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A Child’s TikTok Stardom Opens Doors. Then a Gunman Arrives

51 points by danso 5y ago

danso 5y ago
Non-paywall link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/politics/tiktok-ava-majury.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DPDm8diPkORJCH_0bRZKF4IMcy3CicR5pILrZqQfVw0_VOeUxxTg3i6r21pKM4GQRn44SiQjFxmJvXQbEz9TKtPmTpJOsnmLP6tkKLOn3tDfOOzSYhLFl69sdlcQyr2SMNla_HAfc1joclpYopBZ9wTDgEbDDb_KW7TkUjZ6jVK03U-QI0WOpGWDrMnd_667MIdAtaC1iuX2ooqC9nq4saYIVLSf65ex0we8P-gqETCHhoLeqqDp42QYvVldZ6oKDH3VuIfhb0icmQOIY05B8&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/politics/tiktok-ava-ma...
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
It sucks what happened but it's important to realize that this is a pretty rare occurrence. There are a lot of famous people and most of them don't have someone turn up to their house with a shotgun at any point. News seeks out the sensational but keep in mind that it is sensational because this is an outlier. And even the individual affected by this incident apparently considers the platform to be worth the risk, since she is still active on there.
- dijonman2 5y ago
  I can’t accept this argument. In a risk matrix the probability is low but impact is high, so it’s still high risk and doesnt justify dismissal. I think it bolsters the need for anonymity and privacy, especially online. In FL you have the sunshine act which makes doxxing particularly easy.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    That’s true of literally any rare disaster. That’s why they’re called disasters. Better not fly.
    - theodric 5y ago
      Everyone's a risk manager until they have to do it every day, and then they find themselves constrained by last week's fears to the extent that they can no longer leave the house without a haz-mat suit, armed bodyguard, and one-way plane ticket to a remote village in Switzerland
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    I totally understand that some people would not choose to make the tradeoff, and they are free not to. Inherently, anyone broadcasting video of their everyday life is going to be doxxable if they are not extremely careful about how much information they are putting out. The sunshine laws in this case may have helped but I don't think we know that. The article doesn't mention them at any rate.
- _bfhp 5y ago
  Any specific-enough set of circumstances is inherently rare. Men stalking and using guns on women and girls isn't uncommon at all.
  - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
    >Men stalking and using guns on women and girls isn't uncommon at all. I would say it's pretty uncommon.
    - strogonoff 5y ago
      It’s very difficult to estimate the ballpark of how many cases that victims are disincentivized from reporting happen on daily basis. This includes countries that are perceived as “low crime”, like Japan and UAE.
    - fullshark 5y ago
      It's common enough to worry about and not handwave away I'd say, especially if you are operating a social network.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  IMO the issue is that people are attracted to these platforms for the ad-money and attention of an audience, but the extent to which you open yourself up to harassment and stalking is only understood after-the-fact. If only social media hadn't enforced real name policies, it might be a little easier to stay anonymous while still being a content creator, maybe its different in other countries. Edit: Facebook and Google+/Youtube had or have real name policies, before then it was the norm to never reveal your real identity online, I admit I am ignorant to TikTok policies, but apparently sharing your venmo address is not uncommon.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    > the extent to which you open yourself up to harassment and stalking is only understood after-the-fact. Some things are hard to learn the easy way. In any case, as I observed, the tradeoff seems worth it to the subject of the article and her family, even now they are made forcefully aware of the possible downsides. Perhaps it ultimately will not be but I personally don't feel like I'm in a position to dictate how they should balance the risks and rewards of stardom.
  - theodric 5y ago
    Social media didn't enforce real name policies, Facebook dot com did. Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, the right-wing sites-- none of those (nominally) require you to divulge PII to open an account (although try opening a Twitter account in $currentYear and see how long you last before they lock your account for 'unusual activity' until you provide both a phone number + e-mail address)
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    TikTok doesn't require your real name.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      Fair, but Venmo does.
