Since having a baby a week ago, all of a sudden everyone is willing to install a decent messaging app in order to receive pics of the baby.
We explained that we weren't ready for images of our child to end up in the wrong hands via non-private apps. Another thing was telling them that the one single friend who had already got on board with this had already been recieving pics...
It's been a conversation starter for many and I think seeing privacy from the point of view of a newborn has helped our family and friends understand it a bit more easily. Plus they've had to put up with it if they want any photos, so they will see it working firsthand.
So, if you want to have a baby, know that it can be a wonderful opportunity to help loved ones communicate more privately.
It also increases the sum total of love, community and compassion in the world and in your own life but that's a conversation for another community :)
Edit: If anyone has good tips on how to share a little one's journey more privately with those that care about them, please post them in the discussion.
I have two kids. I asked people to use signal to send and receive the photos. Asking people to follow your requirements only works for the direct immediate communication. The photos of my kids were sent by the recipients I sent them to (over signal) to other members of the family, over gmail (unencrypted), WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. I learned that years after.
This was in direct violation of my express requests. When I confronted them, they played dumb.
So, not to be a buzzkill here OP, but if you did this to get more people to use your messenger of choice, good job, it worked. If you did this so the pics of your kids stayed on safe apps, don't fool yourself. They didn't.
That's OK, I understand that unfortunately it's only a matter of time until images of them end up somewhere I don't want want them, either through ignorance or a difference in values. That's the world we live in right now sadly. But hopefully I can delay and minimise it a bit, open a better channel of communication with a few friends and relatives and perhaps raise some awareness in the process.
I'm genuinely sorry to hear about your experience, especially with the pictures of them ending up on instagram. At least you were responsible as a parent and tried to do your best.
Its important to share and celebrate the birth of a child with your community. Yet another part of our lives that has been compromised by the degradation of our privacy unfortunately.
But hopefully I can delay and minimise it a bit, open a better channel of communication with a few friends and relatives and perhaps raise some awareness in the process.
Yeah, my strategy is to not share pictures of my kids at all. I can hold my phone up in front of people's face so they can look if they want, but that's it.
My relatives hated this strategy, and I wasn't the only one who suffered from it. They guilted me for it, but also guilted my parents and siblings. As if they are entitled to the details of my daughter.
People could handle (though they were vocally unhappy about it) is keeping the baby off Facebook. They could not handle me not sending pics on (Facebook) messenger, and they couldn't handle me not telling me the birth weight.
Multiple boomers got very upset that I wanted to keep that information private.
Wait, who other than the grandparents actually wants to see the baby pictures? In my experience it is insufferable new parents that want to show their baby pictures to everyone and you have to pretend to like it to be polite. Maybe others just agreed to using another messenger just so they could ignore it better?
Depends on the baby, I liked seeing my nieces and nephews growing up. Random coworker baby pics though, they get one pic to announce them, then unsubscribe.
Yeah they're amazing! They definitely come with some intense needs but I think the world would be a better place if we all spent more time around babies.
Haha. Yes, grandparents but also aunties and uncles and close friends. I've noticed that especially friends who have their own kids have been really keen. It's mostly been my girlfriend's female friends but my own two best friends (male) have been keen because they've been by my side in the journey and have been excited and wishing us well. For us it's not about spamming all of our contacts, just sharing with people who are close.
We explained that we weren't ready for images of our child to end up in the wrong hands via non-private apps. Another thing was telling them that the one single friend who had already got on board with this had already been recieving pics...
This really is the best way. Once there's a REASON for extra security, people understand and want to learn more. Once it's installed, other day or day conversations can take place there
If you start off with low priority / day to day conversations, they aren't as willing to put in the energy
This really is the best way. Once there's a REASON for extra security, people understand and want to learn more.
No one cares. Nobody around you understands the security, the need for it, and the requirements. They will pretend, to see your kid. And then immediately and completely stop caring. It works for making people adopt your favourite messenger, yes. But nothing else.
Yes, this exactly what has happened with one of my friends - after installing Session for the pics he is now messaging me on the app about unrelated stuff instead of using SMS in whatever his preinstalled iOS app is. Win!
We created a WordPress (installed on our server) blog which requires logins we have to approve. We share this with family members, with an email notification to them when something new is posted. They can post comments to the site.
We really actually did this for ourselves, as a kind of family photo album/blog, and so would have it even if no one else was invited :-)
We got them using Session. My girlfriend and I currently use Jami for text/calls/files but I found that Session worked more reliably with my friend who uses an iphone, so we went with that. So far so good!
In case you don't already know, to make voice calls with Session you have to enable it in the settings. I also recommend changing the theme from the stock 'bio-hazard' one!
That’s why my aunt and uncle finally got iPhones. They were missing out on iMessage and FaceTime with the grandkids and rest of the family making plans.
Wait, so the family chose to keep two people out of the loop until they caved and bought new hardware instead of adding one more app that would be common for everyone and give everyone the option to use whatever hardware they wanted?
Nobody uses third-party messaging apps here; it’s not just those two old people. There’s just no need.
MMS has horrible quality videos and can’t be added and removed from a group chat and breaks functionality for everyone else in the chat.
We're using Session with friends and family because I think it works most reliably with people who use apple devices out of the box. We use Jami for each other because it's p2p (distributed) and endorsed by the FSF. I set up Jami on my mum's phone too. You can use your own push notification provider with it or simply let it run in the background if you want to run your phone without google or apple servers but still want instant notifications for messages and voice calls. Jami is the app I would most like to see succeed. I believe you can also use it on internal networks, which is a pro in terms of independence future-proofing
This would be a good use case for private posts on self-hosted Movim + XMPP. Only your followers can see the posts but they persist unlike messages which tend to fade either due to expiry or just being too far back in the history. The XMPP platform’s clients come with OMEMO for double ratchet E2EE & Movim has a slick progressive web app for anyone that doesn’t want ta install some app while being able to comment on posts, participate in DMs+audio/voice calls, as well as MUCs (multi-user chat).
There's no signup involved for the apps we're using - you just download them and share IDs with people (you can even choose to add only people who don't have kids). Worth checking out: