Flickr Perversion
Yesterday, I received an email notice saying that a few of my Flickr photos had been favorited. These particular photos were of my children, mostly of my daughter. Every time this happens, I go to see who the Flickr user is, and most of the time, it is a family member, a close friend, or someone I know through Twitter (or other social network). I did not recognize the user in this particular case, and when I went to see their photos, the Flickr message alerted me that none of the user’s photos were available. Seeing as my photos had been favorited, I went to see what other photos had been marked as favorites by this user.
My jaw dropped to the floor.
What I saw was three pages of favorited photos of preteen girls, most shots in bathing suits or with little clothing. Had I viewed any of these photos individually, isolated from the others, I am sure that this same feeling of disgust would not have come over me. But these photos, viewed together, favorited by some anonymous user, told a very different story. These photos of these girls were without a doubt being sexualized, and my four-year-old daughter was amongst these images.
Note: The images I include below are the actual screenshots. My daughter does not appear in these images, and she was the only girl in these photos that was well clothed. I have included these screenshots because I think it is important to get a sense of what happened here. However, I have significantly reduced the size of this image for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
These photos are legal. The actions of the user who favorited these is also legal (although incredibly disgusting). I did not want photos of my child to appear here. So, this is what I did:
1) Blocked the user. This means my photos would no longer appear in the list. However, if your photos are viewable to the public, this means they can still be viewed, just not favorited.
2) Contacted Flickr: I reported this user, and within a couple of hours, the user was taken down.
End of story? Nope.
I get another email, telling me that more of my daughter’s photos had been favorited. Same story. I check out the user, no photos, but many favorites. It gets worse.
This time, there were four pages of girls favorited by this user. The girls were a bit older, but in the majority of the photos, the subjects were handcuffed, often in sexually provocative poses. Again, my daughter’s photos appeared. I blocked the user, contacted Flickr. Same deal. But obviously, that’s not enough.
I admit, I live my life (in the) Open. I have been lucky that I have never had to block a person from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc., before this time. Sure, there has been the odd griefer here and there, but usually, these problems resolve themselves if you deal with them appropriately, or in some cases, ignore them. My belief is that in all aspects of life, we should not have to live our lives in fear. I’m an idealist. I believe in the power of good people, and I have been lucky enough to have been surrounded by good people in both my temporal and virtual realities.
But these types of incidents shake up everything one believes. So now, rather than provide answers, I want to provide some questions for anyone willing to respond. Here are some of my questions.
1) What must parents know about the realities of the Internet in regards to how we deal with the photos (and identities) of our children?
2) What are the benefits of an open vs. a closed reality? Are the benefits of openness (e.g., in regards to our families) worth the risks? And, what are the credible risks?
3) What precautions should we take, or perhaps, what precautions do you take in the presentation/development of your family’s digital identity?
4) What rights and responsibilities do we have as parents to protect the digital identities of our children?
5) How do we proceed from here? How do we help other parents to understand these important issues?
I’d love to hear from you. While openness will be a continued theme in my educational life, I continue to rethink these philosophies on the most personal of levels. It is also my belief in openness that guides me in telling this story. I believe that we need to face these issues head on, inform others, raise awareness, and work to solve these problems together.
May 26th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
@Pat Thanks for your thoughts.
re: “The part that disturbs me personally is what I view as a lack of civility in some of the responses, especially if an individual felt that his/her parenting skills were being questioned. What is posed as opinion is sometimes viewed as an attack, with a corresponding hostile response.”
There are a couple of ways to look at this. If you subscribe to basic communication theory, you may have heard of Lasswell’s Maxim: “who says what to whom in what channel with what effect”. While basic communication describes the process of information being sent from sender to receiver, what is also important is how that information is first crafted, worded, or constructed. In your response, it seems that you place most of the responsibility upon the receiver of a message. Message construction is a result not only of what is received, but in how the message is originally constructed. Addressing the “in what channel” attribute, any message received could have a different effect depending on the channel. For instance, we may tolerate swearing more at a hockey game or football game, vs. a classroom.
In context, a message that somewhat leans or alludes to poor parenting skills would likely be defended more vigorously in a personal blog space (where one constructs and shares their digital identity) vs. a casual comment at the mall. Aside from this, messages are also influenced by previous conversations, individual and group histories, context of the conversation, and other critical elements contextual to the event and to the participants.
