Inappropriate Images Problem

[Penelope McConnell]

Dear "Changers", 

As much as I may wish to support petitions that seek to aid children who are being killed, I do not want to share images of dead children on my feed that may be attached...some of my friends have lost children and this is traumatic.  Also, I do not wish to circulate images of an unknown dead child as if it is currency : as much as I understand that people need to be motivated into action, the majority of these images are used as if the fact that they are seemingly anonymous makes it okay.  They are someone's child and these photographs were taken without the parents consent to be used and circulated in ways of which they are unaware. This shouldn't matter if they are a a political migrant drowned trying to reach safe haven - or in the particular case I am citing - a child drowned in Palestine. Were one of these images to be seen circulating in public by their friends and family either now or in the future is your motivation to help really an adequate defence? Could you look their mother and father in the eye and claim that you had thought the issue through and made the best decision? 

I wholeheartedly support the instinct to want to help and the mute fury that we all feel when confronted with grave injustice...I don't want to blame, accuse or point fingers. I am guilty of making errors of judgement but hope to learn how to do better.  Certainly I would not, nor would I want anyone else to become inured to seeing the death of children nor feel as if a case could not be made unless such images were present. This is part of the problem with image consumption : it becomes common place and we become numb. Worse still is the possibility that images must compete with each other and we need to step back and think this through.

I would like an image filter option added to all petition shares.  I may want to advertise the cause and the petition but without the image attached.  I would urge all people creating and circulating petitions to think about the people they are trying to reach and how, if human life is so sacred, perhaps we could think more humanely and creatively in future.

Can an image filter button or choice of image be incorporated into your posts? If not, can we at least not trade in dead children's photographs when we don't have written consent from next of kin? 

Respectfully,

Penelope McConnell