      - 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare. A man stalking and becoming obsessed with a specific woman, spending time and effort for sex and attention despite the woman clearly not being interested, is surprisingly common. Many, many woman have real-life incidents of men literally stalking them, men repeatedly trying to get their attention / ask them out despite blatant “stop talking to me” rejection, and men getting really aggressive when they get rejected or “emasculated”. On games and social media it’s much worse, to the point where basically anyone who reveals themselves to be female gets creepy messages. You just don’t realize because relatively this stuff almost never happens to men, even attractive men. Go on a sub like r/NiceGuys, r/TwoXChromosomes and you will see a ton of examples. But even random subs like r/AskReddit and my college’s sub have multiple stories because it’s so common. It’s actually a very serious issue in nearly every society, and this incident is an (albeit extreme) example of the persistence and aggressiveness most semi-attractive women experience.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    > A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare. > A man stalking and becoming obsessed with a specific woman [is common] . . . I recognize the truth of what you're saying, but I also just want to point out that the discussion is about the former situation, not the latter one. Otherwise there wouldn't be these vague intimations that something is wrong with Tiktok in the NYTimes piece.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare. If your denominator is fans, yes. If it is stars, not so much. > You just don’t realize because relatively this stuff almost never happens to men, even attractive men. Yes, it does, and not just conventionally attractive men. You don't realize because men have less social support for discussing it when it happens to them, and you mistake relative visibility for relative frequency.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I'm glad you brought this up. I think this is similar to how domestic violence is cast as a women's issue, yet men are just as likely if not more so to be victims. https://www.saveservices.org/2019/02/men-face-31-greater-risk-of-domestic-violence-than-women/ https://www.saveservices.org/2019/02/men-face-31-greater-ris...
smoldesu 5y ago
> “I wasn’t sending anything of my body," Ava said. “It was just pictures of my face, which is what I assume that he was paying for. My whole thing is my pretty smile — that’s my content.” She said Mr. Justin paid about $300 for two photos, via the Venmo digital wallet app. If you're a parent out there, that should be the biggest red-flag possible. I'm not one to advocate for total control over your family's online interactions, but if a ball like that starts rolling, you need to have a serious sit-down conversation with your teen about boundaries and what kind of crazy, obsessed people there are in the world. Feeding their cycle of obsession should be a non-starter for any guardian out there, and I'm frankly surprised to learn that her father, a former police officer, didn't start asking questions after $300 hit her bank account. People used to call the tech industry a "brave new world" of finance and commerce. Influencer culture is a whole different level of psychological horror, though.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  The most surprising thing about this story to me is that there are 14 year olds advertising their venmo wallets.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Two things: 1. It's just "buy me a coffee" but for TikTok, it's not weird until creepy adults make it weird. One creator I follow gets a bunch of people sending her $0.69 for the memes. Lots of people use Amazon wishlists for this too. People with artistic talent will sell merch on Etsy/Redbubble. 2. Oh honey, I will make no claims about anyone but myself but I did this kinda shit when I was that age. I realized I was hot, I was a sponge for attention, and too stupid to realize that having older guys hitting on me and buying me stuff wasn't as cool as I thought. Amazing in hindsight that nothing bad ever came of it.
    - dvt 5y ago
      Not exactly my kind of thing, but a friend of mine was selling pictures of her feet and making six figures (she started when she was 17!). Men and women just live in completely different worlds in their 20s and 30s (until serious relationships/marriage). It's insane to me that anyone would pay for OnlyFans, private Snaps, etc. But here we are, it's literally a billion-dollar-a-year marketplace.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lowbloodsugar 5y ago
This article is simply monetizing the issue using the same appeals that attracted the shooter in the first place. The article ends with how various lawyers have now set up corporations to promote the victim in exchange for a percentage. I assume one of them raised this to the attention of NYT to generate this promotional story. The message is, this is how you get famous: "I'm so pretty men are literally killing to be with me."
- duxup 5y ago
  Could someone report on this and it not be “ article is simply monetizing the issue”?
  - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
    Not using victims name. They are a minor. Report the facts. "A young man was shot dead by a former police officer after the man blew a whole in his front door. The young man had stalked the daughter living at the house." Facts. You'd need far better writing than mine, of course. The piece is not a report. This is a shock / emotion piece and is part of the US behavior of sexualizing young girls. It is promoting her. You may find it reasonable that a 15 year old girl has one million followers, at least one of whom purchased pictures from her for $300. Or you may not. I'm just saying that the article is part of that system, and that putting yourself out there is going to get this kind of attention and that it demonstrably works as a means to get famous.