Yes, “what is posed as opinion can sometimes be viewed as an attack.” Yet, I do not agree with the underlying assumption that the construction of messages are more the responsibility of the receiver. Also, it can be said that some opinions are indeed attacks. Without context, how do we discern? Individuals who are new or unfamiliar to a particular conversational context (e.g., first time commenters) would likely have to construct their messages even more carefully in order for their intended meaning to get across.
In spirit, your message says to me that you favour “open dialogue”. I do as well. Yet, open dialogue means a careful creation, negotiation, reception, and construction of messages; such responsibilities lie with both senders and receivers. In this spirit, I trust that you will not see this message as an attack on you, but simply a response to your comment written in the spirit of open dialogue.
May 27th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Hi Alec, I responded earlier (#45 and #80), but this latest flurry of comments raises some further questions.
In general I do not give or approve of unsolicited advice about parenting except where manifest harm is occurring, and I do not agree with some of the responses you objected to. But I do think that you seem to be taking offense at people giving what (they thought) you were asking for.
So, more explicitly, here are my own answers to your questions:
1) What must parents know about the realities of the Internet in regards to how we deal with the photos (and identities) of our children?
A1) The internet merely amplifies what was true (and should have been known)before it existed. Namely that there is no way of preventing a published picture from being used (and circulated for use) in ways that you might not approve of – and in fact that you might find downright revolting.
What the internet does is make it much more likely that you will discover these things without actually looking for them. Good if you want to know, bad if you don’t.
2) What are the benefits of an open vs. a closed reality? Are the benefits of openness (e.g., in regards to our families) worth the risks? And, what are the credible risks?
A2)The expectation of physical risk is known to be small (but that just means that the probability of something horrible happening as a direct consequence of publication is very low – not that it is impossible). The probable risk of future discomfort or embarrassment is on the other hand quite high.
Of course both kinds of risk are present no matter what we do and the marginal risk of openness is probably only very small.
The benefits to an individual of openness (esp wrt student work) include promotion and recognition of talent – although this may be just as effectively achieved by communication to a more restricted audience, so the real benefit may be more to society as a whole than to the individuals being exposed.
However the relative weighting of risks vs benefits of openness is something that each individual will have to decide for him or her self (or have decided by parents).
3) What precautions should we take, or perhaps, what precautions do you take in the presentation/development of your family’s digital identity?
A3) This is where you invite criticism (with the “should”). I have taken no precautions myself, but my own children were grown by the time that I (or they) could be faced with easy accidental exposure to anything nasty that might have been done with their images.
4) What rights and responsibilities do we have as parents to protect the digital identities of our children?
A4) Again, you are asking for it!
Dirk’s #86 may have been a bit over the top, but a comparison (with FAS) is not an identification, and in an increasingly litigious world I’m not sure I would discount the possibility of being sued both for forcing a child to dance on one day and for not doing so on the next. (Remember the lightsabre dance? What if a parent had found that and thought it cute enough to post? But again it’s not just the internet. Various traditional TV shows seem to provide for some pretty gross violations of children’s privacy these days.)
5) How do we proceed from here? How do we help other parents to understand these important issues?
A5) I can’t answer the first, but I think you have done a great service on the second of these.
May 27th, 2009 at 1:32 am
[...] This post was Twitted by sguilana – Real-url.org [...]
May 27th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your careful and comprehensive response to my initial queries.
I will not comment on all of your points, but would like to draw out two pieces. re: A3, yes I used ’should’, and perhaps that’s where the confusion (as you point out in the 2nd sentence of your comment) came from. For some, that may lead people to responses that are or at least sound like personal attacks, and I’d probably word things a bit differently next time. Of course, I never imagined that this post would get this sort of attention. Lessons learned. However, I think it is also important to point out that your carefully crafted response to these queries wholly avoided these personal judgments.
But my bigger question comes from your response in A2. I don’t have an answer to this, but I question the assumption.
You write, “The benefits to an individual of openness (esp wrt student work) include promotion and recognition of talent – although this may be just as effectively achieved by communication to a more restricted audience, so the real benefit may be more to society as a whole than to the individuals being exposed.”
Audience is indeed important, and I wonder about the “restricted audience”. What potential difference to student motivation occurs when you go from being recognized in the classroom, to the local community, to the city, to the province/state, nation, to an international audience (not that most of these borders actually exist these days?). How restrictive is restrictive? At what point is the difference in the size of the audience negligible to student motivation and growth? Of course, this cannot be answered generally, but I think these are interesting questions.
