefs/goals of the a…

'Desirable' usernames are, technically speaking, as close to irrelevant to privacy as you can get. Your behavior with an account is what matters for privacy, not the account name. [1]

Yet the article is entirely about the account names and only somewhat in passing about the sorts of lessons the author hopes her daughter learns about "how (not) to conduct yourself online".

And without those lessons... you can 'protect' facebook.com/janeannsmith all you want, but if your daughter makes privacy-eroding mistakes with reddit.com/u/sparklepony2031 -- those can be trivially connected to facebook.com/janeannsmith the second you hand over the 'keys' to that account.

That's the whole point about the loss of privacy online. Once the accounts are associated to you, those associations last forever and follow you immediately and irrevocably anywhere else an account becomes associated to you.

[1] sure, sure -- using your real name as a username is Bad For Privacy, but the author wasn't talking about janeannsmith vs sparklepony2031. They were talking about janeannsmith vs jane-ann-smith and janeannsmith vs janineannsmith -- should jane ann smith have turned out to be the name of a porn star or third world dictator or some such.

Frankly, as far as privacy goes via name conflicts, you're better off being named Mike Johnson and having lots of collisions, even if some are negative, than having some unique name that doesn't have an online association yet. Some plausible deniability is better than none.

However, for branding, the opposite is true. Which, again, underscores how the author's behavior seems to be much more about branding than privacy.

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#143

Post by ef4 » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 8:51 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #105

ef4 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll grant that it's logically possible. But I don't really understand why people think it's disadvantageous if others can find out whether or not you were cute when you were two years old. I think it has more to do with fear of what's new than any logical argument. Putting my money where my mouth is, here is my son: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7402/9525304181_8da5d48e22_b.j... In what future dystopia will the pres…

> But I don't really understand why people think it's disadvantageous if others can find out whether or not you were cute when you were two years old. Some examples: you child ends up in a viral video and millions of children all over the world and at his school mock it (e.g the Star Wars Kid, and lots of others). How will that affect his growing up? Or your kid is not really popular at high school, and some other ki…

I'm not claiming that we should share completely without judgement. Just that the vast bulk of things people share are easy to judge as innocuous.

The Star Wars Kid video is not a good counter-example, because it was never intentionally posted online by its creator -- it was found (on a videotape) by other people and posted, and those people knew they were posting it to make fun of it.

> Or your kid is not really popular at high school, and some other kids dig up a naked baby pic of his. Nothing special, they just circulate it all around school and make fun of him, and he feels like slicing his wrists or something.

Firstly, we're not necessarily talking about naked baby pics. The original article is about never posting any photo of their kid online.

Secondly, the kind of bullying you describe presupposes several much bigger problems that are the responsibility of the parent, and it is the behavior of parents that we're discussing.

You're looking at this from the perspective of a bullied kid who just wishes it was easier to hide. But if your kid is so emotionally fragile that having other kids laugh at innocuous baby pictures is enough to make him suicidal, you did a shitty job as a parent.

Lots of parents do, in fact, raise emotionally damaged children who are vulnerable to bullying. But it's not their photo-posting habits that really matters.

Re: We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online

#144

Post by dlhavema » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 9:43 PM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #94

ceejayoz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a great Dilbert that had his mum asking him the "if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" question. His response was along the lines of "if they all came back and told me how awesome it was, yes".

Also, this: http://xkcd.com/1170/ "Imagine reading this on CNN: 'Many fled their vehicles and jumped from the bridge. Those who stayed behind...'"

Thank you, this puts a great twist on the situation.. basically saying that if all of his generally smart, sane friends all of a sudden jumped off a bridge, most likely there was a REALLY good reason behind why they did it