    - duxup 5y ago
      It sounds like you want the newspaper to pass judgment on her or something.
      - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
        Er, I am literally arguing for the opposite: report the facts; protect identity; don't get into the social mores / titillation conversation.
manholio 5y ago
andrewclunn 5y ago
Gaining fortune through fame is a sucker's game. Those with real fortunes attempt to avoid fame because it costs way more than it brings in. Once you hit that point of requiring private security, suddenly you're locked in and you need to keep the money coming in (via your fame) to protect yourself from the risk (associated with your fame). Plus it breeds the worst sort of social habits and incentives if you gain fame early in your life. It's so easy for young girls (who are even mildly attractive) with poor parents to get roped into this thing. It's the same perverse incentives that cause prostitutes to get their own daughters into the "family business" (which happens more often than you think). What you get validation from in your teenage years has a huge impact on what you strive for / put your effort into. Do the right thing for your kids long term and invest in them instead of cashing in on them.
- screye 5y ago
  > Gaining fortune through fame is a sucker's game There is great wisdom in this line. I would extend that to say that true freedom is the ability to 'do what you want, when you want.' Money is one pillar of this. It grants you the ability to have the material resources to do what you want. But, 2 confounders get in the way. Time and physical/environmental constraints. If you are gaining money (1 pillar) by compromising the others. Your net freedom stays the same. This includes all sort of suckers games: * Anonymity allows you to get away with anything without anyone noticing. Your example, addresses that freedom tradeoff. * Working long hours (in something unfulfilling) involves trading off time for money * Back breaking involves trading health for money A truly wealthy person is anonymous, rich and has all the time in the world, because they don't need to work to sustain their wealth.
- duxup 5y ago
  The whole striving for viewers and subscribers skews things. You see a lot of channels mimicking each other and so on. When the channel is “you” and you’re young I wonder what that means.
duxup 5y ago
My neighbor has twin daughters and casually told me he “found out” they have a YouTube channel. Approaching 1k subscribers… and they’re early middle school aged. He asked what I thought and I talked about how I monitor the best I can any online interactions for my kids and a secret YouTube channel would be a no go for me. He seemed conflicted on what to do, I’m still kinda horrified.
- jeffy90 5y ago
  I would feel conflicted as well. On the one hand, I would be happy to see someone work hard to build something they're interested in. On the other hand, I would feel nervous about all them getting exposed to the grossness of the internet.
  - duxup 5y ago
    His description of the content didn’t encourage me :( If it was about hobbies or something I might feel differently.
- sockpuppet69 5y ago
- Syonyk 5y ago
  My policy for any use of photos of our kids on my blog (which is mostly my projects, but occasionally includes triplogs, and as my kids are getting older, they show up a bit more often in builds) is simple: My wife and I both have to be entirely OK with any photos of them that I use - and I typically will use hand photos, or photos from the rear if they're helping with something. It's only very occasionally that you actually see faces, and that's going to be something like an interesting place we were as a family. Said photos are almost always a landscape shot with us in them. Our house, our rules. When they're old enough to be interacting with the internet on their own, I intend to apply the same rules - and we run a limited tech household anyway. Electronics don't go in rooms, and we've deliberately set things up so that the house computer is visible when in use, etc. "Oh, lulz, my daughter has a YouTube channel of her being a cute enough preteen to have 1000 subscribers without me knowing about it" would be well beyond the scope of reasonable, and in addition to having supervised-only internet use for quite a long while, I would supervise the removal of the channel. That's just not acceptable, in any way. If my kids want to publish things to the internet (and I hope they will), that's fine - it just has to go through us as parents first, at least until a regular trend of good judgement is demonstrated, and we get access to whatever is being published as well.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
As long as there has been fame, there has been stalkers. The idea that "it's on the internet, it must be safe" is a silly assumption. In fact, we should all know by now, the internet makes you more findable and more trackable. Young Karens - and your parents - you should know better. Just ask Jodi Foster.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/5Tu6e https://archive.is/5Tu6e

