I think a large part of their concern is AI-altered photos generated by an individual.

Came here to say this. If you upload pictures to instagram, they are already being processed by Facebook ("Meta"). If you have an online backup of your photos Google/Apple cloud, then they are alredy being processed.

The problem with posting pictures of kids in closed groups is that pervs will just join those groups because they have what they're looking for. You're basically making it easier for them.

It's not that parents are afraid of their kids being part of a training set, though that is a bad thing in and of itself. It's more about all of these AI undressing app ads that are showing up on every social media site, showing just how much of a wild-west situation things currently are, and that this brand of sexual exploitation is in-demand.

Predators are already automating the process so that certain Instagram models get the AI undressing treatment as soon as they upload an exploitable pic. Pretty trivial to do at scale with Instaloader, GroundingDINO, SAM, and SD. Those pics are hosted outside of Instagram where victims have no power to undo the damage. Kids will get sexually exploited in this process, incidentally or intentionally.

Growing up at the dawn of the internet, this was considered normal. You stay anonymous online because you don’t know who the person on the other end of the screen is. What changed?

I think it is just a different scary. It is less predators snatching you up in their white van and more social media is totally screwing with people's heads. It is more addictive than ever before. People are have para social relationships with online personalities. All photos you see online have been edited and changed to make them look better. Creating huge body image issues. And that is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.

And the preditor in the white van hasn't actually gone away. Their have been some very questionables things over the years that have gotten some news coverage. Spiderman and Elisa shit, some very very questionable Musicly/TikTok video with kids, I have heard about some kids doing ASMR videos. Minecraft YouTubers seem to always end up grooming some kids.

Bottom line the Internet be scary. Stay safe and definitely don't let kids be unattended.

Lol, no. Very accessible AI tools can make the pictured kids do whatever the fuck the creator wants. It's easier than ever to steal identities and ruin lives. The internet still is full of porn and gore but that hardly is the problem. Also, brainwashing via social media is a really big and scary problem. The internet absolutely is scarier then aver before.

IMO the "getting scarier" is the swinging back part. Grew up in the same time, my parents were big on "No identifying information to anyone on the internet!" I joke with them now that their generation, the ones that told us to stay off post all their business on facebook and the like.

But that's the thing, you have a small segment of society that was the internet nerds that didn't trust anything on the internet, hid themselves and the like, but now like you say it's the corporate walled garden that's sanitized and happy, which makes that veneer of trust. And boy do people trust it, posting anything and everything.

Odds are lower in percentages of being genuinely victimized as a child, but the lack of paying attention what's posted has lead to a lot of effects, so people are getting worried again.

Those where more, how should I put it, 'visual' and 'tangible' threads. Now it's watch out or someone is aggregating all your infornation about you and will use it for some neferarious things...
Which I find is a much wider issue, but is also much more dificult to warn and protect.

It's not, it's just that with enough mainstream media coverage about scary internet stories normies are slowly waking up to what the internet is and how you should conduct yourself on it. Of course any terminally online person could have told you that 20 years ago but those are not most people. Hell even if you do know better good luck convincing your family, I know I tried for years with negligible results other than one of them now using a password manager.

Why "run"?

It's weird the parents that are complicit in this, like how do they justify it in their mind? I had a girlfriend in high school whose mom encouraged her to post risque photos online in 8th grade, taking photos of her with her thong out posing seductively etc, she wanted her daughter to be hot. Maybe the parents are trying to relive their youth vicariously.

But you are right, worse than the random parents encouraging this, the platforms knowingly encourage this sexualization of children because they know the ad revenue it can generate.

Anything with your name on it should be very controlled and curated. Anything you said 10 years ago can and likely will be used against you.

Let me guess, the group chat is WhatsApp or iMessage, so Facebook or Apple gets to see them too.

Everyone loses data once before they understand how important backups are.

Here's a real screenshot from Instagram.

That looks cool, I hadn't heard of Circles before. I want to check it out now. I'm curious if it somehow keeps your data private from the server owner. That feels like the missing feature in most federated, privacy-focused social networks.

Side note: looks like it's made by Futo; I hadn't realized they were working on something like that. I've been using another one of their apps, Grayjay for almost all of my mobile Youtube viewing lately. It works great.

Optical disc, it might get mushrooms

Um... what?

If you don't care about privacy, you're probably blasé about backup, but if you have backups it's as simple as 3-2-1...