Currently, when a user checks the "Hide Photographer" or "Hide Credit" checkboxes when adding a photo in Composer, nothing is explicitly added to the ANS structure. Instead, empty arrays are added under vanity_credits.by and vanity_credits.affiliation, which is not an intuitive place to look and also feels more like a bug than a feature, especially since it's not very clearly documented and it took a few days for client support to find it.
The fear is that the behavior could change and we could no longer count on those values.
This could be solved by adding hide_credits.by and hide_credits.affiliation boolean values to the ANS. It would be easier to work with and improve trust that behavior won't change.
Todd Dukart
Thank you for this idea -- this makes sense and I could see how the empty array may cause some confusion. I've added this for future consideration.