"safety is certainly a big part of the appeal for many users – so I allow the app to alert him each time I reach my front door." I'm finding that people are irrationally paranoid these days. They see random acts of violence in the news and think it might happen to them but its so statistically unlikely given these are already unlikely events and these people usually middle class people living in nice areas.
Humans are awful at accessing risk and chance, one of the reasons casinos and lotteries thrive.
Look at fear of flying for an example, all statistics say you are many many many times over more likely to get into a car accident on your way to the airport, than during the flight. Even when the ride to the airport is usually short and the flight very long. Yet people are afraid of flying, but not going by car. By percentage, there are of course those, rightly so, afraid of cars as well.
It doesn't really matter how you measure it, number of flights, duration, distance traveled, etc.. No matter which, air travel is by far the safest option. The only other that comes anywhere near is trains. Going by car is bad (though motorcycle is even worse), but so many are afraid of flying that they instead takes the car. Which is among the worst things you could do from a safety point of view.
Risk assessment is probability and severity. The probability can be vanishingly low, but if the severity is astoundingly high then acting like a high risk situation could be appropriate.
Take asteroids. The last planet killer to hit us was 94million years ago. A rudimentary estimate could put the probably as 1:94mil. The severity of an asteroid impact of that magnitude is off the charts, so it is reasonable to consider it a risk and act accordingly to spend resources to search for and track asteroid trajectories.
The severity of abduction, murder, and rape is probably pretty high for most people, so considering it a risk even with a very small probability is not unreasonable.
Location sharing doesn't prevent any of that though?
Like, no criminal who would want to rape/murder/abduct you knows whether you are sharing your location with anyone. They would do so regardless before anyone can arrive to help you.
Also, no kidnapper on this planet is stupid enough to take your phone with them. You have a slightly higher chance for authorities to be alerted sooner but that's about it.
I'm assuming this is a young group, and they've grown up in the always-connected, always-surveilled modern world.
I've met plenty of people that are surprised or even suspicious when I say that I try to avoid corporations and governments tracking me. I guess the Overton window has shifted so that people expect and accept constant surveillance.
As a fairly privacy conscious person, I also expect and accept that it's happening too. I don't think you can be privacy conscious and not accept that. You have to be ignorant to think you can hide it all. I do my best to keep as much data out of their hands as possible though. I don't agree with it.
When I say I don't accept, I don't mean I live in denial, I mean I don't acquiesce; I resist it, whether that be by avoiding services/products, paying for premium, installing ad blockers or modding things to remove telemetry.
I am aware that my phone company knows where I am and I'm on cameras, but I'm not going to make it easy for the next Cambridge Analytica.
It's nothing about trust issues- privacy is just a foreign concept to that generation. It was dead and gone before they were born. They take for granted that eveyone has their phone on them at all times and is never unreachable, so knowing where all your friends are is just a matter of convenience.
I've actually done a little to combat this, in my personal life (apart from ordinary privacy stuff like librewolf und Linux). I got so sick of the majority of my friends expecting me to reply to every text message within 30 minutes, and then getting extremely offended when I didn't (simply because I don't look at my phone that often), that I turned off read-receipts on all my messaging apps, and set my notifications to only arrive in groups at specific times of day.
Then I made a habit of not answering unimportant messages for a few days, until I got the reputation that I pretty much don't use my phone (I also don't use conventional social media, and none of my friends even know I'm in lemmy). This worked like a charm! My social life much, much less stressful.
I've broken the absurd contract that so many people seem to think they have a right to. My time is now my own. I can highly recommend this system! Of course, I can't do it for work-related stuff, but it still really has reduced my stress by a lot.
Like 16-17, I don't talk to the people that do that too much because they're not the type of person I like hanging out with, so I don't really know why they do it.
It's like an extension of their group chats, on snapchat.
I've seen some article recently that the patterns of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (don't remember which one) interference with brainwaves can be scanned to reconstruct brainwave signature remotely, meaning that it might be possible to scan anyone's EEG from Wi-Fi/Bluetooth distance. And there are some AI advancements for reconstructing inner monologue from EEG. So maybe we're not so far from actual remote mind-reading.
Exactly. My girlfriend will disappear for an entire day and not come home until 10pm. I usually have no idea where she is or what she's doing (mainly because I forget due to having ADHD), but I don't worry about it because I know she'll never cheat. How can a person even be with someone who they don't trust? Without trust, there is no relationship IMO.
There is the case of the worriers. People who, when not given positive confirmation otherwise, assume the worst. I'm not talking cheating, but like accidents. "He's 5 minutes late, maybe he got in a car accident and died!" It's not healthy, but it is common and isn't a trust issue.That said, my partner doesn't get to track me, and I have no interest in tracking them.
I don't think enabling it is a good idea though. Yeah, they might be worried, but they need to learn to handle those thoughts. Feeding them can only make it worse.
Exactly my thought. It’s nothing to do with jealousy and just kind of convenient if you need to meet up or are seeing if they’re on their way home and can get dinner started or whatever.
Same. We both follow each other and neither of us care. We mostly have it enabled for the “just in case” scenario that anything happens to one of us. We can make sure that we know of our last known location.
I’ve also had her use it one time I was away from home in NYC. And I was too drunk to figure out which subway to take to get back to my hotel. So she walked me through step by step while on the phone with me. It fucking rocked.
I don't know, it's a pointless thing that I just forgot to turn off at some point. I couldn't care less if she knows where I am and sometimes I do what her to know, like when I go hiking alone.
I have my mom's location, and it's good because she just turned 64 (I think) five minutes ago, I need to wish her a happy birthday, appreciate the reminder. But when she travels out alone, sometimes it's nice to know she got back to her hotel without having to bother her about it, so we do the sharing thing. And for hiking alone, sharing your location with someone beforehand just seems like a good idea.
This article is dumb. Location sharing is silly. People will abuse it, and those same people would've found some other way to abuse the trust in their relationships anyway. I had girlfriends as a kid who'd demand calls when I was at a party they weren't at. Dealing with a lack of trust in a relationship is a growing pain.
Further most people don't know they are in abusive relationships even if it is obvious to others around them so the casually dismissive argument "well abusive couples shouldn't use it" is a trash argument.
My point is when people use this argument "Well abusive couples just shouldn't be couples!" it is a way to dismiss the danger of never ending surveillance that makes an INCREDIBLY problematic leap of condemning people falling into abusive relationships to simply suffer, tough luck... and it demonstrates a callous, ineffective and frankly worrying understanding of how abusive relationships formed in general.
I'm still good ta. But it might be ok for the person I was replying too. I assume that there's been independent verification of their claims and we're not just taking them at their word.
Since you're one of the few people that admit to you and your partner using it: What do you think about the company knowing where you are at all times?
I noticed this becoming more common. Young people do so enjoyably. Old people I hear talk about it, it sounds controlling and bordering on unhinged paranoia. Those young people will be old someday too along with whatever sorts of paranoias they develop like all people seem to do
This is dumb. Young couples have been plagued by insecurity long before location sharing. Dial the clock back 20 years and I'm your typical high school boy worried about his girlfriend.
I share my location with my wife, and even some buddies of mine. My wife has seen my location when I was at someone's bachelor party. It has nothing to do with sharing location and everything to do with trust in your relationship. I don't have her location to keep tabs on her. I have her location so we can better figure out how to get our kids from places. I have my buddies' locations so if I end up grabbing a beer, I know who's out and about, or when someone goes to Tanzania, I can say, Joe, what the hell are you doing in Tanzania?
Before location sharing you texted, or you called, or you hit me on my pager, or sent me a letter. Technology isn't the problem, it's -- once again -- just us dumb people being dumb.
What's wrong with giving the spouse a quick call when they're worried about them? Fuck sharing your location, what kind of dumb shit is this? If anything, sharing your location might actually make them paranoid in the first place, as they might try to interpret things in your movement. The hell is wrong with people? I've never heard of this behavior, is this something Americans do?