Thanks to you, and to everyone (everyone!) for your responses to this now almost 6 month old post. :-)
June 7th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Alec,
With respect to all of your questions, the issue involves a balancing of benefits and risks. Clearly there are pedophiles cruising public places looking for pictures of children who attract their interest. And they communicate with others. So if your child’s picture gets picked up by one, this will attract the interest of others. This is obviously what happened in your case.
But having paid attention to the research in this area and the statistics, your daughter faces far greater risks of actual sexual abuse by you (sorry, that is just statistically speaking), an uncle, a grandfather, a teacher, a religious leader, etc.) But still, as a parent, the idea that my daughter or son’s image could end up in some pedophile’s collection is of concern to me and I would seek to prevent this.
So I am going to consider a variety of issues. Where the image is posted? Who has access to the image? What kind of image – does the image present the child in a manner that would potentially attract the interest of someone with sexual interests in children or teens? What is the reason or benefit derived from posting the image in the place it is posted? And does the reason or benefit outweigh the risk?
Maybe you can help me. Where I am having problems in balancing benefits and risks in your case is the question of benefit.
Of what possible benefit is it to you or your daughter that you are posting images of her in a very public place where other people are allowed to “collect” favorite images and share them as a group collection to others – a place where people with unhealthy sexual interests in children and teens are clearly present and active? Please help me understand your reasoning.
Then, lets transfer this to the school environment. Should a school post images of students on publicly accessible sites? What are the risks and how great are those risks? What are the benefits? What standards should be put in place? Nancy
June 7th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
@Nancy: Good to hear from you. I’ve been a follower of your work. Thanks for your response.
I’d like to respond first with some clarification. First, when you write “clearly there are pedophiles cruising public places”, one of the things brought up earlier in the comments was the distinction between paraphilia & pedophilia. While clinically, the distinction is more clear, in common usage, the latter term refers to actual physical child sexual abuse. In your later question, this distinction may not be as important, but I think it is important that I use more accurate language to assess what we (as parents) deal with, and more so, what may have happened in this particular case.
Second, you write “so if your child’s picture gets picked up by one, this will attract the interest of others. This is obviously what happened in your case.” I would agree with your general assessment, but I do not agree that is what happened in my case (and you wouldn’t have had enough information to consider otherwise). Because the person was using similar user names and acted quickly, I am more likely to think that it was one person who noticed being blocked but had a number of alternate user names.
To your more important question, consider the following blog post re: the children at PS22 in NYC – http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/1603 . I could screen capture any moment of that video. Or, I could scan children in the newspaper. Or, I could go down to the public park with a camera, even a zoom lens, and take photos of children on a daily basis. Access to innocent photographs of children are numerous, we can find literally billions of photographs of children online or offline. What kind of society do we become when we hide photographs, videos, artefacts, and the creative works of our children? What happens to us as a society and as individuals when we buy into this fear culture? As others have commented, women and children are objectified in much worse ways in television and news every single day than the ultimate result of sharing a proud family moment of a child via Flickr. As Will Richardson noted much earlier, where is the outrage in those cases? I’d also note that there are much better places for paraphiliacs to pick up “real” child pornography than from Flickr, where the majority of child photographs (like those of my children) are innocent, fully clothed, and non-provocative.
As parents, I think it is important as others have noted that we take care in what photos we choose to post, where we post them, what we tag them with, and overall, we need to assess our reasons for sharing. For me, as this conversation has really helped me understand, my reasons are in line with my beliefs of a free, open, and generally good and caring society. I will not exploit my children, but I will raise them in a way that I feel will be to their greatest benefit.
Most of my photos get only a dozen or so views. I am notified of when these are favorited by someone I don’t know, and I will block. Of course, this doesn’t mean I am in total control of my photographs. And Nancy, I know that you have many photographs of yourself on the web, and you know that you are not in control of these either.
There is a convicted child killer and rapist who lives in my city, as he was recently granted parole. These are the types of people I fear.
http://www.leaderpost.com/Life+goes+with+killer+parole/1661360/story.html
He committed these crimes about 3 decades ago, long before age of the Internet. In his case, his victims were random. And you have said yourself, the chances are more likely from a relative than a stranger in cases of child sexual abuse. There is not any correlation of the photographs being on Flickr or in public spaces being related to physical sexual abuse, and again, that’s what I think is most important in understanding all of this.
