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Not every damn thing needs to be “social”.
by efitz 7mo ago
Not every damn thing needs to be “social”.
- manquer 7mo agoPerhaps not, However Gamification of fitness is huge motivation for many people to keep exercising and maintaining the rhythm which in fitness is quite important. Such social sharing + gamification systems are no different than Github contribution streak or StackOverflow awards for streaks etc. Those streak award only benefited the platform, while awarding us fake points and badges, the fitness streak rewards and social sharing benefits the users health so arguably has a stronger case for being gamified. We can argue all day that people should want to do fitness to be healthy, not on how they look or other people see them or their fitness, but reality is that the social component of fitness is a big part for many people be it at the gym or in an app.
- xp84 7mo agoLogging is one thing, syncing it to the cloud is unnecessary and shouldn’t even be the default; making any of the location data available publicly is just terrible. If you want to share an individual workout map so you can say you circumnavigated Manhattan or whatever, fine! Share that one workout with your friends! (And ideally as a freaking screenshot rather than some database) Anything else is far too risky.
- nradov 7mo agoRisky for what? It's just a bit of fun. Most of us aren't being pursued by stalkers or assassins.
- Terr_ 7mo agoIt doesn't need to be anything nearly that dramatic as assassins, because economies of scale both lower the bar and make most attacks impersonal. Consider how odd it would be for someone in 2025 to say: "Computer security?I haven't done anything to personally offend a genius hacker." Imagine this data going to a burglar, who has a digital dashboard of nearby one-person properties and when the owner is likely to be out, able to act with confidence they can leave before the victim could return. Sure, sophisticated international hitmen won't have any interest in catching you in ambush... but that doesn't make you safe from a local rapist of opportunity.
- nradov 7mo agoWhat a weird comment. The type of low-end criminal who commits home burglaries aren't sophisticated enough to do that level of research.
- polotics 7mo agodo you have any evidence to back your claim? gangs employing teams of underage burglars assisted by risk averse adults with skills for entry and targeting are a thing. everyone has a mobile phone.
- teiferer 7mo agoWith the new crop of agentic coding tools, you can whip up such an app in a few hours for all burglar buddies to use.
- pm3003 7mo agoThey are. A related example is criminal gangs tageting gun owners in France after the dataleak at the sport shooting federation. This one has been well covered. There have been a few hundred targeted robberies (on old people mostly) and one or two deaths (predictably). In Western Europe there are also foreign burglar gangs that go on sprees for a few weeks. They're well organised but don't have time to do the stalking. They use publicly available data as much as they can.
- brnt 7mo agoLow-end criminals fish based on data leaks all the time. More data, especially cross-referencable data, will make this ever easier.
- gzread 7mo agoThey'd buy access from someone on the dark web for $5 a day.
- withinboredom 7mo agoI'd recommend reading 'Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief' -- normal dude, just decides to spend a career stealing shit for fun.
- dylan604 7mo ago> Most of us aren't being pursued by stalkers or assassins. Most of us, but for those that are... However, in the world we live in today, the various LEOs are using this type of data to find people they do not like. It's getting to the point that I pine for the days of good ol' 1985 where you could just be another anonymous person in public with no tracking of your every move.
- embedding-shape 7mo agoFwiw, from the people I know using Strava, it's less about the sharing/reading other's efforts aspect that makes them use it, and more because of the analysis, dashboards and stuff like that.
- dkga 7mo agoYes, all of which can be purely personal and not shared beyond the device.
- alexfoo 7mo agoSure, but many people want to use Strava for more than one purpose. a) Analysis and tracking of your own personal goals. (Some of the tools are better than the stuff available on the device itself.) b) Sharing and socialising some other activities. You can be careful and only allow certain activities to be public but you'll make mistakes and eventually many people will just think "whatever, I'll just default to public and remember to hide the ones I don't want to be public" and then it's even easier to make mistakes. Defaulting to "opt-in" is all well and good until a human makes a mistake.
- roywiggins 7mo agoimho with unusually sensitive things like precise location data it could just not let you opt-in to making it all public, and make it much easier to share with a specific named friends than to share on a public directory
- nradov 7mo agoI really don't understand these criticisms of Strava, it has excellent privacy controls so you can share as little or as much as you want. You can already choose to share your activities with only your friends (followers). Or keep your activities private or hide the location data.
- 7mo ago
- Forgeties79 7mo agoNo but every damn thing seems to be that way by default, so we are expecting everybody to opt out rather than opt in most of the time
- LightBug1 7mo agoI agree with you ... but gotdamned if I don't see another unasked-for shared workout stat. I have the family exercise group on mute, lol