9 ms·

The dangerous intimacy of social location sharing

supportengineer 1y ago
I will never forget what it was like to grow up in the 80s. As a child often I was at some kind of child care. After school programs, or a neighbors house. I remember what it was like, wanting my parents to pick me up. I lived in a place that was surrounded by bullies and abusive religious zealots. Often times I would be staring out the window or looking towards the road wondering when my loving parents would come and get me and take me away from the nightmare situation. Endless hours staring, wondering, hoping. Praying for them to pick me up and take me away. And that is why I happily allow my wife and my children to track me at all times. So they will never feel that kind of pain and despair that a young child once felt.
- cyanydeez 1y ago
  i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd.
  - lagadu 1y ago
    The fascist government won't need you to enable tracking, they can have the corporation that makes your OS silently gather it and give it to them, or simply have the phone carrier do it, again silently to the one carrying the device. We're already all carrying a tracking device with us, willingly.
    - leptons 1y ago
      The government can also just set up their own cell tracking towers, cut out the middleman.
      - danudey 1y ago
        Or just mandate that the telcos do it and make it illegal to tell anyone about it.
        ruined 1y ago
        why would they need to do that? that's just how cell towers work. the government can and does also buy the location data on the market like anyone else.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        cyanydeez 1y ago
        yeah, the important part is that the government via third party surveillance gets much of the domestic spying they need without "technically" breaking the law, even though if they directly did any of the activities they would be breaking the law.
        leptons 1y ago
        And yet they do that all the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_law_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_...
  - david_shaw 1y ago
    > i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd. The phones (GPS) and cell networks (towers) have your location anyway. The article -- and what the parent comment was talking about -- is social location sharing. Although citizen tracking is a valid concern, turning on "Find my Friends" isn't going to make you any more vulnerable.
    - Rebelgecko 1y ago
      IIRC some of the social location sharing options have sold data in the past, eg Life 360 (I think they still sell data but claim that they've started making it aggregated/anonymous)
    - stavros 1y ago
      I have location services off, so at least my phone doesn't usually have my location, and neither does Google.
      - lazide 1y ago
        That is wildly optimistic.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - svachalek 1y ago
        There are still various Google processes that likely still gather your location, and certainly your phone carrier does.
        stavros 1y ago
        I don't think Google does if location services are off.
        1y ago
  - b59831 1y ago
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  - decremental 1y ago
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- g-b-r 1y ago
  Why not only letting them track you when you're going to pick them up, or better when they ask you to?
  - dgunay 1y ago
    In addition to the other arguments presented here, I have 24/7 location sharing enabled with my wife so that neither of us has to actively remember to check our phones all the time. And if it's potentially an emergency, it is still active if one of us is incapacitated.
  - pcthrowaway 1y ago
    Or.. just messaging when you're on your way? And not leaving them in abusive situations? I'm actually not opposed to direct location sharing among one's loved ones, but I don't think being in terrible situations and praying for your parents to remove you from them is a good argument in favour of location sharing.
- z0r 1y ago
  Would your parents have picked you up if real time location sharing existed? I understand your story is emotional and personal, but using it as an argument why you want to share your location at all times is a bit of a non-sequitur.
  - supportengineer 1y ago
    It was more about not knowing where they were, or when they were coming. With technology, children can always know where their parents are, not to mention they are only one text or call away.
renewiltord 1y ago
[flagged]
- ricardobeat 1y ago
  None of the people in the article, nor the author, mention abuse. Are you responding to the article or what you imagine the discussion to be? It barely talks about safety, it’s merely one example, and is focused on the social effects. It even makes the point that location sharing can lead to less social interaction, contrary to your own experience.
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - canadiantim 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - renewiltord 1y ago
        [flagged]
        dotnet00 1y ago
        That's not tough love, that's just dodging a topic you dislike by insinuating that anyone who disagrees must be mentally ill. Really just comes off as projection of your own insecurities.
        iamnothere 1y ago
        > Really just comes off as projection of your own insecurities. No kidding, dude needs to know where everyone is AT ALL TIMES or he’s going to have a panic attack. Really makes you wonder what kind of pathology is behind these people who must have total surveillance, no matter the consequences.
m-s-y 1y ago
The article’s first narrative revolves around a phone being held captive in a police station for days because the station was closed for the weekend? What kind of police station maintains business hours?
- pulvinar 1y ago
  In US cities they have substations and neighborhood stations. I'd guess one of those.
- QuantumNomad_ 1y ago
  > What kind of police station maintains business hours? The police station having business hours is normal in my country and several other countries that I know of. If you have an emergency the police will come of course. The patrolling and emergency response is separate from the business hours of the station.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    I believe this is true in my little town in the US as well. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. With that said, I'm reasonably certain even our town has open hours on the weekend...
- potato3732842 1y ago
  >What kind of police station maintains business hours? "Sorry, retrieving property is Sgt SoAndSo's job, come back when he's here, which <checks schedule> is 2-10am Tuesday."
- ilikecakeandpie 1y ago
  More rural areas
zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
Location sharing is creepy. It's weird how many people track their partner's movement. Back when Foursquare was a thing, Brad from Phone Losers of America would do pranks where he calls businesses and has them page someone who had shared their location.
- jsbisviewtiful 1y ago