Yeah, a call. A method of communication that instantly conveys emotions and information, which you can even use while driving a car! How about that ey?
I'll look and see my wife is distant and I'll shoot her a text and say "Grabbing the kids." We each work jobs that take us different places every day (her more than me since COVID), and so we aren't able to rely on some set pattern. I'm able to just see where she is and make a decision. Half the time she's in the car she's on the phone for some meeting and so I can't call. It just makes things easier. I can't fathom why it upsets you so much, but if you wanna chalk it up to America bad, you do you.
It might have to do with how much Americans must work and sit in a car every day I guess. I suppose that sort of workflow makes sense. But then I'll definitely chalk it up to America bad. Thats not a life I'd want to live.
The only time it crosses my mind to check it is when they are coming to visit or we are otherwise traveling or meeting up.
I thankful for whatever makes it easy for me to just be chill about it. It’s nice to not have to manually mess with an app when needed. And it’s there in an emergency.
Edit: oh shit. This reminds me that I saw one of those 360 something ads recently. I usually avoid tv ads, but happened to see one. It was unhinged in how it was stoking paranoia to sell the tracking. It was targeted at parents.
Just treat them like regular people, like you would anyone else, and they'll come to you. Basically, you don't have to hit on them. Just be their friend. Let it happen naturally.
I very much do like the idea of sharing your location (once you are in a committed relationship). Knowing when your partner is coming home or stuck at work or at the grocery store is useful. Same with knowing that someone can check in on you if something horrible happens. And I have 100% shared my location temporarily for that.
The problem is that... you don't always want to do that. And explaining that becomes a mess.
At its core it is opt in versus opt out but it also can trigger the kinds of conversations that are really better suited to a lot later in a relationship. Like with prenups. There are a lot of REALLY REALLY REALLY good reasons to have them but it is the kind of topic that you can't even raise without having the implication of "I don't trust you".
I know several people that do this, but most often it's parents with kids. That's still not an excuse though as there deserve their own privacy. In all cases that I've seen though, it's through Apple/iPhones. Now I'm not saying Android users can't or don't do this, but Apple makes it so easy, that it's everywhere and I hate that.
My wife and I work different schedules. on the rare day off that were both home, she's often out of the house when I wake up. She's not great at replying to texts. I never know when she's going to be home, and usually have no clue what she's out doing or where.
But I know who she's doing while she's gone- no one. Because I trust my wife. I know who she is as a person, I know what our relationship is like.
I have no particular desire to know her location at all times. I'm sure if I asked, she'd share it with me, and I'd do the same for her. I might occasionally do that when I'm off hiking or something in case there's an emergency, but half the time I wouldn't have a signal anyway.
We are two humans with our own lives. Those lives are very intertwined, but we're both allowed to go off and have our own adventures, occasionally some secrets, and we don't need to know where each other is 24/7
We only share our locations when for example my wife is coming home from shopping groceries so that I know when to go out to the parking lot to help carry the groceries home.
My friend shares her's with me continuously. I do not share mine. I see no point. I don't even know why she shares her's with me. I've only found it a bit useful two or three times over the years. And more of in a "I don't have to walk around this area to find her" way. If I didn't have her location I'd just walk around a couple minutes to I spotted her.
My girlfriend and I share our locations mainly for convenience and safety. It’s nice to know that she’s 3 tram stops away from home so I can start cooking dinner for example. She’s also terrible at responding to texts and calls though lol
Same with my wife. I even have it set up for my mother, so I know she’s safe. I don’t understand what the big deal is, as you say it’s a safety and convenience feature, it doesn’t mean you spend the day looking at the app to see where the other person is.
It’s not something I would do in a casual or new relationship, but if I’m with somebody for years, I value their safety over my (perceived) privacy.
And for the people who think this would prevent or bust cheating: lol. They can just turn it off and complain of bad reception, or leave their phone in their car, while they “shop at the mall”. Or just get a second phone. This app is not a substitute for trust
Regarding tech privacy: it’s not like other apps on your phone are not already tracking, I doubt anybody has their GPS constantly turned off. They already know your location, this one feature doesn’t make a difference.
Secondly, everyone I know my age keeps GPS off unless using a mapping program.
Finally regarding app privacy, people do care about that which is why grapheneos and other privacy focused OS's exist.
The fact that you don't care about privacy and want the government and corporations to have every sext you've ever received or sent doesn't mean that others don't care as well.
that might as well be AI generated. there are no numbers, just some dumb matrix with arbitrary reasoning and now evidence. I'm all for evidence to the contrary, but this is not that
While I can't find any source to back up my claim that it certainly drains some amount of battery, can you provide any evidence that it doesn't impact battery life? Given that GPS uses significant processing power
She could text you, no? It seems like getting her to be better at that is better than opening the can of worms involved with location sharing. For example, here's some bad stuff that could happen:
phone sells that data to advertisers
gov't gets that info and you trigger an alarm (maybe you went hiking a little too close to a sensitive area)
data breach happens and now crooks know when you're not home
SO's creepy friend sees your location and is secretly stalking you
Etc. Those probably aren't super likely, but being able to avoid it all entirely with a little better communication sounds a lot better.
Sometimes it's worth it, like you're going hiking alone or going to a bad part of town.
Lol. I keep telling my partner that I’m sharing my location data with her so don’t need to worry where I might be (Im pretty bad at reporting home unfortunately)
The main reason my wife and I don't have location sharing set up isn't because of trust or lack thereof between each other, but because I don't trust proprietary/commercial location-sharing services.
I've been meaning to set up a self-hosted system (mainly because it seems like Home Assistant could do some neat automations with that info), but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Yeah we use it with home assistant, and Bluetooth beacons to turn on the garden lights when we get home, and turn on interior lights if neither of us are marked as home. Also turn on the electric blanket if we are out and heading towards home after 9pm. Also the person detection camera only alerts us if we aren't home.
Would you mind sharing your automation yaml for the garden lights? I'd love to do more with Bluetooth beacons but don't know enough about how they work to do anything with them.
We have it hidden in the letterbox. The mobile app has a Bluetooth beacon setting where you can have it report either specified beacons to HA, or all of them and you can filter for the ones you want at that end.
The automation looks for the beacon to be reported from either of 2 devices and then switches the lights on, quite basic.
We have a separate automation that turns the scanning for beacons setting in the phone app on at dusk and off at 3am. And another that turns the garden lights off after 10 min triggered by them being switched on
Also turn on the electric blanket if we are out and heading towards home after 9pm
Make sure it defaults to OFF after power loss. My colleague had a close call when the smart plug with the infra panel plugged in decided to turn on after the power outage.
Find your device and control it remotely. Works over SMS, instant messengers, or FMD Server's web interface. A secure open source alternative to Google's Find My Device.
One of my gf's friends went through a pretty nasty breakup, moved and whatnot and most of her friend group were trying to make sure that the ex and his friends didn't have their location anymore and I'm just sitting here like "its wild that you have to go through that" well a couple weeks later 3 of her tires were stabbed with a screw driver or something, and while there's no concrete evidence that they learned where she moved, I'm still over here trying to get them all to be more conscious about online privacy and location sharing, but nothing works....
Well, I need a reverse proxy or VPN or something so that the phones can connect to my Home Assistant server from outside the LAN. That's the main thing I haven't gotten done yet.
Me an my GF have been sharing location for years now, it has never been an issue and often been handy to see if one of us is driving from work to home or finding each other in a festival or theme park etc.
But well I kinda wanna surprise here and for that I need to drive somewhere where I normally don't go, so now I gotta find an excuse just incase she checks my location. Or I just turn of my Phone for an hour or two
In my 8-or-so years of using it with my partner, close friends, and some family, the only occasion where I turned it off was when visiting a jewelry store for an engagement ring.
I know I have less privacy in principle, but I've never had an issue crop up so far.
