4 ms·

That's the wonderful thing though, everyone is free to raise their kids as they see fit. Original comment about "I threw up a little in my mouth just from the h

That's the wonderful thing though, everyone is free to raise their kids as they see fit. Original comment about "I threw up a little in my mouth just from the headline" is obviously ridiculous and attempting to shame parents that opt for this kind of device. Regardless of the choice the parent makes, odds are the kid is going to grow up just fine. There was no need for OP to make an incendiary comment.

Dylan16807 2y ago
It's shaming constant tracking, not anyone that might buy this. And that probably should be shamed.
- wonderwonder 2y ago
  why? What's the harm with knowing where your minor kids or opted in spouse are? Honest question.
  - godelski 2y ago
    Your kids don't learn independence and how to be self sufficient. After all, the goal is to make your kids into self-sufficient adults who can survive and navigate a complex world without your help. Being over protective (which is a natural instinct) can lead to children being overly dependent and not learning to be (to put in the most HN way possible) generalist agents. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40519118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40519118
    - lolinder 2y ago
      > Your kids don't learn independence and how to be self sufficient. Doesn't this depend on how the tracking is used, not on whether the tracking is present at all? My wife and I share our location with each other and I don't actually know if she uses my location at all. If she does, she doesn't mention it. I use it occasionally to get a sense for when to expect her back or to find her when we need to meet up for something. When our kids are old enough to have phones I imagine that we'll add them to the location-sharing circle we have and continue to use it in much the same way. For us it won't be about monitoring them at all times, it's just a helpful convenience for running a household.
      - godelski 2y ago
        > Doesn't this depend on how the tracking is used, not on whether the tracking is present at all? Of course. I think most people would agree that this would be an implicit assumption not worth explicitly mentioning. Do you think that's non-obvious? To me it seems rather obvious since in the extreme case if you bought the device and never actually used any of the features (but still put it on your kid) then clearly it'd have no effect. There's clearly a lot of gray area in between. But I think it is quite common for these types of devices to be significantly more desirable and predominantly used by those who intend to use it for persistent tracking. Because the value/utility is significantly lower for those that don't (we can agree that these factors are significantly related, right?). From your specific example, I don't think anyone arguing against this type of device would be worried about that type of usage. My partner and I often share locations with one another, but honestly we often forget we shared it and end up literally asking instead lol. But my experience has been that we are the abnormal ones and others use the feature much more.
        wonderwonder 2y ago
        "But my experience has been that we are the abnormal ones and others use the feature much more" I think you would find that you are the normal ones. My family has had it turned on for over a year now. I don't know I have ever used it to find my wife and I use it ~ once a month on my oldest now that he is venturing out on his own to ensure he got to where he was going. I have discussed it with several friends / acquaintances and their use is similar to mine. I think your assumption that everyone actively tracks each other and over uses it is assigning an edge case to the majority. Its a simple safety feature to most, there when its needed. your assumption that "it is quite common for these types of devices to be significantly more desirable and predominantly used by those who intend to use it for persistent tracking" is flawed and I don't think based on most people experience.
      - smogcutter 2y ago