  I share my location with 10+ people, including my partner. My wife and participating friends all know, trust and love each other and none of us care if we know where each other are, but at times where we are coordinating a plan on the fly FindMy has been incredibly useful. If I’m letting weather apps and etc know and sell my location to data brokers, letting my inner circle see my location isn’t that deep.
- twodave 1y ago
  I suppose it depends on the context. For some couples there has been some past dishonesty, and the location sharing can serve as a measure of accountability. That doesn’t mean it’s always monitored (though I’ve definitely seen some people obsess over this to an unhealthy degree), but it helps the one who was offended feel more secure and keeps the one who did the offending honest.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Until someone figures out they can leave their phone at their desk and do whatever they want, anyway.
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      Exactly, all location sharing does is give a false sense of security. You either trust a partner or you don’t.
  - hackable_sand 1y ago
    That sounds horrible.
  - 1y ago
cortesoft 1y ago
My only location sharing is with my wife. It is very useful to check things like how far away she is before getting home so I can start dinner, or seeing if she has left the house yet or can I still text her to ask for her to do something at home.
- iamnothere 1y ago
  My location sharing with my partner is a Signal message. “On my way home!” Works great, hasn’t failed yet. And I can still make it a surprise, which is nice. Keeps things fresh, you know?
  - decremental 1y ago
    [dead]
  - bckr 1y ago
    You’re both doing what you want, which I find awesome.
  - nkrisc 1y ago
    My location sharing with my partner is a sudden appearance. "Hello, I'm here!" Works great, hasn't failed yet. And I can still just not show up, which is nice. Keeps things fresh, you know?
  - cortesoft 1y ago
    We often send those, but sometimes we are busy or traffic is worse than normal. I don’t want to text to ask where she is, because she might be driving and I don’t want to distract her. When you have two young kids, surprises aren’t usually on the table. We need to know when things are happening. I also like having the feature in case she is in an accident or something.
- noduerme 1y ago
  About a year ago, I started sharing location with my girlfriend. In general I hated the idea and I'd sworn I'd never do it in previous relationships. But she lives about 20 minutes away, and she convinced me it would be nice for the reasons you outlined. I could write a book about this, but to sum it up: It lasted about six months. I felt somewhat too watched and I started changing my behavior. Instead of texts like "what are you up to?" she would send texts like "how many drinks have you had?" Or we'd just stop checking in with each other by text, because we could just see where the other one was. It felt weird to ask "where'd you go after work?" when obviously I already knew the answer. At the same time, I also got a bit too obsessed with checking on her. I started watching for long periods, which got me noticing irregularities. Sometimes at home, her position would move every minute or two, and sometimes it would just stay stuck. Sometimes it showed her battery level and other times not. I started thinking she was spoofing her location. Then I started thinking she'd convinced me to share locations so that she could spoof hers as an alibi. Once, her location jumped to a residential street a mile away from her apartment and then jumped back ten minutes later. Convinced she was cheating on me, I started spoofing my location and driving by to see if her car was at home. Finally, I showed her the screenshot of the jump and accused her of cheating. Having mostly lost my mind at that point, I went ahead and told her that I'd been spoofing my location and driving by her place. She swore up and down she'd never cheat on me, she had no idea how to spoof her location, and had no idea what had happened with the jump - her only explanation was that she had been moving her car to park around the corner. We were pretty much breaking up. I didn't trust her, she was angry that I didn't trust her, and I was angry that she was angry. We do, however, both have very patient communications with each other. We sat down and talked over the whole thing. She could see why I didn't believe her. I could see why the relationship would not work if I couldn't trust her - and by trusting her, it had to be somewhat blind. That's the definition of trust. I also realized that, having started sharing locations only a few months into our relationship, I had never developed a sense of real trust for her. We hadn't built that toolkit. Why would we need to? This was like an epiphany. I saw that the trust I needed to work on had been undermined by this technology - and worse, the technology itself was flawed. I came to believe that the jump had, in fact, been a glitch. I was like - I want to make this work, and the only thing I can think to try now is to turn location sharing off. So we did. And things got a lot better. The last few months have felt like a new, much healthier relationship. Now we call each other, text each other little notes about what we're up to, what we did when we don't see each other. I trust her a lot more than I did before. I have to - there's no choice, other than to break up. One concession we made was to switch on RCS chat, which neither of us usually use, so we could have read receipts. That did more to chill me out than anything. Anyway, I know this story makes me sound batshit crazy, but all I can say is - maybe location sharing works for some people, but it's not for everyone.
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> Even [Jane] Jacobs believed that “there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space.” "Even"? Historically no such demarcation existed. Often it still doesn't. Compare the commentary at https://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2019/9/26/how-to-reassure-someone https://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2019/9/... : > Citizens, on the other hand, don’t like red light cameras because they don’t want to be fined. They complain that the cameras are an invasion of their privacy. I don’t buy that because I grew up in a small town, and as such I understand that privacy is a myth.
- pseudalopex 1y ago
  How the commentary was supposed to support your point was unclear. No such demarcation exists because people want some amount of privacy in public space? No such demarcation exists because a self righteous random person asserted privacy is a myth and anyone who disagreed with him lied to themselves at least? I know people who value privacy because they grew up in small towns. Traffic cameras are used for surveillance also. And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights.
  - rmunn 1y ago