But well I kinda wanna surprise here and for that I need to drive somewhere where I normally don't go, so now I gotta find an excuse just incase she checks my location. Or I just turn of my Phone for an hour or two
Eww this is just weird you have to think about that.
My wife and I have had our location shared with each other for years, but it's not a "Are they cheating?" thing. I have been married for 14 years and never wonder if my wife is cheating on me. It's just incredibly useful for seeing how far away one of us is from home to do things like plan dinner prep times, know where to look for a lost phone, etc. If you can't trust your SO, there is something wrong that you need to address and micro-managing where they are is toxic.
Also, do yourself a favor and use something open source and/or self hosted. Home Assistant, for example, has the ability to track location data for iOS and Android devices and pin that location to a map. Don't give your location data to corporations to be used for data mining.
Call me old fashioned, but I put it in the same bucket as a prenup: If you're always prepping your heart and mind for a split, you'll always have one foot out the door. Not everyone will agree with me, but that's how I feel and it's why I don't have one. Find yourself someone who is ride or die, if you are looking for a lifetime partner. Don't settle for someone you can't trust with your life.
That said, not everyone is looking for monogamy for the rest of their life, either, and that's OK, too.
Call me old fashioned, but I put it in the same bucket as a prenup
I don't agree. Prenups are passive, they don't do anything until not needed. all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust.
Legally and practically, prenups are anything but passive. They’re proactive tools. They’re usually dormant, but they’re ready to be called into action.
Marriage is different things to different people. Some have every intention to make it work, no matter what. To them, a prenup is an anti-“burn the ship”. It’s a statement.
Also, tools like “find my” are not major breaches of privacy if both parties jointly agree to use them. For me and my family, it’s the ultimate expression of trust. I’m never somewhere I shouldn’t be, and I like my family knowing where I am, for a multitude of reasons.
There are two types of people who a tracker wouldn’t be effective for: those who are in an inappropriate location, and those who are constantly questioning why someone is in an innocent place, regardless of where it may be. However, at that point, the issue isn’t the trackers; it’s the people.
Nope. That’s only part of it. You’ve flattened the nuance into cliché without refuting the substance. But if that’s what you walked away with, that’s fine.
Consensually choosing to share my location with my wife is not the same as not caring about my data being collected or sold. I don't have any intention to break her trust, but that has nothing to do with why we share location. It's all about safety and convenience. I know when she's working late. She knows when I made it back to my car safely after a night out. I know when she's on her way home, even when she forgets to text me, so I can start cooking. As two gay women in a conservative area, it just made sense.
Legally and practically, prenups are anything but passive. They’re proactive tools. They’re usually dormant, but they’re ready to be called into action.
that's what I meant by passive. they don't do anything until invoked, once.
It's like comparing a personal forcefield with an always worn camera and mic that streams your life to google's personal security subsidiary, if I want to magnify the differences.
I don't see why what you said makes it not passive. maybe we understand that term differently.
Some have every intention to make it work, no matter what.
that's how abusers learn they can do whatever they want
Also, tools like “find my” are not major breaches of privacy if both parties jointly agree to use them. For me and my family, it’s the ultimate expression of trust.
I don't necessarily mean breach of privacy that way. if everyone voluntarily agrees, without "problems", that's good. but more that the service provider has access to a fuckton of sensitive data! I can imagine people who accept that.. and then who also condemn others for wanting to escape shit privacy invading services
all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust.
How? My situation is similar to the person you’re replying to and I’m curious how two consenting adults sharing their location with each other is “a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust”.
Maybe if one party is unwilling or has no say/control in location sharing but specifically in the scenario at hand I don’t see it.
because you are not sharing your location with each other. you are sharing your location with a greedy company that also lets your significant other, and then the highest bidder access this information. they are doing whatever they please with it to make (even more) money. see, I was so into google's timeline feature years ago. but soon after I realized privacy is a thing I was disgusted of it and turned it off. if you run nextcloud and that addon I don't remember, or reitti, at home and use that, and you keep is somewhat safe*, then it's fine, and I could imagine using that, even just for myself.
I should have explained that. for some reason I tend to assume that lemmy users are privacy conscious, but that's probably not true.
* don't expose the services because your data will get stolen and you'll get hacked by automated systems. run a VPN on the server, only expose the port of that. then you can access the services through a VPN. wireguard is relatively simple, and it's secure.
I get that it’s not privacy focused; so much these days isn’t, but I’m still not understanding how two adults knowingly enabling location sharing via a 3rd party service is “a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust”.
I’m gathering that your intent was more along the lines of “it’s not very privacy conscious since you have no control over how the 3rd party uses that data or any way to control it”, would that be accurate?
its not "not privacy focused", but it is completely against it. there's almost zero things private about it, only that it's not entirely public. but tbh, at that point that difference would not matter to me
I’m gathering that your intent was more along the lines of “it’s not very privacy conscious since you have no control over how the 3rd party uses that data or any way to control it”, would that be accurate?
I'm not sure I understand you, but my point is that I strictly don't want my location history to be known by such a company. if it somehow still happened, I wouldn't care if only that company or anyone from the public would know, because those who really want to know can get access anyway.
another way to put it: I don't care that my neighbor can have a look at it, because I know they don't care at all, and have better things to do. but in my opinion, if someone cares to check it any time, there's a high chance that their intentions are not good or neutral. of course differences like family, maybe coworkers in very soecial jobs, but otherwise.
The original commenter explained they and their spouse share their location.
You said it was a breach of trust and privacy.
My question was “How? My situation is similar to the person you’re replying to and I’m curious how two consenting adults sharing their location with each other is ‘a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust’.”
I understand now that you didn’t mean that it was a breach of trust and privacy literally, obviously they’ve both opted in, but you used that to express your own preference.
I understand now that you didn’t mean that it was a breach of trust and privacy literally, obviously they’ve both opted in, but you used that to express your own preference.
well, it depends. I still think they are breaching their own privacy, but they just don't care.
Privacy generally means the ability to control your personal information and how it's used, as well as your freedom from intrusion and observation.
If you knowingly opt in it’s not really a breach of privacy. They’re choosing to allow a 3rd party access to that information which doesn’t fit with your preferences but it’s not really a breach of privacy or trust.
they have control over giving that information to the 3rd party, but they don't have any control after that, over how the information is used. with that in mind, do you think they have control over their information?
they are choosing to allow a 3rd party access to that information
that's right, allowing that 3rd party. but did they choose to share it with the business partners of that 3rd party too? are they aware of what is happening in the background? even if they didn't just register-accept-next-next-finish it, most people have no idea about it, because there's so little discourse about it.
like, when I registered to facebook many years ago I had no idea what I was doing. I was using their services a lot for years, blissfully unaware that facebook is a shit company. and what control did I have at the end? the illusion of deletion.
with that in mind, do you think they have control over their information?
It’s not about what I think, they have control over whether to share their location data with a 3rd party or not. By definition that is control. They also have control to stop sharing that data at any time.
Do you have anything to support that the specific system used by the original commenter is using that data in a manner not agreed to when they shared it or in a way that the original commenter doesn’t agree to?
Or are you applying your own personal preferences and beliefs to someone else’s situation?
well if you think your opinion does not matter in a discussion, I may as well just stop responding. especially since with every response you sound more and more hostile. the point with that question was to ask if you disagree. you don't have to say you do, it's clear as day
Do you have anything to support that the specific system used by the original commenter is using that data in a manner not agreed to when they shared it or in a way that the original commenter doesn’t agree to?
you are asking for the impossible as they did not disclose what service do they use. but one of the most popular of such services is life360, which has been known to be doing this for a long time
Life360 Secretly Sells Users’ Geolocation Data to Third Parties, Class Action Claims
This is a bit dated, but the case it not yet resolved. If you search it its still pending and in mediation. Life360 is looking to limit who it sells the info to in order to resolve the case. There is no debate that they were selling the info.
you are asking for the impossible as they did not disclose what service do they use
So you’re applying your own personal preference and beliefs. Saying “all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust” is just you applying your preferences and beliefs to someone else’s personal decision.
especially since with every response you sound more and more hostile.
