I appreciate the sentiment here, but I disagree with the premise in the first paragraph. It sounds like the age-old “nothing to hide” argument.
I trust my SO with my location information and I have nothing to hide, but I don’t provide it because they don’t need it. That’s it. Why should I compromise my privacy and potentially security just because I trust someone? That’s dumb. They don’t need it so I don’t provide it, that’s my primary reason and that should be enough.
I have other reasons too, such as:
And so on. There’s no upside and tons of potential downsides, so why do it?
There’s no upside
It is insanely useful to know where your partner is. It is not necessary. It is still useful. I would not allow my partner 24/7 location information. It is still useful. I don’t trust any app/manufacturer that allows such a feature. It is still useful.
My SO can just call me, and they do about every other day when I’m inevitably stuck in traffic due to some accident during rush hour.
My SO and I call each other very frequently. It takes 10s to call and ask me if I’m stuck in traffic or something. Maybe it takes 5 to check an app, but saving a few seconds isn’t worth the unlikely but possible downsides.
Where’s the upside vs alternatives that don’t have those extra issues?
Is it realy so incomprehensible to see how useful it is? I feel like most people in this threat just close their eyes and scream. Yes you can call, yes you can find a different solution to every problem. But it is still fucking convenient to just know where somebody is without you having to ask them having to actively respond.
Yes, I can see how someone could consider it useful, but that always needs to be compared to alternatives and downsides. For example, the government knowing exactly where I am at all times could be useful if I get abducted or something, but there are so many potential downsides and limited upsides to that to the point that I can’t consider it a reasonable option, therefore it’s DOA.
So yeah, I don’t see location sharing as net useful, especially when the alternatives are almost equivalent in convenience and successfully solving the problem. My routine is the same almost every day, and deviations are really easy to communicate w/ a quick text.
Location sharing is a solution in search of a problem.
Know when they come home or if they are stuck in traffic
Look at maps and see how traffic is on their route if they’re late
“oh you are still in the store can you get me …”
Tell each other when you are going to the store beforehand and ask if you need anything.
security if they get kidnapped
Very unlikely to happen in the first place and competent kidnappers would toss their phone right away anyway.
It sounds like the age-old “nothing to hide” argument.
It’s really not, though. For many couples (including my own relationship), this is something we talked about before implementing. We both decided that since we have the technology, we should use it to our advantage…so we do. Right now we’re using Life360, but I’ve already implemented Traccar (self-hosted and accessed via Home Assistant) for our older kids who have phones (Pinwheel), and I plan on extending that capability to my wife as well, so we can dump Life360.
If everyone consents and you trust the service, I guess that’s fine.
I just personally don’t see the benefit. My area has a really low crime rate, my kids don’t have phones and don’t go anywhere on their own anyway (they hang out w/ neighbors or we drive whem somewhere), and my SO and I just go between work and home and rarely anywhere else. If we have a unique schedule, we let each other know.
The only time I think I’d want it is if I’m doing something potentially risky, like going on a hike on my own, which I almost never do. That’s pretty much it.
When my kids get phones, I plan to follow the same policy. If they go somewhere, they need to let us know where they’re going, who a backup contact is (i.e. if they lose their phone or it dies), and when they’ll be home. I don’t need to know exactly where they are if I trust them to inform me if plans change.
I ride motorcycles. So I just leave it on by default because my wife worries when I go out. Rightly so. Cagers are fucking morons.
Obviously each situation is different, but I’m very much on the side of trusting kids vs having some kind of leash. Sure, my kids would probably be fine w/ the caveat that I can see whatever they’re doing if that means they get a phone, but to me, it also shows that I don’t trust them, and that could mean they won’t come to me when something I can’t track happens. I personally value that two-way trust a lot more than whatever short-term benefits tracking gives me, and I go out of my way to tell my kids what I could do so they know how much I trust them.
So far it has worked out, but my kids aren’t teenagers yet (close), so we’ll see what happens once their social circle broadens a bit.
FishFace@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It is enough. In fact, it’s better than the “you should trust your SO” argument which doesn’t make any sense.