    > And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights. This. I heard an anecdote, which I can't prove but I'm sure has happened dozens of times in various places, about a guy who got a red-light ticket and suspected the yellow light was too short. He went back to that intersection and filmed the yellow lights, proving that they were shorter than the mandated-by-law 3 seconds. (I think state law, I imagine different states and countries might have different minima). He took that recording to court and got not only his ticket thrown out, but (according to the version I heard) all red-light tickets produced at that particular intersection.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      The National Motorists Association blog used to write about that all the time. (They still might, but their RSS feed has died, so I no longer see their posts.)
colechristensen 1y ago
I share my location with a couple of people who, 99.9% of the time do not need it but 0.1% of the time it is rather useful. I do not care if they know where I am, I do not care if they have commentary about my location. I guess if they got weird about it I would turn it off but I could not imagine a situation where that would be true. It's not "dangerous", I am as unbothered by any consequence of my location being known by them as it is possible to be. It is entirely possible to have actually healthy relationships where people respect having information available to them and not abusing that information. It is also possible to have relationships with people where you actually don't care about each other's business.
- iamnothere 1y ago
  > It is entirely possible to have actually healthy relationships where people respect having information available to them and not abusing that information This is true, but it’s also possible to not realize your relationship is unhealthy until it’s too late. Trust should be earned, not given, especially with something as sensitive as location data. It should be years into a relationship before you even consider this unless you have proven yourself to be a truly excellent judge of character. It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private, allowing intermediaries to get this sensitive information and either sell it or better manipulate you using targeted ads. Location data can be misused in some pretty serious ways, especially if someone wishes you harm, so it’s best to avoid handing it out if you can avoid it.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    People keep saying sensitive, but I cannot think of a single thing these friends could possibly do with the information of where I am. Is this a mobster movie and they're going to hire a hitman? Are they going to follow me around and steal my car or break into my house? What exactly is the threat model I'm trying to mitigate here? Why wouldn't I give my mother my location? Because I figure it would trigger a series of invasive or annoying conversations. That's it, that's the worst thing I can imagine, an annoying conversation. >It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private My phone, and Apple already know my location. I'm not changing that whether or not I share my location with people.
aradox66 1y ago
I love location sharing with friends. "Find my Jerry", "Find my Anna" we call it in our friend group. It simplifies logistics, gives us a narrow but fun little window into each others' worlds. "Is __ on the top of the mountain or waiting in the lift line?" I want my friends to find me, and my friends want to be found by me. It's nice!
est 1y ago
what are some good solutions to this? proximate location sharing?
- dotnet00 1y ago
  Probably just a more fine-grained permissions system. Like allowing location to be viewed if your phone hasn't been touched in a configured amount of time, or if you're on your regular route home from work, or maybe you're specifically going out to be social and are fine with friends finding you, etc.
XorNot 1y ago
I just really wish there was a way to do live and on-request location sharing through Signal. There's a plugin for OSMand but its based on a modified Telegram client, so...no. As it is me and my wife share Google Location via maps which mostly fills in cutting out "how far away are you?" messages but it's surprisingly unfeatureful. What I want is something where I can designate a trusted contact to be able to request an update immediately from my phone or enable live tracking - since sometimes you want to be able to get a moving dot on the map when you know someone else is driving.
jntun 1y ago
"Lighthouses in the sky" was pro-slavery & pro-racism Virginia Senator John Randolph's criticism of John Quincy Adams policy to build astronomical observatories throughout the US. Adams referred to the observatories as "lighthouses of the skies" and Randolph turned the phrase during the Congress of Panama to embarrass Adams. Could be complete coincidence that Dr. Getting used the same phrase, but this time with a productive connotation.
- fragmede 1y ago
  wrong thread?
CamelCaseName 1y ago
I share my realtime Google Maps location with 30 people, friends, family, people from the internet. They can see where I am, down to my address, at any given time. Why not? The very real upside is that they casually see me while looking at Google Maps and strike up a conversation or invite me somewhere, something that's happened many times. The article talks about private and public life... but people will go to all the effort to post the very same things their location reveals on social media. Might as well make it real time. If you're sharing location data with people who would use it to harass you, that seems like a selection issue, not a systemic issue. Location data is hardly private. Everyone should share theirs with as many interesting people as possible. If only I had done so back in school.
- dataflow 1y ago
  > They can see where I am, down to my address, at any given time. Why not? To avoid some awkward conversations many people would rather avoid, I guess? "You were nearby? Why didn't you attend blah/come say hi/etc.?" "You're here? Didn't you say you're going to be out of town?" "What were you out doing at {time/place}?" etc.
  - ohyoutravel 1y ago
    I do the same thing, just smaller group. Answering the questions you’re asking just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time.
    - dataflow 1y ago
      > just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time. Great! You tell them honestly, what could possibly go wrong. I'm sure nobody's feelings would be hurt when you tell them you weren't feeling like meeting them. Now next time you drop by and still don't manage to catch them for whatever reason. Now your prior "candor" becomes a lie -- one that never needed to arise in the first place. Maybe you enjoy getting yourself into these kinds of situations, but hopefully you can understand why others might not.
surprisetalk 1y ago
https://taylor.town/find-my https://taylor.town/find-my
rmunn 1y ago
Best use for location sharing I can think of is traveling in a convoy of more than one vehicle, when you plan to meet up for lunch somewhere along the way. At least one person in each car shares their location with each other during the trip, so you can tell that car B is 20 minutes away from the restaurant while car A is 30 minutes away, so car B can afford to stop for a bathroom break. Then you turn off location sharing after the trip, because you don't actually want to share your location with casual acquaintances all the time. At least, I certainly don't.