        I don’t care if my wife knows my location either. She’s my partner, not my parent. Thankfully, I’m not a teen trying to develop a sense of autonomy and self reliance independent of my wife’s supervision. As other posters have pointed out, no one really knows anything about anyone else’s life from an HN post. That said, the whole point of the panopticon is that if the prisoner doesn’t know when they’re being observed, they’re effectively always observed. It’s a concern that’s at least worth giving serious consideration, not dismissing out of hand because it happens to work for you and your wife.
    - potterken 2y ago
      [dead]
    - wonderwonder 2y ago
      Do you have kids? If you do you know that the main goal is to keep your kids safe and healthy. Everything else generally comes 2nd. Now there are of course extremes to this but for most the use of tracking technology is not intended as a crutch for the child but for the parent. So they know the kid is safe. Little Jimmy for the most part is not thinking if I get lost Mommy knows where I am. If they are out, they are free. A kids ability to be self sufficient is very unlikely to be damaged by a nervous parent peaking at the location of their dot on their phone a block or 3 away.
      - kelnos 2y ago
        > If you do you know that the main goal is to keep your kids safe and healthy. Everything else generally comes 2nd. This type of reasoning is not sound, because you can draw the line literally wherever you want and still make that argument. "Kid isn't allowed to do anything alone without a parent present" satisfies that statement, but I wouldn't want to be a teenager living in a household like that. > Little Jimmy for the most part is not thinking if I get lost Mommy knows where I am. If they are out, they are free. I don't think I'd agree with that. Maybe when they're 4 years old, sure. But 8 years old? 10? 12? 15? At some point they will feel stifled, knowing that Mom and Dad can find out exactly where they are with a few taps on their phone. Maybe the parents will decide the tracking is no longer necessary before they get to that point. But maybe not. Or hell, maybe they won't feel stifled, even by the time they're 15, because pervasive surveillance will be so normalized to them that it would feel strange not to be tracked. IMO that's the worst possible outcome.
        stickfigure 2y ago
        > Or hell, maybe they won't feel stifled, even by the time they're 15, because pervasive surveillance will be so normalized to them that it would feel strange not to be tracked. IMO that's the worst possible outcome. To play devil's advocate here - my wife and I, and several of friends that we frequently travel with, all cross-share each other's locations on google maps permanently. Doesn't really feel stifling, and it's come in handy quite a few times. Why is this a terrible outcome? I think everyone imagines the overbearing parent micromanaging their kids' lives. Maybe the problem isn't the tracking, it's the overbearing parents. As an intellectual exercise, would you rather be a kid of overbearing parents who didn't have tracking technology, or permissive parents that always know where you are?
  - hgomersall 2y ago
    I think the question is: what is the threat model, and how would the information change your behaviour? If it's just peace of mind, then the false positives are super super stressful as I have had direct (not mine) experience of. My view is tracking might have its place in certain situations, but almost certainly not in a blanket way, and always with an understanding of the threat model.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    The spouse may have opted in, but the kids certainly didn't. Even if they say it's ok, they likely assume they have to agree, or they don't get to go anywhere alone, don't get to use the phone, etc. Or -- worse -- they just don't yet understand the awful implications of living in a society where everyone can be tracked. And so now they're conditioned from a young age to think this is normal, and then when they're in their 20s they don't bat an eye when the government passes a law requiring that the smartphone OS makers share real-time location data with the government at all times. That may sound sensational and hyperbolic, but I honestly don't see that as particularly farfetched, given the growth of government overreach over the past decades.