As for schools, take the case of Kathy Cassidy’s Grade 1 classroom. http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337 . I would seriously consider moving to this city if Kathy could be my girl’s Grade 1 teacher. These children are learning in powerful ways and their Internet activities have linked them to experiences that I believe all children should have. They have found an authentic audience, they regularly consult with distant experts, they are mentored by other teachers and preservice teachers, and at an early age they understand the importance in balancing sharing and safety. I do not want the work of my children held hostage in the four walls of a classroom. I want my children to value what it means to live in a free and open society, but to also understand the real risks, not the media-generated absurdities.
Standards? Let’s create school policies based on the new possibilities of open and connected learning. Let’s help students understand what these new realities mean for digital identity and presence. Let’s educate for a better world, and not let our standards and policies be driven by fear.
I’m not sure if I really answered your questions, Nancy. Again, I appreciate your questions, and I want to thank you for dropping in on this very important conversation.
June 7th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
I’m very sorry to read about this though I think it’s great that you have shared your story and alerted others to a similar danger. And as much as my wired friends like to shush shush tech panic stories I think a truly critical discussion of the web – in all its glory – must address the dark and very authentic dangers of the web.
To that end, I also feel it’s necessary to interrogate the philosophy of “open” – a philosophy I support and advocate – along equitable, ethical and democratic terms. Not all forms of information should be accessible to anyone or everyone. Take your intimate conversation with your spouse or indeed your private activities in your home. Unless you are Winston Smith living in an Orwellian dystopia, you can assume that you can enjoy both without surveillance, monitoring or documentation.
Those who believe that “open” should extend to everything do not respect the individual democratic rights of citizen and individual privacy. And there is such a thing – as quite distinct from institutional, corporate or political space.
The open movement has to start defining a more respectful term for spaces/content that is not open – beyond “locked down” or “walled.” These terms are essentially negative and connote propriety. As a woman I am especially sensitive to my privacy in a sexist society – and the internet is exceptional in that regard. As a citizen my privacy is a right. When somebody hassles me because I have chosen to protect my Twitter updates I regard that as form of explicit oppression and an socially corrosive attitude.
While I wouldn’t deign to tell you how you should live your life online I would say – as someone who has experienced bullying and oppression – that there are very good reasons to make certain content private (available only to family and close friends). As much as I’d like to inhabit a more equitable internet where you and I can share our lives more freely we should also respect each others decisions about what we choose NOT to share. This is my message to the open movement.
I’d also argue that the majority of proponents of the Open Movement appear to be male, white and privileged. Why is that? Because those groups represent a power base that isn’t especially subjected to harm, abuse, exploitation or marginalisation. If any of the Open movement wonders where all the women, teens, minorities and exploited people are it’s because many of us expressly seek “safe” spaces.
So I’d like to propose a new term: “Safe space” to borrow from the queer community. Would you describe a gay youth shelter as a “walled garden” or a “locked down” environment? No. Because we would understand the nature of that space as being free of oppression.
The internet is not a space that is free of oppression. For that reason, groups who are oppressed, abused or exploited (including children) should never, ever be admonished for making choices that speak to their needs for safety and freedom from harm.
June 7th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
#106: “To your more important question, consider the following blog post re: the children at PS22 in NYC – http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/1603 . I could screen capture any moment of that video. Or, I could scan children in the newspaper. Or, I could go down to the public park with a camera, even a zoom lens, and take photos of children on a daily basis. Access to innocent photographs of children are numerous, we can find literally billions of photographs of children online or offline. What kind of society do we become when we hide photographs, videos, artifacts, and the creative works of our children? What happens to us as a society and as individuals when we buy into this fear culture?”
