Is it strange? I'd say it's fair to assume that potential alien visitors would want their existence to be hidden, or at least not known to the broad population[1]. Working under that assumption, isn't that exactly the behavior you'd expect?

It would be incredibly unlikely for humanity to be the first civilization potential aliens make contact with. They'd probably have a lot of knowledge about interactions with lesser developed civilizations, which would inform the risk they can take based on the developments made. A civilization without broadly available personal cameras would logically allow for much closer interactions.

Let me just add that I don't believe the sightings are real, and I don't believe aliens are visiting earth - I just really dislike using faulty logic to "disprove" this stuff.

[1]: If potential alien visitors wanted their existence to be widely known, it would be easy to do so through conventional news mechanisms (e.g. media or politicians). Since that hasn't happened it leaves two options: there are no alien visitors (the incredibly likely solution), or they exist and want to stay hidden, for whatever reason that may be.

No, I get what you're saying.

To be clear, I don't believe we're being visited by aliens.

If we are, though, they're obviously extremely advanced. To put it mildly. So clearly they would know that relatively high quality cameras are now ubiquitous, and adapt their behaviors accordingly if they preferred to remain unknown to the general public.