51 points by danso 5y ago

Non-paywall link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/politics/tiktok-ava-majury.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DPDm8diPkORJCH_0bRZKF4IMcy3CicR5pILrZqQfVw0_VOeUxxTg3i6r21pKM4GQRn44SiQjFxmJvXQbEz9TKtPmTpJOsnmLP6tkKLOn3tDfOOzSYhLFl69sdlcQyr2SMNla_HAfc1joclpYopBZ9wTDgEbDDb_KW7TkUjZ6jVK03U-QI0WOpGWDrMnd_667MIdAtaC1iuX2ooqC9nq4saYIVLSf65ex0we8P-gqETCHhoLeqqDp42QYvVldZ6oKDH3VuIfhb0icmQOIY05B8&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/politics/tiktok-ava-ma...

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago

It sucks what happened but it's important to realize that this is a pretty rare occurrence. There are a lot of famous people and most of them don't have someone turn up to their house with a shotgun at any point. News seeks out the sensational but keep in mind that it is sensational because this is an outlier. And even the individual affected by this incident apparently considers the platform to be worth the risk, since she is still active on there.

dijonman2 5y ago
I can’t accept this argument. In a risk matrix the probability is low but impact is high, so it’s still high risk and doesnt justify dismissal. I think it bolsters the need for anonymity and privacy, especially online. In FL you have the sunshine act which makes doxxing particularly easy.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  That’s true of literally any rare disaster. That’s why they’re called disasters. Better not fly.
  - theodric 5y ago
    Everyone's a risk manager until they have to do it every day, and then they find themselves constrained by last week's fears to the extent that they can no longer leave the house without a haz-mat suit, armed bodyguard, and one-way plane ticket to a remote village in Switzerland
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  I totally understand that some people would not choose to make the tradeoff, and they are free not to. Inherently, anyone broadcasting video of their everyday life is going to be doxxable if they are not extremely careful about how much information they are putting out. The sunshine laws in this case may have helped but I don't think we know that. The article doesn't mention them at any rate.
_bfhp 5y ago
Any specific-enough set of circumstances is inherently rare. Men stalking and using guns on women and girls isn't uncommon at all.
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  >Men stalking and using guns on women and girls isn't uncommon at all. I would say it's pretty uncommon.
  - strogonoff 5y ago
    It’s very difficult to estimate the ballpark of how many cases that victims are disincentivized from reporting happen on daily basis. This includes countries that are perceived as “low crime”, like Japan and UAE.
  - fullshark 5y ago
    It's common enough to worry about and not handwave away I'd say, especially if you are operating a social network.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
IMO the issue is that people are attracted to these platforms for the ad-money and attention of an audience, but the extent to which you open yourself up to harassment and stalking is only understood after-the-fact. If only social media hadn't enforced real name policies, it might be a little easier to stay anonymous while still being a content creator, maybe its different in other countries. Edit: Facebook and Google+/Youtube had or have real name policies, before then it was the norm to never reveal your real identity online, I admit I am ignorant to TikTok policies, but apparently sharing your venmo address is not uncommon.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  > the extent to which you open yourself up to harassment and stalking is only understood after-the-fact. Some things are hard to learn the easy way. In any case, as I observed, the tradeoff seems worth it to the subject of the article and her family, even now they are made forcefully aware of the possible downsides. Perhaps it ultimately will not be but I personally don't feel like I'm in a position to dictate how they should balance the risks and rewards of stardom.
- theodric 5y ago
  Social media didn't enforce real name policies, Facebook dot com did. Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, the right-wing sites-- none of those (nominally) require you to divulge PII to open an account (although try opening a Twitter account in $currentYear and see how long you last before they lock your account for 'unusual activity' until you provide both a phone number + e-mail address)
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  TikTok doesn't require your real name.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Fair, but Venmo does.
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
armchairhacker 5y ago
A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare. A man stalking and becoming obsessed with a specific woman, spending time and effort for sex and attention despite the woman clearly not being interested, is surprisingly common. Many, many woman have real-life incidents of men literally stalking them, men repeatedly trying to get their attention / ask them out despite blatant “stop talking to me” rejection, and men getting really aggressive when they get rejected or “emasculated”. On games and social media it’s much worse, to the point where basically anyone who reveals themselves to be female gets creepy messages. You just don’t realize because relatively this stuff almost never happens to men, even attractive men. Go on a sub like r/NiceGuys, r/TwoXChromosomes and you will see a ton of examples. But even random subs like r/AskReddit and my college’s sub have multiple stories because it’s so common. It’s actually a very serious issue in nearly every society, and this incident is an (albeit extreme) example of the persistence and aggressiveness most semi-attractive women experience.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  > A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare. > A man stalking and becoming obsessed with a specific woman [is common] . . . I recognize the truth of what you're saying, but I also just want to point out that the discussion is about the former situation, not the latter one. Otherwise there wouldn't be these vague intimations that something is wrong with Tiktok in the NYTimes piece.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare. If your denominator is fans, yes. If it is stars, not so much. > You just don’t realize because relatively this stuff almost never happens to men, even attractive men. Yes, it does, and not just conventionally attractive men. You don't realize because men have less social support for discussing it when it happens to them, and you mistake relative visibility for relative frequency.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I'm glad you brought this up. I think this is similar to how domestic violence is cast as a women's issue, yet men are just as likely if not more so to be victims. https://www.saveservices.org/2019/02/men-face-31-greater-risk-of-domestic-violence-than-women/ https://www.saveservices.org/2019/02/men-face-31-greater-ris...

