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> What's even the point of posting a photo of your child, with the face hidden? Seems very niche. Might be a cultural US thing, but this is something my wife d

• Grustaf 5y ago
  I have kids, and don't mind posting their photos. But if I did, why post at all? It just seems weird. "Here's my son, minus the face. Oh he's so cute!"
  • mysterydip 5y ago
    I have a friend who does this for her foster kid(s).
    • Nathanael_M 5y ago
      My in-laws foster and this is the first use case I thought of. It’s sad to take a big family photo and either not be able to share it, or have to take a duplicate without the foster child.
      • Grustaf 5y ago
        Why do you need to do that?
        • ajbourg 5y ago
          Speaking as a foster parent: my agency like many have rules against posting foster kids to social media. Usually intended to help protect kid's privacy. I think the motivation comes from a handful of places, protecting kids from being exploited for likes, keeping kids privacy, but a big one in foster circles is so that people don't know you're a foster kid unless you say so. Most adults in the system take great care to not acknowledge kids if they run into them in public to avoid situations where kids have to explain to their friends, "Who is that?" and then having an awkward situation where they have to say something like, "That's my caseworker/therapist/whatever".
          • Grustaf 5y ago
            Some of these make sense (not that I agree with them), but don't seem peculiar to foster children. But what does this one mean? > so that people don't know you're a foster kid unless you say so. If you post a photo of your family and none of the children have emoji faces, why would anyone conclude that the foster child is a foster child? Because he looks different? Seems to me that emoji:ing out one child would do the opposite, draw attention to him. EDIT: It seems we are talking about temporary arrangements, then things become clearer. Still very weird photos.
            • greedo 5y ago
              Not all foster kids come from the same ethnic backgrounds. So for example if you're Caucasian and post a picture of your family with a foster child who is Asian, or African-American etc, it can bring unwanted attention.
              • Grustaf 5y ago
                Not saying you're wrong at all, I have zero insight into foster care. Just trying to understand. But why is it a problem if someone sees a family photo and notices that one kid looks different? He could just be adopted, or a friend or something. Is it something like witness protection, the children might have abusive parents that shouldn't be able to find them? If it's a matter of not standing out, they will stand out just as much when you meet them anyway, right?
                • greedo 5y ago
                  The number of people you meet in person is limited by geography. The number of people who might view a photo online is 7+ billion. Foster kids might have abusive parents as you surmised. They might have been removed from an unsafe home, or have relatives that were denied custody and might act on a photo.
            • ajbourg 5y ago
              I was referring generally to the general desire for "the system" to preserve the privacy of kids in care. I think you have to look at it holistically and not just social media. We also signed agreements that we would be very careful with the information we received about our placements, they don't deserve their story being blasted around (even to close friends and family) unless it is needed for the benefit of the child, and even then only to the degree necessary. I've been in doctor's appointments where the nurse is quizzing me on my family medical history and I've had to stop them with, "We're not biologically related and I don't know the biological history". No need for them to know the whole story. I feel privacy for kids is really important, for a number of different reasons. (preventing kids from being exploited for likes by foster parents, preservation and ownership for them to tell their story in their way when they are ready for it, privacy, sometimes protection from relatives that don't have their best interests at heart, and probably a dozen other reasons I have never thought of.) The best default is really to keep everything private in my opinion, but obviously not every agency or foster parent will agree to all the same specifics as me.
        • wlesieutre 5y ago
          Probably varies by location but here's what Connecticut DCF has to say about it: > Please refrain from posting any photos or information on social media websites about the child/ren in your care. Their presence in your home should be treated as confidential information is not to be referred to on any social media websites. https://portal.ct.gov/DCF/CTFosterAdopt/Manual/Chapter2#SchoolPics https://portal.ct.gov/DCF/CTFosterAdopt/Manual/Chapter2#Scho...
        • andrewoneone 5y ago
          Why do you care? Nearly every comment you've left here in this post has negative language. You claim to have been an iOS developer for ten years - where's your podcast? Where are your apps on the app store that you're posting publicly about? Why aren't we talking about Grustaf in this post? Find empathy. Find humility. Find more in life than being a negative person on the internet.
