Technology

If the only thing stopping your partner from cheating is location sharing then you've got problems.

Putting aside how much of a red flag that is,

Is there any foss self-hosted version of these location sharing services?

‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’ - then fuck your girlfriend. How can you be in a relationship without trust?

This article constantly reloads and alternates between showing and hiding some warning about my privacy lol. Unreadable.

My wife and I have it on Google Maps. I can't remember why, but we've had it for years. I think my wife worries if I'm safe sometimes. I think I check it less than once a year. I checked it once to see if they were on their way home once, that's about it.

My wife and I have location sharing enabled in case something happens to one of us. We usually don't use it, but its good to have when we need to meet up at an unfamiliar place after something goes sideways for one of us.

But if your SO doesn't trust you enough to allow you private moments and would accuse you of cheating, your relationship isn't based on trust and thus is very weak.

My best friend drove me to work the other day. We missed a turn and had to take a detour. Not two blocks after that missed turn, his girlfriend calls him asking where he's going lmao

I would be willing to share locations because I worry about people and don't want them to worry about me, but I'll toss this phone in a Blendtec blender before I install an application that gives some creep in fuckin Dayton Ohio my and my girlfriend's GPS coordinates 24/7. Tasker does the job well enough anyhow

It's really disturbing how everyone sees this practice through the lens of (mis)trust. Can you really think of no other reasons? Absurd.

Immature crap like this makes me very grateful to be a grownup married to a grownup.

if you believe the only reason your partner isn't cheating is that you'd find out via location share; what the fuck is the point?

a common way to keep tabs on friends, family and romantic partners so I allow the app to alert him each time I reach my front door. In a disappointingly heteronormative and retrograde move, I’m more interested in knowing when he goes out – where’s he off to now? – and set up my own notifications accordingly. Having grown up with the internet, gen Z are, generally, more comfortable sharing their data online; Snapchat, the social media platform notoriously most popular with younger users, has long incorporated location sharing with its Snap Maps feature.

Does anyone even have a private moment at all? Also if I were to cheat I'd leave my phone in a very specific spot if I can. Faux location services may work, but mostly switching to a feature phone seems to be secret trick that shuts down these app fueled nightmare.

Oh, sorry, the battery is down I had to switch to my old phone for a moment! When did we stop having private moments and thoughts? I like tech when it aides me, but recently it has been feeding off my personal time and even some order of thoughts in ways it didn't do before. It almost feels like it tries to fix and set up human emotions in ways that are forced.

Do you want technology to replace normal communication and socialisation skills? Or does it even matter to you that it is what happens now. Remember that only a few years before nobody followed you all the day, and even the internet access was relegated to a computer room. How far have we come from that?

Meanwhile, I often work with immediate risk of death or injury and, by law, I can not be equipped with a panic button for rescue purposes, as it is deemed unlawful surveillance of the worker.

I am supposed to warn in advance what work I will be doing and agree on a reasonable time window for it to be done safely, before having to call in again to say I am not yet dead and if the task is done or not.

So we have two camps.

1. It's a tool to be used and it's a good thing to exists and I have it enabled forever

2. Keep a gun pointed at it at all occasions and even if you use it, do so with heavy restrictions

I trust my partner and my partner trusts me but the idea of stalking her via app is mindboggling and, honestly, disgusting to me. Like a dog on a leash, always observed, always controlled. That's some mind disease shit going on. Trust your partner dammit. Ya all have issues.

On the other hand though being violently agaisnt it cuz "oh my god privacy" is also funny. The recipent is your partner. Setting it up for some specific use case shouldn't be a bother. It can be extremely usefull for example for grabbing shit in a mall - if you are not interested in going to the same shop, enable it, split, get what you need, join back, disable it.

What I am getting at is - it's a tool, but an invasive and overly controlling one. Use it how you wish but do not perceive having it on constantly as normal. It literally sounds disgusting.

Edit: For people talking about privacy - we're on lemmy. We all know how tracking works. An even if you have localisation off, your device will connect to local wifi and smart appliances to log your location anyway. So I am not really invested into discusing overall practice of having location on - only on sharing saud location.

If you have to use these things in a relationship, then you already have a problem.

If I was actively sharing locations with someone and theirs just abruptly vanished, I'd be concerned that something happened to them... either share or don't share.

I have location sharing between me and my friends because... What if something happens to any of us? That's it, nothing else, I don't spy on them.