smoldesu 5y ago

> “I wasn’t sending anything of my body," Ava said. “It was just pictures of my face, which is what I assume that he was paying for. My whole thing is my pretty smile — that’s my content.” She said Mr. Justin paid about $300 for two photos, via the Venmo digital wallet app. If you're a parent out there, that should be the biggest red-flag possible. I'm not one to advocate for total control over your family's online interactions, but if a ball like that starts rolling, you need to have a serious sit-down conversation with your teen about boundaries and what kind of crazy, obsessed people there are in the world. Feeding their cycle of obsession should be a non-starter for any guardian out there, and I'm frankly surprised to learn that her father, a former police officer, didn't start asking questions after $300 hit her bank account. People used to call the tech industry a "brave new world" of finance and commerce. Influencer culture is a whole different level of psychological horror, though.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
The most surprising thing about this story to me is that there are 14 year olds advertising their venmo wallets.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Two things: 1. It's just "buy me a coffee" but for TikTok, it's not weird until creepy adults make it weird. One creator I follow gets a bunch of people sending her $0.69 for the memes. Lots of people use Amazon wishlists for this too. People with artistic talent will sell merch on Etsy/Redbubble. 2. Oh honey, I will make no claims about anyone but myself but I did this kinda shit when I was that age. I realized I was hot, I was a sponge for attention, and too stupid to realize that having older guys hitting on me and buying me stuff wasn't as cool as I thought. Amazing in hindsight that nothing bad ever came of it.
  - dvt 5y ago
    Not exactly my kind of thing, but a friend of mine was selling pictures of her feet and making six figures (she started when she was 17!). Men and women just live in completely different worlds in their 20s and 30s (until serious relationships/marriage). It's insane to me that anyone would pay for OnlyFans, private Snaps, etc. But here we are, it's literally a billion-dollar-a-year marketplace.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lowbloodsugar 5y ago

This article is simply monetizing the issue using the same appeals that attracted the shooter in the first place. The article ends with how various lawyers have now set up corporations to promote the victim in exchange for a percentage. I assume one of them raised this to the attention of NYT to generate this promotional story. The message is, this is how you get famous: "I'm so pretty men are literally killing to be with me."

duxup 5y ago
Could someone report on this and it not be “ article is simply monetizing the issue”?
- lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  Not using victims name. They are a minor. Report the facts. "A young man was shot dead by a former police officer after the man blew a whole in his front door. The young man had stalked the daughter living at the house." Facts. You'd need far better writing than mine, of course. The piece is not a report. This is a shock / emotion piece and is part of the US behavior of sexualizing young girls. It is promoting her. You may find it reasonable that a 15 year old girl has one million followers, at least one of whom purchased pictures from her for $300. Or you may not. I'm just saying that the article is part of that system, and that putting yourself out there is going to get this kind of attention and that it demonstrably works as a means to get famous.
  - duxup 5y ago
    It sounds like you want the newspaper to pass judgment on her or something.
    - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
      Er, I am literally arguing for the opposite: report the facts; protect identity; don't get into the social mores / titillation conversation.

