this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
605 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
73534 readers
2386 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you just see this and, like 20 others, blindly say "you should trust your partner" then you haven't thought about it at all. If you trust your partner completely, then you trust them to use your location information responsibly, right? So trust does not have any bearing on whether to use it or not.
The issue for me is that we should try to avoid normalising behaviour which enables coercive control in relationships, even if it is practical. That means that even if you trust your partner not to spy on your every move and use the information against you, you shouldn't enable it because it makes it harder for everyone who can't trust their partner to that extent to justify not using it.
On a more practical level, controlling behaviour doesn't always manifest straight away. What's safe now may not be safe in two years, and if it does start ramping up later, it may be much, much harder to back out of agreements made today which end up impacting your safety.
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?
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.
Look at maps and see how traffic is on their route if they're late
Tell each other when you are going to the store beforehand and ask if you need anything.
Very unlikely to happen in the first place and competent kidnappers would toss their phone right away anyway.
-They'll be here when they be here
-The tracker is also a communicator. "Hey are you still at the store? Good can you grab.." doesn't add that much time to that convo
-