- al_borland 1y ago
  A theme park or festival would also be a good one. In the past we’d always designate a meeting spot if people got separated. These days, location sharing can solve that and no one is ever really lost.
- crossroadsguy 1y ago
  It’s actually a good use case. However what we usually do is decide where to meet/stop and we wait for others to reach and until everyone arrives we relax, joke around, munch on something or so. If someone is getting too late then we call and check and if they’re fine and are just getting late then we weigh on making fun of them and pulling their legs and sometimes actually do that. Stuff like that.
stevage 1y ago
Amongst my friends I have definitely concluded that the upsides outweigh the downsides. Amongst others, it's very convenient for meeting people. You don't need to look up the address, you just go to their bubble on the map.
- al_borland 1y ago
  It’s also good for seeing how far away someone is if you are waiting for them to meet up. My sister was chronically late when she was younger. She’s worked really hard to be better, but still holds a lot of baggage from our parents giving her a hard time for most of her life. If one of them calls to see how far away she is, she loses it, because it feels like an attack, even if it’s not. Location sharing solves this, as we can see how far out she is without the call.
dfworks 1y ago
It’s perhaps a bit better now, but back when trip-sharing features were first added to third-party mapping and delivery platforms, there was a real tendency to overshare. Many early implementations generated public URLs with sequential or low-entropy IDs that could be guessed or brute-forced. Anyone who knew the pattern could enumerate live or historical “shared trips,” exposing routes, addresses, and other metadata that were never meant to be public. I documented a few examples of this a while ago, which demonstrate how easily these systems could leak journey data. https://dfworks.xyz/blog/online_stalking_citymapper/ https://dfworks.xyz/blog/online_stalking_citymapper/ https://dfworks.xyz/blog/pizza_order/ https://dfworks.xyz/blog/pizza_order/
aeturnum 1y ago
I have been eagerly sharing my location with as many people as possible for years. I have not been very discerning about it - and in fact if anyone in this thread wants my location feel free to message me on signal (drex.64) and I'll share on google maps. No need to share back (though I don't mind)! The simple reason for this is that we are all already sharing our locations with many corporations all of the time. I just shared my location with home depot a few days ago so it could locate which store I am in. Google knows my location constantly. There is an urgent, obvious need for us to develop social practices around location sharing. We must build these practices and preferences within our communities so that as the wide scale tracking develops we can understand what we would consider reasonable. The demarcation of pen registers to track phone calls came out of a sense of what is a reasonable invasion of privacy - we must socially develop that sense around this form of sensing. I now have a pretty healthy community of location sharing and the stories in this piece are familiar. When I was in the ICU for a few days (thankfully due to medical confusion and not a real condition) people reached out to see if I was ok and needed anything. I know people who discovered that a mutual friend died unexpectedly when their phone had been at the morgue for several days. There is no question, in my mind, that "always on" sharing is probably too much for most people. But the only way we will develop a detailed sense of what we want instead (and what we should insist on when it comes to corporate tracking) is to engage with it and reflect. So far my thoughts on how to do it better involve a series of contextual elements to increase or decrease the specificity of sharing. I.e. if you are out doing errands there's no need for a precise location - show a few blocks. However, if you are close to a friend, show a precise location and notify both parties. Consider creating tiers of sharing where when you enter an area of concern (hospital, morgue, etc) your location is visible and flagged for people close to you but otherwise appears generally to others (as if you are shopping as above). Etc, etc. There is much work to do here and I hope others are thinking about how to do it.
- kibwen 1y ago
  > There is an urgent, obvious need for us to develop social practices around location sharing Indeed, such as "don't, tf is wrong with you?" People don't need to know where I am at all times. I don't need to know where anyone is at all times. Stop normalizing this insane practice.
chatmasta 1y ago
A simple fix for this “passive creepiness” would be to have a setting like “share location with Alice, but only when she asks” or at least “Location shared with Alice (last checked one hour ago).” If I share my location with someone, I can’t tell the difference if they’re never looking at it, or if they’re checking it every minute. That’s what makes it creepy for someone to be checking it every minute – the surveilled user doesn’t know. (Maybe this is already a feature… I’ve never enabled this thing.)
cess11 1y ago
Surveillance erodes trust and has an oppressive effect. This is a key mechanic of the panopticon, i.e. the modern prison, and the constant surveillance of late modern societies amounts to a 'prisonifying' of both private and public spaces. There is a harsh power imbalance between the corporations mediating that surveillance and the surveilled, since corporations under capitalism aren't reachable through democratic means. At best they're indirectly, abstractly and highly bureaucratically regulated, but usually by a corrupt parlamentarian neo-noblesse using surveillance techniques to gatekeep and reproduce their power. Half a century ago this was mainly done through probing the public with polls and the like, as pointed out by Baudrillard in his short work In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Shadow_of_the_Silent_Majorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Shadow_of_the_Silent_Ma... Contemporary surveillance is much more invasive, immediate and relies on evermore sophisticated psychometrics and technologies. To willingly participate and submit to this regime is arguably worse than being a slacker, (in)famously studied in a paper by Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti. http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_perett...
danielhep 1y ago
I have location shared with a dozen or so of my friends. It has many times been useful to find out that we happen to be near each other and end up hanging out.
forshaper 1y ago
I've shared my location with 60+ people, and started the habit ten years ago. I've never experienced a downside. Except one time when doing some airsoft-equivalent and it was used to locate me.

