I have always loved your way with words Betty
On earlier MrsM threads under my old ID G&TGal some of you may remember my incandescent rants about child protection issues, images being captured within seconds of them being put online and the potential for sexual predators with a predilection for pre-pubescent children to access a phenomenal amount of information about each of the Meldrum children.
In my opinion Rebecca and Lee have facilitated this over the years allowing their 'stuff you' attitude to those they see as trolls to override any normal parental protective instincts. Selling births for money, intruding into what should be their girls private and personal safe space - their bedrooms, and of course Lee putting a black and white seductive filter over two of his girls pouting and fluttering their eyelashes which was a paedophiles wet-dream.
I had a look at Buymeacoffee and it seems to me to be a cross between a sales site for creatives and a GoFundMe where some social enterprises can showcase their work in the community and inspire. Rebecca does not know who is sending her £6 a month nor does she care as long as she is getting the money. Arguably it is no more secure than a public Instagram page as she has storied that it you want to get 'more' then you can...by paying for it. @Eglo has confirmed that Poppy is featured with full image available so that confirms that Rebecca has now 'sold' access to images of her children and no one is naive enough to think that Rebecca and Lee know all the subscribers so how can they be the 'close friends' she was so keen to invite to join her 'fan page'.
To Lee, Rebecca, Karen and any other family members reading Tattle, here are the facts;
Identity Theft - you need three basic details; full name, date of birth and address. An 2018 online security study by Barclays projects that by 2030 sharenting could account for up to seven million incidents of identity theft costing £667million per year. The study described sharenting as the ‘weakest link’ in risking online fraud and identity theft and said sharenting compromised children’s future financial security. But Rebecca and Lee only care about their own finances, not their children's future !
Images - Russian child porn sites, there are thousands of sites with many holding over 200,000 images. All those cute images of children dancing, running through water in their swimsuits, in the bathtub ...captured in seconds off instagram and manipulated to appeal to the particular fetish of a specific site and sold on. Oh wait ... you are now selling access to photos of your own children , my bad !
An investigation last year revealed just how big the problem of child safety is on sites like Instagram, as predators lurk over parenting accounts featuring images of kids. During just one month in lockdown the Internet Watch Foundation blocked at least 8.8 million attempts by UK internet users to access videos and images of children suffering sexual abuse. Those images can be composed of the head of one child seamlessly photoshopped onto the body of another. Photogenic little girls can very easily be merged with some horrific abuse to normalise it.
Also seemingly innocent images in the hands of a perverted mind can be distorted to induce arousal in voyeurs. One such recent case was an Instagram account with over 17,000 captured or stolen images of pre-pubescent girls with suggestive captions and strategically imposed emojis. One child sitting eating an ice cream with her legs fractionally apart had a caption ' just open a little wider' strategically placed. The thought of someone potentially jerking off over a captured image of your child would repulse nearly every parent.
Personal Identity - A prominent America Lawyer who was a state prosecutor in Child Protection states that when parents share their children online "with each disclosure we make about our kids online (whether positive or negative) we are taking away the child's ability to narrate their life on their own terms"
Internet history - google your children Rebecca and hang your head in shame. Everyone in school peer group, future Uni friends, employers, work colleagues have instant access to a phenomenally large digital footprint you alone have created. You cry troll and bully when people call you out for your behaviour, and yet you have set your children up with the perfect storm of material that can be used against them in the future.
Claire Bessant has written some excellent papers about the dangers of 'sharenting' and the potential damage to the children. It raises interesting questions about the balance between profit motives and protecting the child and I'm afraid in my opinion Rebecca and Lee Meldrum are firmly on the side of profit.
