Privacy is not a single dial that everyone is asked to set to the same level. It is a set of needs that vary wildly by job, geography, family situation, and personal history. The advice just be more careful online is, for some people, easy. For others, it is the difference between safety and exposure, between employment and unemployment, between a quiet life and a managed-public one.
This article is for the second group, and for the people who love them. It is also, more practically, for the broader audience: if you do not think you are in any of these categories, you may still find a few of them describe somebody close to you.
A short framing
The cleanest way to think about who needs more privacy is to ask: what happens if a stranger forms an accurate picture of this person's daily routine? For most people, the answer is nothing much. For some people, the answer is a measurable risk. The privacy needs of the second group are not paranoia. They are a rational response to a measurable cost.
We covered the foundational use cases in When Creating an Alternative Reality Makes Perfect Sense. This article goes deeper into who they are, and why.
The categories
People leaving abusive relationships
The single highest-stakes case. People in the first six months after leaving a controlling partner are most at risk when their daily routine is observable from the outside. Geotagged selfies at a regular coffee shop, a public gym, or a recognisable street corner can be the literal map an ex uses to find them.
For people in this category, the recommendation is not use this app. It is be off geotagged social media entirely. If they remain on it for social or professional reasons, finished photos of non-specific settings are one of several harm-reduction tools, alongside locked accounts, blocked numbers, and trusted-friend notifications.
Domestic and migrant workers in restrictive countries
Many millions of people work in countries where photographing themselves outside of work — at a restaurant, at a friend's place, in a relationship — can result in consequences ranging from dismissal to deportation. For them, I was at home is not a casual claim; it is a legal one.
Finished photos of home-shaped life are, for this group, a low-cost defence against being seen by an employer's network of contacts. The honest framing: this is a real, well-documented use of the tool that we did not anticipate when we built it.
People in safety-sensitive professions
A long list: prosecutors, judges, social workers, immigration officers, hospital security, child-protection professionals, customs officers. These jobs put people in contact, regularly, with members of the public who later have a strong incentive to find them.
For people in these professions, the standard recommendation is to keep social media accounts private, scrub recognisable backgrounds, and avoid geotags. Finished photos of generic settings extend that posture without forcing them to disappear from social life altogether.
People in conservative communities with a private inner life
Religious, family, and cultural environments vary enormously in what they consider acceptable. A person who is queer in an unaccepting family, in a relationship that the community would judge, or simply living a life that does not match the village's expectations, often manages a visible version of their life for one audience and a real one for another.
For these people, the visible version often has a higher cost of upkeep than the rest of the internet imagines. A finished photo every few days — at the kind of place the family expects them to be — is sometimes the difference between social acceptance and explanation. This is not a problem the app can solve, and it is not a use we promote. It is a use that exists, and we acknowledge it.
People with stalkers, online or offline
A small but significant group. The pattern is the same as the post-abusive-relationship case: an observable routine is a vulnerability. The defence is the same: less geotagging, more generic-looking imagery, and finished photos as one part of a broader posture.
Public figures at the awkward middle
We mentioned this in Digital Alibi: What It Is and Why You Might Need One. Local TV anchors, popular small-business owners, mid-level public officials, well-known teachers in small towns. Famous enough to be recognised at the grocery store, not famous enough to have staff. They are the largest under-served privacy group, by population, and one of the most common audiences for tools like this one.
People whose mental health depends on quiet weeks
This is the gentlest case, and the one most likely to be dismissed. Some people simply cannot sustain a normal public-facing rhythm during periods of depression, anxiety, grief, or recovery. For them, posting normally during a thin month is not a vanity project. It is the difference between people checking in with worry every few days and being left alone to recover.
Quiet recovery deserves a tool. We are comfortable being part of that tool.
What this is not
Two clarifications.
- Privacy needs are not a moral hierarchy. The person who simply prefers not to be visible on the internet has as much right to that preference as the person leaving an abusive relationship. The categories above describe higher-stakes needs, not more legitimate ones.
- This app is one of many privacy tools, and not even the most important one. Locked accounts, careful geotagging, password hygiene, and trusted friends do more for personal safety than any finished photo will. If you are reading this for advice rather than curiosity, please start with those.
A short closing point
The conversation about edited photos sometimes proceeds as if the only people using them are people with something to hide. The truth is closer to the opposite: the people most defensibly using them are people whose visibility carries costs that the rest of the internet does not have to think about.
If you are one of them, you are not doing anything wrong. If you are not one of them, you probably know someone who is.
Related reading
- Digital Alibi: What It Is and Why You Might Need One
- When Creating an Alternative Reality Makes Perfect Sense
- The Ethics of Photo Manipulation in the Age of AI
Try it yourself
Three free credits at btdt.fun if the use case in this article describes you or someone you support. No card on file, no subscription, no record of where you generated from.