I will never forget what it was like to grow up in the 80s. As a child often I was at some kind of child care. After school programs, or a neighbors house. I remember what it was like, wanting my parents to pick me up. I lived in a place that was surrounded by bullies and abusive religious zealots. Often times I would be staring out the window or looking towards the road wondering when my loving parents would come and get me and take me away from the nightmare situation. Endless hours staring, wondering, hoping. Praying for them to pick me up and take me away. And that is why I happily allow my wife and my children to track me at all times. So they will never feel that kind of pain and despair that a young child once felt.

cyanydeez 1y ago
i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd.
- lagadu 1y ago
  The fascist government won't need you to enable tracking, they can have the corporation that makes your OS silently gather it and give it to them, or simply have the phone carrier do it, again silently to the one carrying the device. We're already all carrying a tracking device with us, willingly.
  - leptons 1y ago
    The government can also just set up their own cell tracking towers, cut out the middleman.
    - danudey 1y ago
      Or just mandate that the telcos do it and make it illegal to tell anyone about it.
      - ruined 1y ago
        why would they need to do that? that's just how cell towers work. the government can and does also buy the location data on the market like anyone else.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        cyanydeez 1y ago
        yeah, the important part is that the government via third party surveillance gets much of the domestic spying they need without "technically" breaking the law, even though if they directly did any of the activities they would be breaking the law.
      - leptons 1y ago
        And yet they do that all the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_law_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_...
- david_shaw 1y ago
  > i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd. The phones (GPS) and cell networks (towers) have your location anyway. The article -- and what the parent comment was talking about -- is social location sharing. Although citizen tracking is a valid concern, turning on "Find my Friends" isn't going to make you any more vulnerable.
  - Rebelgecko 1y ago
    IIRC some of the social location sharing options have sold data in the past, eg Life 360 (I think they still sell data but claim that they've started making it aggregated/anonymous)
  - stavros 1y ago
    I have location services off, so at least my phone doesn't usually have my location, and neither does Google.
    - lazide 1y ago
      That is wildly optimistic.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - svachalek 1y ago
      There are still various Google processes that likely still gather your location, and certainly your phone carrier does.
      - stavros 1y ago
        I don't think Google does if location services are off.
        1y ago
- b59831 1y ago
  [dead]
- decremental 1y ago
  [dead]
g-b-r 1y ago
Why not only letting them track you when you're going to pick them up, or better when they ask you to?
- dgunay 1y ago
  In addition to the other arguments presented here, I have 24/7 location sharing enabled with my wife so that neither of us has to actively remember to check our phones all the time. And if it's potentially an emergency, it is still active if one of us is incapacitated.
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  Or.. just messaging when you're on your way? And not leaving them in abusive situations? I'm actually not opposed to direct location sharing among one's loved ones, but I don't think being in terrible situations and praying for your parents to remove you from them is a good argument in favour of location sharing.
z0r 1y ago
Would your parents have picked you up if real time location sharing existed? I understand your story is emotional and personal, but using it as an argument why you want to share your location at all times is a bit of a non-sequitur.
- supportengineer 1y ago
  It was more about not knowing where they were, or when they were coming. With technology, children can always know where their parents are, not to mention they are only one text or call away.

renewiltord 1y ago

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ricardobeat 1y ago
None of the people in the article, nor the author, mention abuse. Are you responding to the article or what you imagine the discussion to be? It barely talks about safety, it’s merely one example, and is focused on the social effects. It even makes the point that location sharing can lead to less social interaction, contrary to your own experience.
- renewiltord 1y ago
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  - canadiantim 1y ago
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    - renewiltord 1y ago
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      - dotnet00 1y ago
        That's not tough love, that's just dodging a topic you dislike by insinuating that anyone who disagrees must be mentally ill. Really just comes off as projection of your own insecurities.
        iamnothere 1y ago
        > Really just comes off as projection of your own insecurities. No kidding, dude needs to know where everyone is AT ALL TIMES or he’s going to have a panic attack. Really makes you wonder what kind of pathology is behind these people who must have total surveillance, no matter the consequences.

m-s-y 1y ago

The article’s first narrative revolves around a phone being held captive in a police station for days because the station was closed for the weekend? What kind of police station maintains business hours?

pulvinar 1y ago
In US cities they have substations and neighborhood stations. I'd guess one of those.
QuantumNomad_ 1y ago
> What kind of police station maintains business hours? The police station having business hours is normal in my country and several other countries that I know of. If you have an emergency the police will come of course. The patrolling and emergency response is separate from the business hours of the station.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  I believe this is true in my little town in the US as well. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. With that said, I'm reasonably certain even our town has open hours on the weekend...
potato3732842 1y ago
>What kind of police station maintains business hours? "Sorry, retrieving property is Sgt SoAndSo's job, come back when he's here, which <checks schedule> is 2-10am Tuesday."
ilikecakeandpie 1y ago
More rural areas

zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago

Location sharing is creepy. It's weird how many people track their partner's movement. Back when Foursquare was a thing, Brad from Phone Losers of America would do pranks where he calls businesses and has them page someone who had shared their location.