Dylan16807 2y ago

It's shaming constant tracking, not anyone that might buy this. And that probably should be shamed.

wonderwonder 2y ago
why? What's the harm with knowing where your minor kids or opted in spouse are? Honest question.
- godelski 2y ago
  Your kids don't learn independence and how to be self sufficient. After all, the goal is to make your kids into self-sufficient adults who can survive and navigate a complex world without your help. Being over protective (which is a natural instinct) can lead to children being overly dependent and not learning to be (to put in the most HN way possible) generalist agents. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40519118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40519118
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > Your kids don't learn independence and how to be self sufficient. Doesn't this depend on how the tracking is used, not on whether the tracking is present at all? My wife and I share our location with each other and I don't actually know if she uses my location at all. If she does, she doesn't mention it. I use it occasionally to get a sense for when to expect her back or to find her when we need to meet up for something. When our kids are old enough to have phones I imagine that we'll add them to the location-sharing circle we have and continue to use it in much the same way. For us it won't be about monitoring them at all times, it's just a helpful convenience for running a household.
    - godelski 2y ago
      > Doesn't this depend on how the tracking is used, not on whether the tracking is present at all? Of course. I think most people would agree that this would be an implicit assumption not worth explicitly mentioning. Do you think that's non-obvious? To me it seems rather obvious since in the extreme case if you bought the device and never actually used any of the features (but still put it on your kid) then clearly it'd have no effect. There's clearly a lot of gray area in between. But I think it is quite common for these types of devices to be significantly more desirable and predominantly used by those who intend to use it for persistent tracking. Because the value/utility is significantly lower for those that don't (we can agree that these factors are significantly related, right?). From your specific example, I don't think anyone arguing against this type of device would be worried about that type of usage. My partner and I often share locations with one another, but honestly we often forget we shared it and end up literally asking instead lol. But my experience has been that we are the abnormal ones and others use the feature much more.
      - wonderwonder 2y ago
        "But my experience has been that we are the abnormal ones and others use the feature much more" I think you would find that you are the normal ones. My family has had it turned on for over a year now. I don't know I have ever used it to find my wife and I use it ~ once a month on my oldest now that he is venturing out on his own to ensure he got to where he was going. I have discussed it with several friends / acquaintances and their use is similar to mine. I think your assumption that everyone actively tracks each other and over uses it is assigning an edge case to the majority. Its a simple safety feature to most, there when its needed. your assumption that "it is quite common for these types of devices to be significantly more desirable and predominantly used by those who intend to use it for persistent tracking" is flawed and I don't think based on most people experience.
    - smogcutter 2y ago
      I don’t care if my wife knows my location either. She’s my partner, not my parent. Thankfully, I’m not a teen trying to develop a sense of autonomy and self reliance independent of my wife’s supervision. As other posters have pointed out, no one really knows anything about anyone else’s life from an HN post. That said, the whole point of the panopticon is that if the prisoner doesn’t know when they’re being observed, they’re effectively always observed. It’s a concern that’s at least worth giving serious consideration, not dismissing out of hand because it happens to work for you and your wife.
  - potterken 2y ago
    [dead]
  - wonderwonder 2y ago
    Do you have kids? If you do you know that the main goal is to keep your kids safe and healthy. Everything else generally comes 2nd. Now there are of course extremes to this but for most the use of tracking technology is not intended as a crutch for the child but for the parent. So they know the kid is safe. Little Jimmy for the most part is not thinking if I get lost Mommy knows where I am. If they are out, they are free. A kids ability to be self sufficient is very unlikely to be damaged by a nervous parent peaking at the location of their dot on their phone a block or 3 away.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      > If you do you know that the main goal is to keep your kids safe and healthy. Everything else generally comes 2nd. This type of reasoning is not sound, because you can draw the line literally wherever you want and still make that argument. "Kid isn't allowed to do anything alone without a parent present" satisfies that statement, but I wouldn't want to be a teenager living in a household like that. > Little Jimmy for the most part is not thinking if I get lost Mommy knows where I am. If they are out, they are free. I don't think I'd agree with that. Maybe when they're 4 years old, sure. But 8 years old? 10? 12? 15? At some point they will feel stifled, knowing that Mom and Dad can find out exactly where they are with a few taps on their phone. Maybe the parents will decide the tracking is no longer necessary before they get to that point. But maybe not. Or hell, maybe they won't feel stifled, even by the time they're 15, because pervasive surveillance will be so normalized to them that it would feel strange not to be tracked. IMO that's the worst possible outcome.
      - stickfigure 2y ago
        > Or hell, maybe they won't feel stifled, even by the time they're 15, because pervasive surveillance will be so normalized to them that it would feel strange not to be tracked. IMO that's the worst possible outcome. To play devil's advocate here - my wife and I, and several of friends that we frequently travel with, all cross-share each other's locations on google maps permanently. Doesn't really feel stifling, and it's come in handy quite a few times. Why is this a terrible outcome? I think everyone imagines the overbearing parent micromanaging their kids' lives. Maybe the problem isn't the tracking, it's the overbearing parents. As an intellectual exercise, would you rather be a kid of overbearing parents who didn't have tracking technology, or permissive parents that always know where you are?
- hgomersall 2y ago
  I think the question is: what is the threat model, and how would the information change your behaviour? If it's just peace of mind, then the false positives are super super stressful as I have had direct (not mine) experience of. My view is tracking might have its place in certain situations, but almost certainly not in a blanket way, and always with an understanding of the threat model.
- kelnos 2y ago
  The spouse may have opted in, but the kids certainly didn't. Even if they say it's ok, they likely assume they have to agree, or they don't get to go anywhere alone, don't get to use the phone, etc. Or -- worse -- they just don't yet understand the awful implications of living in a society where everyone can be tracked. And so now they're conditioned from a young age to think this is normal, and then when they're in their 20s they don't bat an eye when the government passes a law requiring that the smartphone OS makers share real-time location data with the government at all times. That may sound sensational and hyperbolic, but I honestly don't see that as particularly farfetched, given the growth of government overreach over the past decades.