Mother goes to the police to stop her daughter’s image from being a meme – 11/22/2023 – Tech

In July, attendant Evelyn Orozimbo, 26, published a video with an outburst about a situation that had angered her since last year: the sharing of her daughter’s image on social media.

“They cursed her appearance, wished her horrible things and I read comments like: if it was my (son), I would kill it”, says Evelyn in an excerpt from the video.

She recorded the outburst in a moment of despair, after noticing that the image of her newborn daughter was being propagated in a joking manner on the internet.

“This really shook me, I felt really bad. I felt helpless and guilty, because I couldn’t control these publications with her image”, the attendant tells BBC News Brasil.

This whole situation began in September 2022, when Evelyn published a montage of videos showing the evolution of her daughter’s first months of life.

Evelyn published the record on an Instagram profile she maintained to share her routine as a mother. She says the video started going viral weeks after it was published, had 7 million views and became a problem for her.

“When I went to see why the video went viral, it was because they were talking about my daughter’s appearance when she was newborn. There were no compliments at any point, only negative comments about her”, he says.

“I don’t know where this came from or who started sharing it and made it go viral in such a negative way,” he adds.

Her daughter became a meme and the target of offensive comments. The mother began to receive criticism for exposing the child on the internet.

In a short time, the image of the newborn girl ended up in publications on humor pages and videos from digital influencers.

The girl became an example of an “ugly baby”.

“I kept thinking that if I hadn’t posted that video, none of this would have happened,” says Evelyn.

She reported the case to the police, but says nothing was done. Now, she will take the case to court.

The spread of the meme

Since the video went viral, shares of screenshots of the newborn’s image have increased more and more.

Evelyn saw these prints in posts on X (formerly Twitter). In some publications, the image of the child was altered, with an enlarged nose, eyes and mouth.

The way her daughter’s image was used caused Evelyn’s indignation. “I think these people are cowards, especially because they are on the internet.”

“It was horrible. I felt a lot of anger and hatred. I wanted to curse the people who were doing this to my daughter’s image”, says Evelyn.

At the time, the girl was close to turning one year old, and Evelyn says the meme made her think about not celebrating the date.

“I felt really bad emotionally and almost gave up on the party I was organizing,” she says, and in the end she decided to keep the celebration going.

She believed that the sharing of her daughter’s image and the offensive comments would stop over the months. “But things only got worse.”

Evelyn says that she even asked some people to remove the posts with her daughter’s face, but says she was ignored.

A year ago, she filed a police report about the case with the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro, the state where the family lives.

In the document, she denounces that her daughter’s photo was being used in a pejorative way and without the consent of those responsible for the child.

But Evelyn says nothing was done after this report. “When I went to find out what had happened, I saw that they had archived the procedure without giving me any feedback.”

The Civil Police told BBC News Brasil in a statement that the case “was registered at the 35th DP (Campo Grande) and forwarded to the Special Criminal Court (Jecrim)”, without giving further details about the investigation.

The Rio de Janeiro Court of Justice reported that it had not located any case with Evelyn’s name. According to the agency, the case may be under judicial secrecy, “in which case it does not appear in the search.”

‘They criticized me for sharing my daughter’s photo’

Even after the police report, the meme continued to spread.

The situation got worse, says Evelyn, when they started using the child’s image in “prank” videos on TikTok and Instagram in which a person shows the photo to a family member to show an “ugly baby” to record their reaction.

“When they alerted me that they were using my daughter’s photo like that, I didn’t want to see it, but the proportion was so big that I ended up seeing it,” he says.

It was during this period, at the end of July this year, that Evelyn opened up in a video in which she talked about what she was going through and asked them to stop using her daughter’s image.

“So, the mother is wrong (for having published a video of her daughter) and those who are cursing or attacking are right,” he comments in part of the outburst.

“The guilt is no longer enough, I still have to deal with people saying: ‘ah, it’s a meme, it’s funny’. Of course, my love, it’s not your son, it’s not your relative, it’s nothing of yours”, he states in the video .

The outburst had 9.7 million views and more than 640 thousand likes on TikTok alone.

It was from this, says Evelyn, that people began to pay attention to what she was going through.

“It had a lot of repercussion. There were people who criticized me for sharing my daughter’s photo, but I received a lot of support too.”

Because of this video, her story reached representatives of the National Association of Internet Victims (Anvint), which provides support to victims of internet crimes.

The association began to provide legal assistance to Evelyn, who says she will take legal action.