jsbisviewtiful 1y ago
I share my location with 10+ people, including my partner. My wife and participating friends all know, trust and love each other and none of us care if we know where each other are, but at times where we are coordinating a plan on the fly FindMy has been incredibly useful. If I’m letting weather apps and etc know and sell my location to data brokers, letting my inner circle see my location isn’t that deep.
twodave 1y ago
I suppose it depends on the context. For some couples there has been some past dishonesty, and the location sharing can serve as a measure of accountability. That doesn’t mean it’s always monitored (though I’ve definitely seen some people obsess over this to an unhealthy degree), but it helps the one who was offended feel more secure and keeps the one who did the offending honest.
- lazide 1y ago
  Until someone figures out they can leave their phone at their desk and do whatever they want, anyway.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    Exactly, all location sharing does is give a false sense of security. You either trust a partner or you don’t.
- hackable_sand 1y ago
  That sounds horrible.
- 1y ago

cortesoft 1y ago

My only location sharing is with my wife. It is very useful to check things like how far away she is before getting home so I can start dinner, or seeing if she has left the house yet or can I still text her to ask for her to do something at home.

iamnothere 1y ago
My location sharing with my partner is a Signal message. “On my way home!” Works great, hasn’t failed yet. And I can still make it a surprise, which is nice. Keeps things fresh, you know?
- decremental 1y ago
  [dead]
- bckr 1y ago
  You’re both doing what you want, which I find awesome.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  My location sharing with my partner is a sudden appearance. "Hello, I'm here!" Works great, hasn't failed yet. And I can still just not show up, which is nice. Keeps things fresh, you know?
- cortesoft 1y ago
  We often send those, but sometimes we are busy or traffic is worse than normal. I don’t want to text to ask where she is, because she might be driving and I don’t want to distract her. When you have two young kids, surprises aren’t usually on the table. We need to know when things are happening. I also like having the feature in case she is in an accident or something.
noduerme 1y ago
About a year ago, I started sharing location with my girlfriend. In general I hated the idea and I'd sworn I'd never do it in previous relationships. But she lives about 20 minutes away, and she convinced me it would be nice for the reasons you outlined. I could write a book about this, but to sum it up: It lasted about six months. I felt somewhat too watched and I started changing my behavior. Instead of texts like "what are you up to?" she would send texts like "how many drinks have you had?" Or we'd just stop checking in with each other by text, because we could just see where the other one was. It felt weird to ask "where'd you go after work?" when obviously I already knew the answer. At the same time, I also got a bit too obsessed with checking on her. I started watching for long periods, which got me noticing irregularities. Sometimes at home, her position would move every minute or two, and sometimes it would just stay stuck. Sometimes it showed her battery level and other times not. I started thinking she was spoofing her location. Then I started thinking she'd convinced me to share locations so that she could spoof hers as an alibi. Once, her location jumped to a residential street a mile away from her apartment and then jumped back ten minutes later. Convinced she was cheating on me, I started spoofing my location and driving by to see if her car was at home. Finally, I showed her the screenshot of the jump and accused her of cheating. Having mostly lost my mind at that point, I went ahead and told her that I'd been spoofing my location and driving by her place. She swore up and down she'd never cheat on me, she had no idea how to spoof her location, and had no idea what had happened with the jump - her only explanation was that she had been moving her car to park around the corner. We were pretty much breaking up. I didn't trust her, she was angry that I didn't trust her, and I was angry that she was angry. We do, however, both have very patient communications with each other. We sat down and talked over the whole thing. She could see why I didn't believe her. I could see why the relationship would not work if I couldn't trust her - and by trusting her, it had to be somewhat blind. That's the definition of trust. I also realized that, having started sharing locations only a few months into our relationship, I had never developed a sense of real trust for her. We hadn't built that toolkit. Why would we need to? This was like an epiphany. I saw that the trust I needed to work on had been undermined by this technology - and worse, the technology itself was flawed. I came to believe that the jump had, in fact, been a glitch. I was like - I want to make this work, and the only thing I can think to try now is to turn location sharing off. So we did. And things got a lot better. The last few months have felt like a new, much healthier relationship. Now we call each other, text each other little notes about what we're up to, what we did when we don't see each other. I trust her a lot more than I did before. I have to - there's no choice, other than to break up. One concession we made was to switch on RCS chat, which neither of us usually use, so we could have read receipts. That did more to chill me out than anything. Anyway, I know this story makes me sound batshit crazy, but all I can say is - maybe location sharing works for some people, but it's not for everyone.

thaumasiotes 1y ago

> Even [Jane] Jacobs believed that “there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space.” "Even"? Historically no such demarcation existed. Often it still doesn't. Compare the commentary at https://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2019/9/26/how-to-reassure-someone https://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2019/9/... : > Citizens, on the other hand, don’t like red light cameras because they don’t want to be fined. They complain that the cameras are an invasion of their privacy. I don’t buy that because I grew up in a small town, and as such I understand that privacy is a myth.

pseudalopex 1y ago
How the commentary was supposed to support your point was unclear. No such demarcation exists because people want some amount of privacy in public space? No such demarcation exists because a self righteous random person asserted privacy is a myth and anyone who disagreed with him lied to themselves at least? I know people who value privacy because they grew up in small towns. Traffic cameras are used for surveillance also. And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights.
- rmunn 1y ago
  > And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights. This. I heard an anecdote, which I can't prove but I'm sure has happened dozens of times in various places, about a guy who got a red-light ticket and suspected the yellow light was too short. He went back to that intersection and filmed the yellow lights, proving that they were shorter than the mandated-by-law 3 seconds. (I think state law, I imagine different states and countries might have different minima). He took that recording to court and got not only his ticket thrown out, but (according to the version I heard) all red-light tickets produced at that particular intersection.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    The National Motorists Association blog used to write about that all the time. (They still might, but their RSS feed has died, so I no longer see their posts.)