Do I? How so? You made a statement of fact (all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust) about someone else’s choice and situation without any information to directly support it (you are asking for the impossible as they did not disclose what service do they use).
Calling my questioning and pushback “hostile” seems like bad-jacketing to me. Maybe you’re getting defensive?
My wife and I share our location. We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information. I think if this is demanded of someone unilaterally, it would be both a breach of privacy and trust, but it's just so damn convenient for our lives and makes us both feel safer. If I'm out late in the city to see a friend, my wife can easily see that I'm safe making it to my car and driving home. If my wife is working late and forgets to text, I can easily check and know she's still in the building. As two gay women, it was a no-brainer for us. I would never demand that of someone. It seems like a lot of people in the comments see sharing location as an intrinsically harmful or negative action, whereas it's far more context and consent dependent for me. Hell, I even share my location with a friend for a few hours if I'm doing something sketchy.
We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information.
I was unclear on what I meant by the breach of privacy. there's another comment chain discussing that but tldr: it's not about sharing your location with your SO, but entrusting profit driven careless companies with both of your sensitive information.
Additionally, there's something I haven't written in that other thread. It's not only about the both of you. I as a host (in my house, this does not apply to public places) don't want to have guests who's phones are uploading their visit at my place to any such services, because that also affects my privacy. but it's also a bit weird, because I don't feel I have the right to ask if they have such an app, let alone asking them to turn it off.
so, my point is not about not trusting your SO, but about not trusting random companies, because they are repeatedly showing both neglect and a big tendency to sell user data and lie to their benefit.
This has nothing to do with the tracking. You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone. Turning on GPS tracking for me and my wife has not given Google new data on our locations, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I'm violating someone else's privacy by doing so. I've also opted out of any app using my location without my express permission. You certainly wouldn't have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don't trust the corporations on the other end, because you have no idea what service, what precautions they've taken, and if they're actively sharing. If you were going to do so, then you should also inspect people's phones for having location turned on, and check all their apps permissions for location.
what is "this"? location sharing apps? if yes, why do you think these are unrelated?
You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone.
I don't care about a random person having location turned on. why should I? there's plenty of offline uses for that function, I use it regularly. maps, sports tracking, reminders, ...
, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I'm violating someone else's privacy by doing so.
that's ok, when it only affects you. but when you are navigating to a friend's place, with this thinking you are just ignorant about what is actually happening. I'm genuinely sorry to point this out.
this is a bit similar to when people refuse the fact that by uploading a picture of someone to facebook they might be violating their privacy. or when people haphazardly allow contacts access to random apps, or to apps like facebook messenger because it asks so nicely, and then disclaim responsibility over where does that contact information go.
You certainly wouldn't have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don't trust the corporations on the other end,
not just the corporations, but the tech hygiene of the average person. I am aware that it sounds bad, and I hate it that it is warranted.
Are you seriously arguing that navigating to someone's house with Google maps is violating their privacy? When I do share my location, I'm sharing through Google maps, directly to my wife's Google account. Google can already see my location for maps purposes. They have obtained no new information. If you are in fact arguing that using Google maps violates the privacy of anyone you navigate to, then I just don't agree and can't take you seriously. If you're arguing that somehow sharing my location to my wife's account in Google maps is somehow fundamentally different for privacy than using Google maps is already, then I just don't understand you. You're okay with people using maps but not sharing their location within those maps apps. That's a very confusing moral stance.
My wife and I have had our location shared with each other for years, but it's not a "Are they cheating?" thing. I have been married for 14 years and never wonder if my wife is cheating on me. It's just incredibly useful for seeing how far away one of us is from home to do things like plan dinner prep times, know where to look for a lost phone, etc. If you can't trust your SO, there is something wrong that you need to address and micro-managing where they are is toxic.
My wife and I are the same. Shared location means rather than a message saying "are you on your way home?" you can just check where they're at. If I'm out on a late night callout she can see where I am instead of worrying or constantly pinging for updates. Meeting somewhere? Live updates keeps everyone in sync, and let's you know if you've got time to do something on the way or if they're already waiting or whatever.
People must be in some super unhappy relationships if they see location sharing as nefarious.
This is like, the opposite of old-fashioned. Calling your wife when you're on the way home is old-fashioned.
This article is the first time I'm actually hearing about this idea because it never even occurred to me as something people would actually want to do. I frankly don't see the point of this nonsense. I would much rather talk to my wife on the phone and communicate with her about plans. It's much more human and normal, and facilitates good communication habits. It takes 2 minutes to give my wife a call and, you know what, I get to talk to my wife! We don't need technology invading absolutely every aspect of our lives. We don't need to be constantly plugged in and attached to our phones at the hip.
It also has other downsides, like making it hard to surprise your partner, constant battery drain from the constant location chatter, etc. In fact, it seems like all downside with no actual benefit (setting aside the trust stuff, because it's pretty irrelevant either way).
I get where you're coming from, but I loathe talking on the phone. I love talking to my wife, but we do that when sitting down for coffee and breakfast in the morning.
Isn’t it strange that “trusting” someone now, means letting them constantly spy on you?
I talked to some late teens about it some months ago. They see it as an “I give you permission to see my every move” kind of thing, as in they have nothing to hide. And they do it pretty early on in relationships, as a show of commitment.
I got my SO to turn off location tracking on Snapchat because I got a message from a family member about his location. She had screenshotted his location from the snap map, searched the address, found the person living there, searched him up, found out he’s also gay, and wondered if I knew he was out with another man?! FYI we attended a dinner party at the guys home.
That’s the level of insane some people get. Constant surveillance, mixed with insecurities and stories of cheating, and you’ve got a shitty ass cocktail.
Me having location shared with my partner of 20 years is one thing. But sharing it with anyone else? Fuck no.
I wouldn't even share my location with my SO of 10+ years. Why? They don't need it, and there's tons of potential negative things with that (phone manufacturer sells it, gov't takes it w/ backdoor deals, breach reveals it, etc).
I don't want my SO's location information, and they shouldn't want mine. If I'm doing some high risk activity, like doing a long hike alone, sure, but it's going off immediately after.
My SO gets super jealous/anxious, probably because of all the horror stories in the news. Having access to my location would only make that worse, because then every time I drop a coworker off at home or something and forget to tell my SO, they'll get super suspicious.
I'd much rather work off trust than need to explain every little deviation from my normal schedule just to avoid some anxiety.
My wife always has my location. I regularly go out for hours on my motorcycle and I'll tell her I'm going for a hour ride and get lost in the woods for 3. Years ago I had to call her to pick me up after a truck decided to go left in front of me and shattered my arm into 4 pieces. Caller her from the hospital bed high as fuck on morphine. She has my location so if I stop responding for hours she can make sure I didn't wind up in a medical center LOL.
For real and there's so many people in this thread who have only had toxic relationships or are in toxic relationships, projecting insecurities and lack of trust onto others who may not have these problems.
I don't think this is a good idea for most people, but for some it makes sense and we need to remember that everyone is in different situations.
When you have a spouse that travels a lot, anxiety can get pretty high.
None of the arguments for sharing location relate to cheating. If you are worried your partner is cheating, nothing will assuage your concerns, that is a you and them problem. I don't think for one second my wife would cheat on me, and not because I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread or anything, she's just a good, honest person, and when we have things come up in our relationship she talks to me.
Meh. My location sharing makes no difference to who I DONT want to see my location, your always being watched if u have a smart phone anyways 🤷 turning it on and off is too much effort to be bothered, I got nothing to hide from her.
You know what kind of couples I have known who use it?
Yep. That kind. The constant accusation, constant fighting, constant chaos kind. The same kind who share a Facebook account and all that.