manholio 5y ago

andrewclunn 5y ago

Gaining fortune through fame is a sucker's game. Those with real fortunes attempt to avoid fame because it costs way more than it brings in. Once you hit that point of requiring private security, suddenly you're locked in and you need to keep the money coming in (via your fame) to protect yourself from the risk (associated with your fame). Plus it breeds the worst sort of social habits and incentives if you gain fame early in your life. It's so easy for young girls (who are even mildly attractive) with poor parents to get roped into this thing. It's the same perverse incentives that cause prostitutes to get their own daughters into the "family business" (which happens more often than you think). What you get validation from in your teenage years has a huge impact on what you strive for / put your effort into. Do the right thing for your kids long term and invest in them instead of cashing in on them.

screye 5y ago
> Gaining fortune through fame is a sucker's game There is great wisdom in this line. I would extend that to say that true freedom is the ability to 'do what you want, when you want.' Money is one pillar of this. It grants you the ability to have the material resources to do what you want. But, 2 confounders get in the way. Time and physical/environmental constraints. If you are gaining money (1 pillar) by compromising the others. Your net freedom stays the same. This includes all sort of suckers games: * Anonymity allows you to get away with anything without anyone noticing. Your example, addresses that freedom tradeoff. * Working long hours (in something unfulfilling) involves trading off time for money * Back breaking involves trading health for money A truly wealthy person is anonymous, rich and has all the time in the world, because they don't need to work to sustain their wealth.
duxup 5y ago
The whole striving for viewers and subscribers skews things. You see a lot of channels mimicking each other and so on. When the channel is “you” and you’re young I wonder what that means.

duxup 5y ago

My neighbor has twin daughters and casually told me he “found out” they have a YouTube channel. Approaching 1k subscribers… and they’re early middle school aged. He asked what I thought and I talked about how I monitor the best I can any online interactions for my kids and a secret YouTube channel would be a no go for me. He seemed conflicted on what to do, I’m still kinda horrified.

jeffy90 5y ago
I would feel conflicted as well. On the one hand, I would be happy to see someone work hard to build something they're interested in. On the other hand, I would feel nervous about all them getting exposed to the grossness of the internet.
- duxup 5y ago
  His description of the content didn’t encourage me :( If it was about hobbies or something I might feel differently.
sockpuppet69 5y ago
Syonyk 5y ago
My policy for any use of photos of our kids on my blog (which is mostly my projects, but occasionally includes triplogs, and as my kids are getting older, they show up a bit more often in builds) is simple: My wife and I both have to be entirely OK with any photos of them that I use - and I typically will use hand photos, or photos from the rear if they're helping with something. It's only very occasionally that you actually see faces, and that's going to be something like an interesting place we were as a family. Said photos are almost always a landscape shot with us in them. Our house, our rules. When they're old enough to be interacting with the internet on their own, I intend to apply the same rules - and we run a limited tech household anyway. Electronics don't go in rooms, and we've deliberately set things up so that the house computer is visible when in use, etc. "Oh, lulz, my daughter has a YouTube channel of her being a cute enough preteen to have 1000 subscribers without me knowing about it" would be well beyond the scope of reasonable, and in addition to having supervised-only internet use for quite a long while, I would supervise the removal of the channel. That's just not acceptable, in any way. If my kids want to publish things to the internet (and I hope they will), that's fine - it just has to go through us as parents first, at least until a regular trend of good judgement is demonstrated, and we get access to whatever is being published as well.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

As long as there has been fame, there has been stalkers. The idea that "it's on the internet, it must be safe" is a silly assumption. In fact, we should all know by now, the internet makes you more findable and more trackable. Young Karens - and your parents - you should know better. Just ask Jodi Foster.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/5Tu6e https://archive.is/5Tu6e