Summer vacation has started, and many netizens are posting photos of their family stay on social media. Whether popular or anonymous, the practice is widespread: more than half of parents have already tried it.
And Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is no exception. He recently posted a photo of his wife and his three children, having hidden the faces of two of them but not their little baby of a few months. Yeah the man in charge of facebook refuses to show the faces of their little ones on the web, should it be the same for all parents? Posting your children’s faces on social media – as long as they are recognizable – is not without risk.
a harmful practice
First, it creates an online identity for them, a kind of story they have no control over that could hurt them in the future, or just lead to disagreements. Depending on the photo, this could expose the child to bullying, for example.
But also, once the age of majority is reached, a child can sue their parents in the event that photos are published without their consent. In France, it is the penal code, and more specifically article 226-1 on invasion of privacy, that comes into play in this case. Such a situation can lead to a fine of up to 45,000 euros and one year in prison.
malicious use
Apart from the family, there is something more serious. Children’s photos can also be exploited by facial recognition services or, worse still, by child pornography image banks. In summer, especially, when the shots can be on the beach, in a bathing suit or simply with clothing adapted to the heat, such shots can attract predators.
According to the deputy Bruno Studer, who proposed, last January, a law to regulate the publications of children on the Internet, “50% of the images exchanged on child pornography forums had initially been published by parents on social networks social”.
In the case of artificial intelligence, and more specifically facial recognition, current media make it easier to find, a few years later, the face of a child who has grown over time. If Mark Zuckerberg did not blur the son of his baby, it is because the discussions about the effectiveness of AI at that age are not concrete.
But even if this level has not been reached, current advances in artificial intelligence suggest that facial recognition techniques will affect everyone in the future.
Lack of prevention
However, despite all these risks, social networks do not communicate, or little, on the subject. For example, no prevention tool is offered on Facebook or Instagram. There is also no tool to “blur” faces during the photo posting process. This observation is even more disappointing when Mark Zuckerberg himself guarantees the privacy of his children on the web.
To avoid having to resort to all these risks, some good practices can be adopted. If you do not want to blur the faces of your children, which is still the safest, there are other possibilities.
For example, restricting posts to only your group of friends. On most social networks, all you have to do is go to the privacy settings. On Instagram, the “Close Friends” feature launched in 2018 also allows posting stories that are only visible to a handful of people selected by the user.
Finally, family photos can also simply be exchanged via secure messaging, such as WhatsApp, and therefore not posted online.
Source: BFM TV