I guess my bias there would be that those would also be the kind of people who advertise it.
I was standing beside an old coworker one time when her husband called, “babe, don’t freak out when I start moving. The boss is sending me to harbor freight to pick up some things.”
I got a call from her in the middle of the night one time, “I’m sitting by the lake and I’m about to drive my car in and kill myself.”
She knew her husband didn’t like me so she thought I wouldn’t call him. Well, I called him. “That bitch is lying. Life 360 has her sitting at her mom’s house right now. She just fucking wants attention!”
Still, I called a friend and asked them to drive by and see. Yep. She was at her mom’s house.
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.
If you trust your partner completely, then you trust them to use your location information responsibly, right?
No. But it isn't about that, anyway. Those apps sell your location data to advertisers and governments, and I'm not installing that bullshit on my phone after I kicked google off of it with grapheneOS.
oh good lord no. years, decades, centuries even couples have trusted each other WITHOUT the need to tracking their where abouts. suddenly this is something we need? no it isn't. but sure, you go ahead and slap a tag on your "loved one" so you know where they are at all times and so will whatever company is selling your data from said tag.
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:
I don't trust my or my SO's phone manufacturer to keep that data confidential, and I don't want them selling that to someone
I don't trust my government to steal that information en masse, and I'd really rather not trigger some alarm somewhere
I don't trust most of the apps on my phone with location information, and I'd really rather not trust my phone's app security to prevent them from getting it
breaches happen, and I'd really rather my location information not end up in criminals' hands
And so on. There's no upside and tons of potential downsides, so why do it?
Know when they come home or if they are stuck in traffic
"oh you are still in the store can you get me ..."
security if they get kidnapped
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.
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 can be absolute fucking morons.
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.
Our two eldest kids have Pinwheel phones. I was very up-front about what we can see from their devices on the parent portal side, and what they are and are not allowed to do with them. Their mom (my ex) doesn't like it, but as I'm the one with primary custody and the one who pays for the devices, and the fact that the kids know I'm open about the phones' capabilities, her opinion doesn't really matter. I'm not malicious about it, either; she's just a cunt.
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.
My mom the other day sent me like 5 texts in a row because I didn't see them while working. Had to stop and tell her "For the past century, if most people wanted to contact their kids they waited months for letters to go back and forth. No need to panic over not talking for a day."
Privacy is something that I think needs to be actively encouraged. It is a right, and thinks like location tracking are creeping their way into daily life and eroding that right.
No one should have the ability to violate that. And we shouldn't be making it easier to.
And what if you broke your leg and were lying in a ditch while chipmunks were eating your spleen, eh? How would anyone ever find you huh? Bet the egg is really on your face now!
Obviously I have my phone on me so I could just dial 911. If your phone breaks when whatever occurs to you, then your spouse or whatever isn't going to be able to track your location and you're not going to be able to call 911 either. So either way you're fucked.
But what if a T-Rex swats your phone away but gets distracted trying to pick it up with his tiny arms, and forgets to eat you, huh? Bet you didn't consider that likely scenario eh Buster Brown?
Yep. This is one of those hard lines for me. And I feel like it's a red flag for anyone who demands it from a partner.
I trust my partner and they trust me. I actively encourage them to do things without me, because I want them to be an independent person. I want them to have friends that I don't hang out with.
My route has pretty much no stoplights, so there's not really an opportunity to text. But I send a text when I leave and if I'm delayed (i.e. I'll have an opportunity to text).
I don't agree with the practice but I do see the point - it reduces anxiety and gives your partner a sense that you're okay for relationships where trust is strong. For toxic relationships this should absolutely not be a thing.
As far as governments or companies selling the data... You can use some self-hosted services on a de-googled GrapheneOS or LineageOS install and use sattelite location only. Then, pipe that to said self hosted solution that doesn't sell your data like homeassistant or whatever.
Idk, I think it would increase anxiety for my SO, and we have a lot of trust. For example, if I take a coworker home, go out to lunch, etc w/o telling my SO, and they see that deviation in my routine, they could start doubting that trust. But if they just don't see it, they just rely on what we tell each other, and if it's not important, it doesn't need to be communicated and can't create that anxiety.
At least that's my take. My SO is really trusting, but also quite anxious because of nonsense they read on SM and whatnot, so a deviation can create a lot of unnecessary concern.
But yeah, I wouldn't be completely opposed to a self-hosted solution here. I use GrapheneOS, and if the UX isn't too terrible (i.e. easy to toggle off and on), it could be really useful for something like going hiking alone or whatever.
if I take a coworker home, go out to lunch, etc w/o telling my SO, and they see that deviation in my routine, they could start doubting that trust
This means there are still significant insecurities in the relationship that can bubble up and become problems, and you know about these.
You do not trust your spouse to trust you and not misinterpret your intentions.
Paradoxally You can defeat some of this insecurity by being transparent and welcoming misinterpretation if you believe you both have full trust in each other.
As a high anxiety person myself, this works to defeat the anxiety which is often feared of the unknown. By proving that deviations to your routine are not something they should feel anxious about, then that anxiety can melt away.
This kind of shit is pretty common for younger people. I work as a teacher, and I hear students talk about this all the time. I tell them how unhealthy it is blah, blah, blah. My SO tells the younger people at her work "If I had PumpkinSkink's location sharing on he couldn't surprise me with cake from the bakery". She has had more success than I getting people to stop.
My wife and I have each other's locations. We trust each other. We just like having that information available. It's really not that hard to understand.
It sounds like you and your wife have a healthy relationship. That’s awesome! But, for possessive and controlling relationships, surveillance can be harmful.
Personally, my location is shared with my sister. I’d share it with my partner but he is a bit of a Luddite. I wouldn’t be sharing because he asked, I would be doing it so he could find me easily in an emergency.
And, I wouldn’t ask him to share his. If he turned it on and wanted me to have it, that’s cool. And if not, that’s cool too.
Not just couples. I was aghast to learn that my fellow parents at work track the location of their teenage kids. All of them, except me. What the fuck? If I want to know where they are I text and ask.
What's more - half of them also have it turned on in the other direction.
This is crazy to me. I want my kids to grow into adults and I'm not going to surveil them all the time. I think a kid of teen age has some reasonable expectation of privacy. We are close, I have a good relationship with my kids but not THAT close, I don't need to know if you stopped at Wawa on your way home.
We have location sharing enabling via Find My since everyone but me uses Apple. I don't think my wife ever uses it and I only use it as a means of checking they seem to still be alive when they are otherwise late to somewhere they planned to be if I get worried about them.
In years past I would just call them, but this way is less actively intrusive. But people that use it as a spying tool have issues.
Made worse, like they had the info before but now they really have it? They always have it, that's it. If you're concerned about privacy drop the phone, otherwise it's a bullshit argument.
I have my location shared with my wife because while I was working out of the house I got tired of answering the same text message ("how far from home are you so I can start dinner?") every afternoon. She's the only one in the world I have no secrets from, so I just never turned it off. I honestly don't know if she still knows I've got it shared with her.
I'm kind of neurotic and get worried that something may have happened to her while she's traveling, which she does a lot. If she's supposed to arrive somewhere and hasn't I start pacing and biting my nails thinking of all the bad things that could have happened.
We shared each other's location and the peace of mind has helped a lot.
We don't keep secrets from each other. Some folks in this thread see location sharing as a threat, I assume because they are uncomfortable or have existing trust issues with their relationship that are yet to be resolved?
That's really not the type of person she is, or the type of relationship we have. She might well know that I'm still sharing with her, but it's not because she's controlling or untrusting. It would be because she had a reason to check recently.
Yeah, my wife has mine and I know she doesn't use it as often as she could, because I'll get the text, and I'll be like hey, just check the location. Both or jobs take us different places every day (that we aren't home), and so neither of us have a schedule, and so rather than the same texts every day, "When you home," when we're trying to figure out the kids, or dinner, or camps, or I have to go to work at night, or she has a book club meeting, or whatever other myriad things happen every day, we can skip that step. Or we have the ability to, and my wife forgets about it.