colechristensen 1y ago

I share my location with a couple of people who, 99.9% of the time do not need it but 0.1% of the time it is rather useful. I do not care if they know where I am, I do not care if they have commentary about my location. I guess if they got weird about it I would turn it off but I could not imagine a situation where that would be true. It's not "dangerous", I am as unbothered by any consequence of my location being known by them as it is possible to be. It is entirely possible to have actually healthy relationships where people respect having information available to them and not abusing that information. It is also possible to have relationships with people where you actually don't care about each other's business.

iamnothere 1y ago
> It is entirely possible to have actually healthy relationships where people respect having information available to them and not abusing that information This is true, but it’s also possible to not realize your relationship is unhealthy until it’s too late. Trust should be earned, not given, especially with something as sensitive as location data. It should be years into a relationship before you even consider this unless you have proven yourself to be a truly excellent judge of character. It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private, allowing intermediaries to get this sensitive information and either sell it or better manipulate you using targeted ads. Location data can be misused in some pretty serious ways, especially if someone wishes you harm, so it’s best to avoid handing it out if you can avoid it.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  People keep saying sensitive, but I cannot think of a single thing these friends could possibly do with the information of where I am. Is this a mobster movie and they're going to hire a hitman? Are they going to follow me around and steal my car or break into my house? What exactly is the threat model I'm trying to mitigate here? Why wouldn't I give my mother my location? Because I figure it would trigger a series of invasive or annoying conversations. That's it, that's the worst thing I can imagine, an annoying conversation. >It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private My phone, and Apple already know my location. I'm not changing that whether or not I share my location with people.

aradox66 1y ago

I love location sharing with friends. "Find my Jerry", "Find my Anna" we call it in our friend group. It simplifies logistics, gives us a narrow but fun little window into each others' worlds. "Is __ on the top of the mountain or waiting in the lift line?" I want my friends to find me, and my friends want to be found by me. It's nice!

est 1y ago

what are some good solutions to this? proximate location sharing?

dotnet00 1y ago
Probably just a more fine-grained permissions system. Like allowing location to be viewed if your phone hasn't been touched in a configured amount of time, or if you're on your regular route home from work, or maybe you're specifically going out to be social and are fine with friends finding you, etc.

XorNot 1y ago

I just really wish there was a way to do live and on-request location sharing through Signal. There's a plugin for OSMand but its based on a modified Telegram client, so...no. As it is me and my wife share Google Location via maps which mostly fills in cutting out "how far away are you?" messages but it's surprisingly unfeatureful. What I want is something where I can designate a trusted contact to be able to request an update immediately from my phone or enable live tracking - since sometimes you want to be able to get a moving dot on the map when you know someone else is driving.

jntun 1y ago

"Lighthouses in the sky" was pro-slavery & pro-racism Virginia Senator John Randolph's criticism of John Quincy Adams policy to build astronomical observatories throughout the US. Adams referred to the observatories as "lighthouses of the skies" and Randolph turned the phrase during the Congress of Panama to embarrass Adams. Could be complete coincidence that Dr. Getting used the same phrase, but this time with a productive connotation.

fragmede 1y ago
wrong thread?

CamelCaseName 1y ago

I share my realtime Google Maps location with 30 people, friends, family, people from the internet. They can see where I am, down to my address, at any given time. Why not? The very real upside is that they casually see me while looking at Google Maps and strike up a conversation or invite me somewhere, something that's happened many times. The article talks about private and public life... but people will go to all the effort to post the very same things their location reveals on social media. Might as well make it real time. If you're sharing location data with people who would use it to harass you, that seems like a selection issue, not a systemic issue. Location data is hardly private. Everyone should share theirs with as many interesting people as possible. If only I had done so back in school.

dataflow 1y ago
> They can see where I am, down to my address, at any given time. Why not? To avoid some awkward conversations many people would rather avoid, I guess? "You were nearby? Why didn't you attend blah/come say hi/etc.?" "You're here? Didn't you say you're going to be out of town?" "What were you out doing at {time/place}?" etc.
- ohyoutravel 1y ago
  I do the same thing, just smaller group. Answering the questions you’re asking just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time.
  - dataflow 1y ago
    > just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time. Great! You tell them honestly, what could possibly go wrong. I'm sure nobody's feelings would be hurt when you tell them you weren't feeling like meeting them. Now next time you drop by and still don't manage to catch them for whatever reason. Now your prior "candor" becomes a lie -- one that never needed to arise in the first place. Maybe you enjoy getting yourself into these kinds of situations, but hopefully you can understand why others might not.

surprisetalk 1y ago

https://taylor.town/find-my https://taylor.town/find-my

rmunn 1y ago

Best use for location sharing I can think of is traveling in a convoy of more than one vehicle, when you plan to meet up for lunch somewhere along the way. At least one person in each car shares their location with each other during the trip, so you can tell that car B is 20 minutes away from the restaurant while car A is 30 minutes away, so car B can afford to stop for a bathroom break. Then you turn off location sharing after the trip, because you don't actually want to share your location with casual acquaintances all the time. At least, I certainly don't.