“We want to hold accountable the people who posted (the meme) in an offensive way,” says lawyer Iolanda Garay, president of Anvint.

Garay emphasizes that the case involves the undue exposure of a child.

“The Constitution says that people’s image is inviolable. Furthermore, image rights are also protected by the Civil Code, which prohibits the exposure or use of someone’s image without permission, if the misuse affects their honor. “

In the case of a child, the lawyer highlights, the situation is even worse because it is a developing individual.

“The right to respect, provided for in the Child and Adolescent Statute, brings an additional layer of protection to minors in various spheres, guaranteeing the physical, psychological and moral integrity of children and adolescents as inviolable, which includes the preservation of the image .”

She considers that sharing the child’s image in a joking tone is also a type of racism.

“If it was a blonde baby with blue eyes, do you think this ‘ugly baby’ thing would be happening? Most of the children exposed in this type of publication have features of black origin”, says Garay.

According to the lawyer, the case of exposing the girl’s image can be considered “a crime against honor and a crime of persecution, in addition to systematic intimidation (act of physical or psychological violence)”.

Garay adds that claims for compensation for moral damages are appropriate in cases like this.

The platforms on which the meme was shared should also be subject to lawsuits, says Garay, because many posts were not removed, even after Evelyn reported it.

Digital crime expert Wanderson Castilho, also a member of Anvint, states that social networks help, in a way, to propagate content that should be taken down.

“This delay (to remove or evaluate reported content) is one of the biggest revolts among victims,” says Castilho.

“In addition, the algorithm helps to spread this victim’s suffering, because the more interaction and people sharing, the greater the number of people the algorithm will reach.”

In some cases, says the expert, the platform agrees that a certain publication violated the rules and deletes it.

But most of the time, says Castilho, the publication remains even after complaints. This is because, according to the expert, in many cases there is no standard that indicates exactly which publications will be deleted only through a report on the platform, without having to go to court.

“And so (without deleting it through a report on the platform), cases like that of Evelyn’s daughter take on unimaginable proportions”, declares Castilho.

The expert emphasizes that parents have the right to share photos of their children on networks. However, it recommends that they have more control over the reach of these images.

“There are several ways in which these photos can be used in harmful ways, such as in the form of memes, forgeries or even on pedophile websites,” he says.

“So, for parents who like to share, the tip is to leave profiles private, only for the people closest to them and most known to them.”

The expert emphasizes that he does not recommend any type of exposure on open profiles.

“But it can be considered a crime to attack a person who shared a photo of their daughter or think that they can spread offense against that mother or child”, he adds.

BBC News Brasil reached out to Twitter to comment on the case, but there was no response until the publication of this report.

Meta, responsible for Facebook and Instagram, informs, in a note, that it always reviews content through a combination of artificial intelligence technology and human teams.

This, according to the company, helps “detect, analyze and remove content” that violates its policies.

“We also encourage people to report content and accounts through the tools available within the applications themselves”, adds Meta.

Regarding WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta, the company says it does not have access to the content of messages exchanged between users and does not do this moderation.

Despite this, Meta informs that the messaging application “does not allow the use of its service for illicit or defamatory purposes, or for privacy rights.”

“In cases of violation of these terms, WhatsApp takes measures in relation to accounts such as deactivating or suspending them”, informs the company.

TikTok says in a statement that it constantly works to ensure that the platform is an environment in which everyone feels welcomed.

“Our guidelines make it clear what can and cannot be published, including the topic of harassment and bullying,” says the company.

“When content is identified as potentially infringing, it may be removed through technology or flagged for further review by our moderation team.”

‘I feel a little stronger’

After the outburst video, sharing of images of Evelyn’s daughter decreased, and many contents with the child’s face were deleted by the users who made these publications.

But she says she will only be at peace when she is sure that there are no longer any images of her daughter shared jokingly on the networks.

“With the support I’ve received, I feel a little stronger about this and have a little more hope,” says Evelyn.

“I think now things can get better and people can stop sharing my daughter’s photo.”

She says she still suffers from the psychological damage caused by the way her daughter became a meme on social media.

“I no longer have the strength to justify myself that I’m not wrong for posting my daughter”, she says.

“It was an ordinary video. The wrong ones are the monsters who started attacking my daughter’s appearance, without thinking that there is a family, a mother and a child behind it.”

Today, she says she avoids sharing publications with her daughter as much as possible so as not to face any type of problem again.

“But now I also understand that I wasn’t the one in the wrong. People can’t use the image of a child like that and think that the internet is a lawless land”, she declares.

Text originally published here