Having a shared calendar has been a godsend for us. Honestly we would each probably miss like half of our appointments if my the other wasn't able to say "hey don't you have that thing...?" or "hey aren't the kids supposed to be at that place in twenty minutes...?". I can imagine location sharing makes that even easier because you'd know if it's even possible for them to make it, or if you need to get them ready or whatever.
To me it's weird that people have issues with this. My wife and I, married 35 years, share each other's locations because if something bad happened we would want to be able to find each other. I don't even give a second thought to, "...and I can make sure she isn't cheating on me."
Starting this by saying: Using tracking apps to see what someone's doing 24/7 or worrying about them cheating is insane and is a solid NO, full stop.
But I do understand why people use tracking apps, and I wish we had good FOSS alternatives. A tracking/location sharing app where the trackee can turn it on/off anytime they want (after using a password/biometrics, to prevent others from messing with it), so loved ones can be sure you made it to your destination.
I don't want people stalking their kids, judging their friends for the places they go, surveiling if someone's a cheater, or worst of all, having their data be sold by the shitty companies that run these services.
I've read stories that have scared me and made me wish I could do something like that when I'm out late. I had to (unfortunately) use Live360 during a field trip in another country cause the teachers needed to keep track of us. I understand safety-wise that these apps are vital
I've setup Hauk for my dad to broadcast his location while delivering. It is only activated when he activates it, but it also works if you want to share location with a specific group of people. It has an app and a website, and can be password protected. It also records history and speed, but history can be turned off.
It is not very robust or particularly well coded, but it is a nice little FOSS app that works, but has to be self hosted.
I trust my wife, and she trusts me. We trust each other not to ask for stupid brain-poisoning shit that humans weren't meant to have access to that could one day blow up horribly.
I don't have her passwords, she doesn't have mine. Our phones are locked. I could technically see what she's doing online I suppose via traffic snooping in the router logs but the day I feel the urge to do something like that is the day I kill myself for having abandoned basic moral principles.
We're apes, we have brains built for avoiding snakes in tall grass and finding water and berries. You poison yourself with surveillance, you feed your worst and most destructive impulses. Practice keeping secrets, practice being okay with not knowing. Trust isn't surveillance, trust is knowing that if something fucking mattered you'd be told.
edit: I want my wife to be able to break my heart because if she does she'll have a good reason for doing so. That is what trust is.
It's only vile when you project insecurities or bad intent...
We both know each other's passwords for everything. We use a shared database for it. We both know each other's phone, unlock codes and often through laziness will just use each other's phones for shit. We shared the same bank accounts, we don't have separate money. We share the same vehicles....etc
What's mine is hers, what's hers is mine. Except literally.
We also both have each other's location. What do we use this for? Essentially nothing except when one of us is traveling, or someone is feeling neurotic/worried. The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn't just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.
We don't hide things from each other, we've explicitly built a relationship of openness and trust, brought on by us actually_not_ trusting each other for a long time. We are completely transparent, and you know what this has helped build? Trust. Know what it has torn down? Insecurities. It's been great.
All they would have to do is turn location sharing off, and change passwords. More likely they would talk about it and agree to split rather than just run off. You know, like adults.
I’m in the same place as you with my spouse, but we didn’t start with not trusting each other. I just never worry about my spouse knowing things about me—I cannot imagine what I wouldn’t tell her anyway.
My spouse has (multiple) physical journals lying around the house. I would never read them—she doesn’t worry about hiding them.
I hope you wouldn't invade her privacy, but I have no problem popping into my wife's Gmail (I'll ask her first), because some camp or school only sent something to her related to our kids that needs to be addressed. And there could be ten emails there from dudes names I don't know and I wouldn't care because I trust my wife implicitly. I would let her do exactly the same, I don't keep my shit on lockdown because I'm worried she'll see my Google search history.
The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn't just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.
Bless you but the moment I start being afraid of my partner dying everytime they leave the house will be the moment I'm getting back in touch with my psychologist.
I didn't say that I'm afraid of him dying every time they leave the house, you said that.
I'm afraid of them dying when they're traveling 20 hours. Or over a mountain pass. Or various other reasons. They travel a lot and I get worried that's just how it is.
When calculating travel costs, I also dug up some statistics and figured what the chance of crashing, injury and death were based on how much driving we do on an annual basis based on national averages.
I actually thought knowing that would make me less stressed about all the travel but it didn't help because the numbers are kind of depressing.
These same people who are suggesting you live in fear of your partner dying are also afraid their partner might find their porn collection. It's staggering. To describe location or password sharing as "vile" just puts into perspective the kind of people you're talking to.
I knowy wife's phone password, must have trust issues. Or we go on car rides and her phone is connected and the kids want me to put a song on. Should we pull over so she can unlock her phone? Vile.
Too many folks think it's to keep tabs on people, because that's presumably how they'd use it, they'd sit there and watch it.
I'm exactly the same. I get that it's not for everyone. I understand that, and respect it. But I hate people framing this as you having a trust issue.
It's the opposite of a trust issue. I trust my wife to be responsible with my bank accounts. I trust my wife to see my location because I also trust my wife to only bother checking if she has a reasonable reason to do so, and to not be a weird paranoid freak if I'm somewhere she doesn't expect. I trust my wife with the password to all my online accounts because it's easier to just share a Bitwarden than it is to segregate everything, and I completely trust her to not invade my privacy.
The thing is, our lives are online. If I get hit by a bus or something, I don't want her to have to deal with my death while ALSO figuring out how to convince banks and insurance companies and whatnot to let her in. Much easier to just share my Bitwarden with her.
I'm not in some panopticon, worrying "Oh no, what will my wife think about me being within 500 yards of an ex's house" or whatever because I totally trust her to trust me. It's just not an issue.
I don’t have her passwords, she doesn’t have mine.
Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death. It's good to have some way for someone you trust to get your online accounts when you pass away so that everything can be concluded and canceled and sentimental content preservation and all that.
For my relationship the means to gain access to my password manager are available in the case of an emergency. Maybe shove the credentials in a bank security box and put access to it into your will if you don't feel you can trust your partner with the knowledge while you are alive.
Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death.
I wa actually thinking about this. After I had a password breach, I wanted to setup a password manager. I wanted something. That I could host locally and access across my VPN. I also thought it would be neat to have a Deadman switch built in to it, where it pings you at set intervals and asks you to just hit a button to confirm you are alive. If you miss a certain number of pings consecutively, then it emails your specified backup contacts and has allows them to access your passwords.
Is this anything anyone here is interested in? Or does it exist already?
Yes we're teenagers. We've been married 15 years, ceremony was when we were three.
Privacy is important, have you never kept a diary? Do you film therapy sessions lest your partner not know what you discussed? Shit with the door open? You don't need justification for wanting privacy, you need privacy so when you have a good reason for it nothing looks different.
What if there’s an emergency?
What if there is? Get help, that's an insane fear to live with. If I am unconscious there's nothing to do anyway, the hospital or whatever will find her details in my purse and call. What the fuck am I going to do, sit there watching the dot on the map and calling 000 if it stops moving? You are a lunatic, we have society to take care of us while we're out and about and emergency beacons if you're like camping beyond the black stump or sailing the Pacific.
My wife has done courses on warning signs for abusive relationships as part of some mental health first aid certification stuff.
2 biiiiiig red flags are insisting on surveillance and not letting people have separate finances. We have a combined account sure, and also pocket money accounts and whatever else. For all I know she's set up a trust. I mean I don't think she has because she'd probably tell me but she has the freedom to do so.
If there's an emergency it will be known regardless. Levels of paranoia that are not justified; how many emergencies have you been in where an Internet connected device is so important in the shortest amount of time? Or at all. No. You might need a phone. But not an app in particular.