al_borland 1y ago
A theme park or festival would also be a good one. In the past we’d always designate a meeting spot if people got separated. These days, location sharing can solve that and no one is ever really lost.
crossroadsguy 1y ago
It’s actually a good use case. However what we usually do is decide where to meet/stop and we wait for others to reach and until everyone arrives we relax, joke around, munch on something or so. If someone is getting too late then we call and check and if they’re fine and are just getting late then we weigh on making fun of them and pulling their legs and sometimes actually do that. Stuff like that.

stevage 1y ago

Amongst my friends I have definitely concluded that the upsides outweigh the downsides. Amongst others, it's very convenient for meeting people. You don't need to look up the address, you just go to their bubble on the map.

al_borland 1y ago
It’s also good for seeing how far away someone is if you are waiting for them to meet up. My sister was chronically late when she was younger. She’s worked really hard to be better, but still holds a lot of baggage from our parents giving her a hard time for most of her life. If one of them calls to see how far away she is, she loses it, because it feels like an attack, even if it’s not. Location sharing solves this, as we can see how far out she is without the call.

dfworks 1y ago

It’s perhaps a bit better now, but back when trip-sharing features were first added to third-party mapping and delivery platforms, there was a real tendency to overshare. Many early implementations generated public URLs with sequential or low-entropy IDs that could be guessed or brute-forced. Anyone who knew the pattern could enumerate live or historical “shared trips,” exposing routes, addresses, and other metadata that were never meant to be public. I documented a few examples of this a while ago, which demonstrate how easily these systems could leak journey data. https://dfworks.xyz/blog/online_stalking_citymapper/ https://dfworks.xyz/blog/online_stalking_citymapper/ https://dfworks.xyz/blog/pizza_order/ https://dfworks.xyz/blog/pizza_order/

aeturnum 1y ago

I have been eagerly sharing my location with as many people as possible for years. I have not been very discerning about it - and in fact if anyone in this thread wants my location feel free to message me on signal (drex.64) and I'll share on google maps. No need to share back (though I don't mind)! The simple reason for this is that we are all already sharing our locations with many corporations all of the time. I just shared my location with home depot a few days ago so it could locate which store I am in. Google knows my location constantly. There is an urgent, obvious need for us to develop social practices around location sharing. We must build these practices and preferences within our communities so that as the wide scale tracking develops we can understand what we would consider reasonable. The demarcation of pen registers to track phone calls came out of a sense of what is a reasonable invasion of privacy - we must socially develop that sense around this form of sensing. I now have a pretty healthy community of location sharing and the stories in this piece are familiar. When I was in the ICU for a few days (thankfully due to medical confusion and not a real condition) people reached out to see if I was ok and needed anything. I know people who discovered that a mutual friend died unexpectedly when their phone had been at the morgue for several days. There is no question, in my mind, that "always on" sharing is probably too much for most people. But the only way we will develop a detailed sense of what we want instead (and what we should insist on when it comes to corporate tracking) is to engage with it and reflect. So far my thoughts on how to do it better involve a series of contextual elements to increase or decrease the specificity of sharing. I.e. if you are out doing errands there's no need for a precise location - show a few blocks. However, if you are close to a friend, show a precise location and notify both parties. Consider creating tiers of sharing where when you enter an area of concern (hospital, morgue, etc) your location is visible and flagged for people close to you but otherwise appears generally to others (as if you are shopping as above). Etc, etc. There is much work to do here and I hope others are thinking about how to do it.

kibwen 1y ago
> There is an urgent, obvious need for us to develop social practices around location sharing Indeed, such as "don't, tf is wrong with you?" People don't need to know where I am at all times. I don't need to know where anyone is at all times. Stop normalizing this insane practice.

chatmasta 1y ago

A simple fix for this “passive creepiness” would be to have a setting like “share location with Alice, but only when she asks” or at least “Location shared with Alice (last checked one hour ago).” If I share my location with someone, I can’t tell the difference if they’re never looking at it, or if they’re checking it every minute. That’s what makes it creepy for someone to be checking it every minute – the surveilled user doesn’t know. (Maybe this is already a feature… I’ve never enabled this thing.)

cess11 1y ago

Surveillance erodes trust and has an oppressive effect. This is a key mechanic of the panopticon, i.e. the modern prison, and the constant surveillance of late modern societies amounts to a 'prisonifying' of both private and public spaces. There is a harsh power imbalance between the corporations mediating that surveillance and the surveilled, since corporations under capitalism aren't reachable through democratic means. At best they're indirectly, abstractly and highly bureaucratically regulated, but usually by a corrupt parlamentarian neo-noblesse using surveillance techniques to gatekeep and reproduce their power. Half a century ago this was mainly done through probing the public with polls and the like, as pointed out by Baudrillard in his short work In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Shadow_of_the_Silent_Majorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Shadow_of_the_Silent_Ma... Contemporary surveillance is much more invasive, immediate and relies on evermore sophisticated psychometrics and technologies. To willingly participate and submit to this regime is arguably worse than being a slacker, (in)famously studied in a paper by Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti. http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_perett...

danielhep 1y ago

I have location shared with a dozen or so of my friends. It has many times been useful to find out that we happen to be near each other and end up hanging out.

forshaper 1y ago

I've shared my location with 60+ people, and started the habit ten years ago. I've never experienced a downside. Except one time when doing some airsoft-equivalent and it was used to locate me.