your comments here get at my feelings on the subject. every summer there are numerous photos of children at area public pools or beaches on Lake Michigan. these photos often contain first and last names. big whoop! the thing is, the people subscribing to a newspaper will likely live in the area. they could easily grab a phone book and find an address for the kids in the photos (even area maps in many phone books). this happens without the internet. when people view photos of my children online, it’s more than likely that they live quite far away. i have a 9 year old daughter and i started a blog about our family in 2000 (before blogging was called blogging) to document her growing up. my family and old friends live far away so it was an easy way to keep folks updated on what we’re doing in a general sense. i had a “first bathtub bath” series of photos in 2000 that didn’t show anything other than head shots, but that was the label on the photos. i noticed in my web log that this page of photos was getting an unreal number of hits so i changed the name and a short time later the number of hits was down to normal levels for my site with the newly named bath time photos barely getting a single hit any more. of course, that episode made me think about much of what is discussed in this thread because i didn’t even expect to be getting an audience beyond my family and friends who i had shared the address with (remember, this is 2000). i didn’t consider quitting the online postings at all — the thought didn’t even cross my mind. i did decide to be more careful in how search engines are going to find us. and i decided to keep on posting what i post. now my kids are old enough (7 and 9) that they enjoy picking which photos or videos are included in our online presence, but i don’t always ask them since they always ask to see the photos i’ve taken with the assumption that some might go online. i am not scared about it in the least. not even after reading this whole series of events. the internet is not forcing people to have sick minds and it’s not making it easier for their minds to be sick. there were sickos before the internet was popular. and, like you noted, my kids play at the school right by our house and a person with a telephoto lens locally could be getting tons of photos of my kids quite easily. or, this person could drive to the parking lot of a pool at a club we use and get many more. do i make it easier by choosing the photos i choose to post online? i doubt it, but i don’t know what i am making easier???
i have an activity in my classes where i have my students (college age) find ed tech blogs and leave comments and hopefully engage in a conversation with an ed tech professional who isn’t me. i tell them they need to let me know who they are, but that they should put “205″ in their name if they decide not to use their real name (so they don’t just pick some random comment and claim it as their own — heh). surprisingly to me, most choose to go with their first name and 205 (ellie205), which is fine. however, i wonder why so many are hesitant to just use their name. i suspect that kids today are being taught to be leery of the online world. or, maybe i am over analyzing and it’s as simple as they aren’t putting much thought into the comments they leave and they don’t want to be associated with them outside of class.
in any regard, i’ve enjoyed the discussion. i do note that there seem to be many folks who are likely educators, if they follow your blog, who are still in fear of someone seeing a photo online. as though it’s different if a photo is posted by a parent or school, yet school aged athletes have their photos online and in newspapers all of the time during a competition without anyone batting an eyelash (e.g., from a swim meet). i struggle to see the harm in having stories or photos posted publicly. i am 9 years into it with my family and i am still far more careful about the physical world (i don’t let my 9 year old go biking without me) than the online one (e.g., that her photo is being looked at by a sicko).
June 8th, 2009 at 6:08 am
After your initial posting I went to check our class Flickr account, it’s public and open to viewing by anyone. A seemingly innocuous favoriting of children skipping (jump rope?)led me to an account where the focus seemed to be barefoot young girls. Checking back at the photo revealed that there were quite a few barefoot skippers and this was probably what had led the user to favorite it in the first place. I blocked them, but couldn’t see a way to report them to Flickr. Anyway, what would I say? Like you said earlier, this person has committed no crime. It was unexpected and just plain creepy.
I’m keeping our Flickr account public and will be monitoring it, but even if I catch and block an inappropriate favorite there’s no way to stop people bookmarking or favoriting a page in their browser.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Thanks so much for the personal anecdote. I am often asked by educators who do not maintain an online presence how I protect myself professionally and how I support/protect my own teenage daughters in their own online lives. School librarians generally teach what I online safety principles to students. It is not unusual for this safety training to include outreach to parents on how to ensure that their kids are maintaining in safe practices online. But seldom do K-12 educators consider the importance of teaching parents how to keep their own online lives secure. To be sure, your post has opened an important window in my own professional view…I plan to spread the word!
June 11th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Read this article and thought of this discussion. Thought it might be of interest to you (Alec) and others here.
September 24th, 2009 at 2:38 am
[...] made me hyper aware of how vulnerable I am making her. I am sure many of you read Alec Curosa’s post a few month back about his Flickr stalker. I started to think about how much trust we ask that [...]
November 11th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
[...] blogger Dadventure had a disturbing story a few months ago about a guy named Alec who noticed photos of his daughter he put up on Flickr had been "favourited" by someone [...]
December 20th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Hello,
I had a similar experience with pictures of our children being favorited, tagged, etc. When we followed the links we came to similar foto galleries as those posted here.
Although I work in IT and visitor clickstream software, I don’t presume to know how to approach this issue. Therefore I wrote an email to Flickr. No response. I wrote an email to Yahoo. No response. I wrote several emails to both Flickr and to Yahoo, filled in feedback forms, etc. I never received any response (this was 6 months ago).
Has anybody received any response from Flickr?
It seems strange to me to not at least receive a response regarding my concerns of child pornography on flickr. My conclusion is that Flickr are trying to ignore this issue in the hopes of it not hurting their revenue streams.