And for long term emergencies an fm/am radio is a better tool than the Internet.
I really think you nailed it and that folks here are either kids or never grew out of the high school mentality. It seems like they conflate trust issues with openness, and that you would only share with your spouse because your spouse doesn't trust you.
My wife has my location. My wife has had my location when I've gone to bachelor parties and done bachelor party activities. I doubt she looked at it. When I came home, I told her about things we did because we take an interest in one another's lives.
It really all comes down to efficiency. She's an hour from home and I need to start cooking dinner soon? I'll go grab the kids now and come home and get going. It just helps plan days and nights.
Hi bros. I'm just letting you know about this terrible app called GPS spoofer. Make extra sure you've haven't installed it on your phone by mistake because a lot of apps will download this without letting you know.
I don't want to share my location nor have anyone else's shared with me.
Friends and partners can text "I'll be there in 5"
My friend shares her location with her mother. Her mother then nags her with like "Are you seeing someone new? You're spending a lot of time in north brooklyn now." Like, who needs that, or even the temptation of that?
A tech solution is not going to fix a social/mental problem like fear of cheating.
Hell, my wife generally knows where I'm going when I go out but only because I want to tell her and usually invite her. I'd hate for her to be able to ask why I'm at a restaurant instead of the bar I said I was going to, even if I'll tell her about it when I get home
My partner and I share locations. We check sometimes how far away from home they are when walking the dog, or coming from work. Also handy when one of us "loses" their phone and the other can see it's at home/in the car/at work. But we have trust, and don't need to check where the other is spending time.
You can send it on a one-off basis in Signal. Share location, requested sparingly it can be done but seems like there are bigger issues by the time thats even necessary and coming up regularly
If I'm doing it multiple times a day every day, why not just keep it on. Do you only leave the house once? I know that for some people that is the case, wake up, go to work, come home, all on a nice schedule. That is not the case in our house, not even close, and so it's nice to be able to streamline the process of getting our shit together every day.
Been sharing with select friends and family for years now, zero issues. And if we did have an issue? I'm turning it off for you 🤷♂️ pretty simple. Frequently extremely convenient.
A friend of a friend of mine is sharing with a friend of theirs. And it's a crap show like you said, coming over, inviting themselves to events, why were you there, etc. Everything you said. And it's still a problem, to the point where they leave their phone at home if they are doing anything sensitive, because they are afraid of hurting the person's feelings by turning it off 🙄
I think the key is having a backbone, and also not having crap friends 🤷♂️
Some people are enablers for those kinds of friends. Others have no problem with it. Ex and family all shared. They'd all be in each other's shit and were a ok with it. Was so odd to see being the polar opposite.
My wife only asked me to 'follow' her with location sharing because there was a creepy dude in the area who was approaching women. Otherwise we trust each other enough and actually communicate about the things we do. Plus we don't cheat on each other - there's enough stress in life without adding to it lol.
Yes, Apple already has my location. Using the location finder in iOS does not share data with advertisers. Also, I spend 99% of my time at my house. Wtf kind of secret shit do you think I’m up to?
Me and my partner share locations. Never once have we done this. It's purely a logistical thing. 10x faster to check someone's location when you're supposed to meet them instead of testing them "wya".
How old are you guys, if you don't mind me asking? It seems that generally younger people don't see this as an innate violation of privacy, where older people feel quite surveilled and even like they're being viewed as untrustworthy for someone to ask this of them.
I've never cheated on my spouse (not even close), I've never felt any inclination to lie about my whereabouts. I can see the safety aspect of this, logically. I would feel offended if my spouse asked me to be a dot on his phone, as if he was asking to own me. We share a home, a child, a bank account, a car, but we don't share location. I don't even keep my location activated for my own use unless I'm actively navigating somewhere new.
We've got plenty of "normal" problems, but none of them lead me to want his location. I simply trust him enough. It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems
but what people are saying is it has little to do with trust: it’s a utility… in fact, the trust is flipped: i trust my partner to have my location, and only look at it for things like checking how far away i am for my benefit
It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems
you’re allowed to feel that, but that’s absolutely not true. given the safety and utility aspect, it FEELS to me like if you don’t trust your partner to have and not abuse your location data then you must have other problems
surveillance implies active, constant, and surreptitious… i would not classify mutual location sharing as any of that: it’s passive, occasional, and well-known and consented to by both parties
NO surveillance is truly constant, that would defeat the point of surveillance which is to create the ever present possibility that someone is watching so you begin to subconciously assume you are always being watched.
I'd rather not disclose my age on this account, but, let's just say we're not newly married.
I will admit my statement about location sharing only being a problem if you've already got problems was a bit too binary. The issue is more nuanced.
I see you're focusing on the cheating aspect, which to your credit is what the OP is all about. But from our perspective, that's not even an issue or a use case for the technology. We have full trust in each other. The technology is simply useful for other reasons.
Did she make it to work in the snowstorm or rainstorm?
Huh she's usually home by now, is she unconscious in a ditch or just stopped at the store?
Dinner is almost ready, I just need to put this in the oven so it's ready to come out the second she walks in the door, let me make sure she's actually on her way home. Oh, she must have gotten held up at work, I'll wait a few more minutes.
Stuff like that. Yeah there's other ways of solving those problems, and that's fine too, we just prefer the convenience.
We don't share locations because we don't trust each other, we share because it's convenient. I guess you could say we trust each other not to go crazy with it 🤷♂️
We have married friends who won't share with each other, and that's fine too.
I'll retract my earlier statement. Location sharing is a sensitive subject, with lots of facets. Sharing or not is a personal choice. And while there can be practical benefits, I think most people would agree that using it for cheating prevention is.... Unhealthy.
I don't mind my girlfriend knowing where I am because I'm not cheating on her. The only time it gets a bit weird is if me and my mates are doing something a bit stupid, one time we went to one of those trampoline centres at like 10:00 p.m. because they were having an adult night. We pushed to get massively over excited about trampolines and I ended up getting questioned about it in the morning. But hey she definitely knew I wasn't cheating on her there she just thought I was being weird
We pushed to get massively over excited about trampolines and I ended up getting questioned about it in the morning. But hey she definitely knew I wasn't cheating on her there she just thought I was being weird
This is precisely the insidious part. This is how an innocent self censorship of your privacy begins, with a harmless anecdote like this.
I'm 37 and share my location with my wife. We have kids. It is an efficiency thing that we use to help decide when to begin dinner, who's grabbing the kids, etc. The whole idea of trust issues is just very high school to me.
I have my mom's location. She lives alone. She works in the city. Sometimes I like to just be sure she got home but don't need to bother her about it, or I'm at work late and can't be making phone calls.
Folks with privacy concerns, I guess I accept that. But if you think the only thing stopping the government from snatching you is your location services being off, you're sorely mistaken.
One of the ways I knew my marriage was over, he disabled location services and left them off for months and then years. I followed when I started fucking other people.
Yeah, exactly. So great to be able to say, oh, she's about 15 minutes away, so I'll start making dinner. Much easier and safer than texting while driving, too.
We originally set it up so she could make sure I wasn't laying in a ditch somewhere from a cycling crash.
Same. I don’t even recall setting it up until I stumbled on it one day and could track my wife. I pulled a few pranks until I revealed my hand but we’ve never turned it off. There’s nothing malicious about it and we’re both happy to keep it on.
To share my location with my partner I need to share it with a third part also and I'm pretty selective about that so I never even signed up for this kind of thing.
I use location services but just leave them off until I need them. I'm not super hard to find anyways
If my partner could check my location at any time, how would I keep bday and anniversary gifts secret? The places where I go to buy things for her are not places I would normally go. She only has to randomly check one time when I'm at an unusual location for her to ask why and then I have to lie. Not worth it.
We use temporary sharing (can limit to one hour) when meeting somewhere. Beyond that, it's a potential liability.
