[paperwasp42]

> The very last thing someone who's trans needs is to have a spotlight shoved in their face involuntarily.

Exactly! This seems so incredibly obvious, and I was stunned by the thousands of followers on the page who seemed to nonchalantly view this kid's privacy and wellbeing as a worthy sacrifice for supposed "trans activism." Especially since there were quite a few negative comments from trans individuals pointing out why this was wrong and a major violation of the girl's rights.

Stories about trans kids are very important to tell, and they can be wonderful tools to encourage empathy and understanding. But they deserve the utmost caution and respect when handling them, especially when there is the complication of people being able to profit off the children.

The other startling thing about the page was the mom's complete lack of interest in shielding details such as what school or hospital the girl went to. It seemed wildly dangerous to publicly proclaim your child to be a member of an endangered minority who often faces hate crimes, and then tell the world exactly which elementary school they attend. Talk about a great way to bait nut-jobs.

I realize I sound very twisted talking about those sorts of possibilities, but as someone who works in cybersecurity, I have just seen too many creeps commit too many crimes.

I would absolutely love to see a policy that forbids the sharing of photos of children, and any identifying details of children, to a public audience. If people want to share those things with their direct network, then sure. But it seems a wild violation of personal rights to be able to share those personal details about another human being to the entire internet, when the child is far too young to consent.

[CRConrad]

> I would absolutely love to see a policy that forbids the sharing of photos of children, and any identifying details of children, to a public audience. If people want to share those things with their direct network, then sure.

And even that is difficult. I mean, let's say Facebook could be required to forbid people from sharing intimate stuff about children with the world at large, but only let them be visible to family and friends. “Wow, easy, problem solved!”, right? But then there are lots of people who have many hundreds, even thousands, of “friends”. How “direct” a network is that?!? So no, not easy at all.