          • Grustaf 5y ago
            I asked because I didn't see why foster children specifically had to be hidden. The reason you are not talking about me is that I'm not famous. Does that disqualify me from having an opinion? Do all opinions have to be positive? Do I have to (pretend to) believe that this app can make money? That seems pretty strange, this is not a kindergarten, grownups should be able to handle feedback even when it's not praise. If he needs empathy, he should go to his friends and family. I will just write what I believe, and that is that this is not a monetizable service, he is wasting his time. He obviously has made a name for himself in podcasting, so he should double down on that. He is clearly not a product person, and I don't think he's a very good developer, he will do much better focusing on his strengths. I'm curious, why do I need to have a podcast if I have been an iOS developer for 10 years, what's the connection?
            • andrewoneone 5y ago
              lol
  • coin 5y ago
    Yes it’s bizarre and I don’t understand it. Didn’t even realize it’s a thing.
  • d3nj4l 5y ago
    I think it's like a preference - I don't understand it either, but I've seen it enough times that I don't think it matters whether I understand. Some people like it.
  • matt_heimer 5y ago
    For some, its not about the kids its about showing themselves as a parent. For others, its about sharing with people that you know that you and your kids had a good time while providing some privacy protection for your kids. Micro-managing who can see what picture is hard, the people that know your kids get the full mental image from the picture.
    • wyldfire 5y ago
      > the people that know your kids get the full mental image from the picture. Maybe it's just me but this kinda thing seems a little weird. If it's too much work to partition into groups then maybe not post at all? But then again I'm not doing any social networks so I guess I'm not the intended audience.
    • 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
      This post made it make sense to me. It’s about the people taking the photos and some external validation thing.
    • kiwijimm 5y ago
      I also didn't get this. Why put photo's on social media of your kids AT ALL if you feel weird about it. Making them look weirder feel a bit strange to me. But now you point out that is basically to enable virtue signalling for parents its makes more sense.
  • ProAm 5y ago
    To be fair their podcast has two programmers and a stay at home dad so it makes sense why he only had focus on his kids. The app isnt worth .99 cents though with questionable utility and a plethora of other apps that do this for free.
    • greedo 5y ago
      To be accurate, all three of the hosts are programmers.
      • ProAm 5y ago
        Two of them are working programmers though and, in my opinion, much stronger programmers. I just think it's clear why he thought this was a valuable app idea.
        • greedo 5y ago
          I've listened to ATP since day one. My impression of Siracusa as a programmer is limited to the few apps he's released. But he could be a fantastic programmer at his "jobby-job." Or he could just be average. We have no way of telling, despite how intelligent both his writing and his speaking on the podcast might convey. Marco is very successful with Tumblr, Instapaper, and Overcast, yet we don't know how good a programmer he is. He's made great money, and has strong opinions, but again, we don't know how good a programmer he is. Casey used to have a "jobby-job" before leaving the corporate world. So he too might be a good, bad or excellent programmer. We don't know. It's kind of like how you don't really know someone until you live with them. For programming, it's until you've worked with them and seen their code. All three of the hosts might be world class; or they might be average. But there's no way to determine who is the strongest programmer of the three. We can debate who's been more successful selling their code, but we don't know where Siracusa works and code/app sales are a poor metric for code quality.
          • Grustaf 5y ago
            We obviously can't know, but hearing someone talk about something gives you an idea. My impression is that Casey is quite weak (as in average), but meticulous. Siracusa is almost certainly the one with the best understanding of theory, but hard to say how he is practically. He could be very good at what he's doing. Marco also doesn't seem very strong in raw programming (he resisted Swift for half a decade, complains that it's hard to deal with, says that architecture is only for beginners etc) but obviously he can solve whatever problem he is faced with, even quite complex ones. And this is obviously what matters if you are an indie developer. That and product sense, which he is also very good at. He probably has the perfect skillset for an indie developer, better programming wouldn't make him any more successful.
  • tedmiston 5y ago
    I also find it bizarre and think similarly... if you're going to cover up the person's face, why post it at all? I have seen some people use these on dating apps where they don't want their own children's or other people's children's faces to be visible. I understand that use case a bit more from a privacy perspective.
• rchaud 5y ago
  It makes total sense. I don't have kids, but I certainly understand that they aren't old enough to understand the principle of consent when it comes to being photographed for pics that will be shared online by their parents. So blurring them out somehow protects privacy and lets parents their habitual social media posting.
• distartin 5y ago
  I think it's not just US thing, I've seen parents did the same thing outside US. There's a market for this but urgency is probably low, fortunately this got viral