Example: she once got upset that I wanted to go to the mail room (apt building) alone and didn't want her to go with me. She wanted to know what I was hiding. Turned out to be her bday gift and it was just in the commercial packaging with a shipping label. I let her go get it and she's never been suspicious of my motives since (this was at the very start of our relationship and we hadn't established the level of trust that we have now).
Anyway, again, the one-hour sharing is all we need.
Sounds like you guys have some serious trust issues. If sharing your location with each other devolves that quickly, it ain’t the tech making problems.
It's not something I've used very much as I don't have much need for it, but I have used Locus a few times and I'm pretty comfortable with their privacy policy compared to the vast majority of other options.
Let your pals or family know you’re safe. Share your position during your outdoor adventures in real time. Share meeting points. Chat with others in the group. Right here, right now!
When did I ever say that? Why would you just assume that since I said google is tracking your location I just being using an iPhone and thibk that apple is better? Fuck apple and google they both suck. Dont use either of them.
You'll never be able to stop someone that wants to cheat. Best you can do is be funner and sexier than anyone else your partner might be around. Never understood why that's so hard for some people.
That's the gist of the success of my marriage. Even before we met, we both had reached a point of maturity where we were confident in ourselves as single people, and then from that solid base you can build the relationship in a healthy way. We both try to be the best to our partner, while being ultimately independent. These over-jealous people are using their relationship as a crutch for life so they're terrified of it going wrong. Either that or they're guilty themselves and projecting.
When we need to know each others location, we share it via element / matrix. Our own server, so no third party.
Happens maybe four times a year.
(Also, do you just always have location services enabled?? IMO it's a battery drain, I pretty much only enable it for this and while I need to navigate)
Nobody to answer to (and share my location). Despite being somewhat aware of the privacy concerns of having location services always enabled, the potential of having access to finding my phone based on the service to find it (Apples and Googles feature) is more important (to me). Same reason I have cellular always enabled.
Main reason I keep location services enabled is for geo-tagged photos. At first I always kept it disabled because of privacy trust issues (e.g. sharing a picture might not always strip the geotags) but since going on a vacation in sri lanka and being able to trace back a picture to a location it became a very useful feature.
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.
And provider of whatever service you use to share your location. Being a bit paranoid about your privacy in this day and age is not just fearmongering and tinfoil-hats.
It can be extremely usefull for example for grabbing shit in a mall
Or communicate in advance that it'll take 30 minutes for you to find your shit and then meet up at a cafe, by car, at lobby or whatever. Live location doesn't add anything to that, assuming it even works reliably enough inside buildings.
My wife and I have our location shared with each other 24/7. Furthermore, my sister also has mine and my wife has her sister's. It has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with safety. Perhaps the real trust is not assuming your partner will use your location to control you.
But that data gets created, so it's vulnerable. Commercial aps on your phone, sketchy apps youve never heard of like facebook, google services, and potentially something from your carrier, plus the government in mosy cases, will have access, phone home, record it.
Then it gets transmitted to your partner somebody('s code) does this. Even if it's e2ee, you need a program to do that, abd the general rule with phone apps is that your data is being sold.
Then it gets to your partners phone, where it is again vulnerable to third parties their apps etc.
Then brake up with her! Why you stay with partner that do not trust you? Yea not everything works perfect inba relationship, but people should allow some space.
That's sort of the irony of it all. People are terrified of being cheated on, because it implies their partner has an attractive alternative they found with mysterious ease. Meanwhile, they're stuck trawling for singles in the gutter.
But it's illusionary. Hot MILFs are not, in fact, In Your Area Waiting To Fuck. Being single, particularly when you're older, is miserable for a lot of people.
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?
Having public social media can be useful. And it was always possible even before (oh yes MySpace). My issue is having this eternal access as a proof of existance on you all the time. I am fine with the idea of having a public life, what triggers me is the normalisation of surveillance from subjects who never had the concept of being surveillance actors in the first place.
Not to mention, how many abusive partners are already using this feature already? I guess many more than just jealus couples. Airtags had the same problems, but thera are apps to let you spot them, even than they're an invasive technology. Position sharing can be invasive too. Even voluntary sharing is probably worse than we think.
There are few cases where i can think this as a useful feature, like incidents or other unspecified situations.
The one thing that stands out is that this is active constantly. It's not situational. The article doesn't do a good job at detailing the possible abuses of the function but they're there, they were the same with gps trackers and airtags. Gps devices are notoriously expensive relative to these alternatives so nowadays only a certain person would use them.
Do we all really think this is a great idea when fascism and toxic masculinity are catastrophically growing globally like a late stage mestastized cancer?
Do you think enabling all those men to abusively control their spouses is just the forward march of technological progress?
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.
Yes, most sane persons I know have disavowed the entire concept of being with someone else. And archaic leftover of a more dependant age. Now it's just handcuffs with no upside Ending cheating is as easy as ending "being in a couple" and for people who can imagine life without this crutch it becomes more and more foreign why anyone would ever accept such an oppressive custom into their household
Could you explain what you mean by calling it an oppressive custom? Personally, I love being with someone. It has the upside of me getting to enjoy companionship with another human being, and it doesn't feel like handcuffs. Sometimes I have to do things that I wouldn't do otherwise for the sake of my partner's feelings/wellbeing, but isn't that the case in all relationships? Romantic, familial, platonic, or otherwise? If my partner wants me to do something I'm truly uncomfortable with (like allowing them to track my location), and we can't agree on a compromise, I'd just end that relationship and find someone I'm more compatible with.
It's hard for me to express it clearly but you description doesn't seem to include an overwhelming sense that being in any kind of relationship like that MUST also mean a exclusivity of intimacy. Complete with paranoia over whether you will ever violate this hard line and become a cheater.
And I'm not against some people wanting that. I'm against that being the default understanding for almost all sexual relationships, even when the sexuality part dies and then you become a prisoner of the relationship, torn between convenience of staying together and being sexually unfulfilled, forever.
Not to mention all the policing that comes around hunting violators of these pacts. And worse, the societal skewing pushing everyone into these exclusivity arrangements. Where I work, just 20 years ago it was well known that married people favored each other and the promotion were far more likely for married than the celibates. There are often many other forms of incentives, a lot of them financial, disfavorable toward celibates.
These types of arrangement used to be inescapable literally, to the point of many killing their spouses and elites having wars over the right to escape, and still we barely are able to escape the oppressive institution and its demands.
This makes sense. I'm completely on board with ethical non-monogamy. To me, cheating is just when you betray your partner's trust to engage in sexual/romantic behavior with someone else, and what actually count as cheating depends on an agreement between you and your partner(s).
I did see OP respond to my comment and edit it away. If I recall, they said something along the lines of 'it's oppressive for someone to restrict your freedom in forming relationships with other people." And I do understand that point. Like, if my friend tried to tell me I couldn't be friends with some other person, I'd be pretty mad. So why do allow a romantic partner to set boundaries on the potential relationships I could form with others that have nothing to do with them?
Well, personally, I'm monogamous, (although I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of an open relationship in some form). I have no desire to be with anyone but my partner, and my current partner feels the same way. I've also been cheated on before, and it felt absolutely terrible. A lot of the pain came from my ex's lies and betray, but it also just hurt to imagine him being with someone else and preferring them over me. Those emotions of possessiveness and jealousy, even divorced (pun intended) from the betrayal element of cheating would still upset me, I think. Maybe these feelings are just a result of a combination of insecurity and my societal upbringing towards monogamy, but they are still very real to me. So I want a relationship with a partner who will respect my feelings on this matter and do their best to avoid causing me strong emotional pain, just as I would do for them.
To me, it feels more freeing to just not have to worry about my partner getting with other people, and it's well-worth the trade-off of not doing something I had no desire for anyways. I see nothing wrong with this type of relationship as long as everyone involved consents to it. But if others want relationships with complete freedom on what they do with additional partners, more power to them.
why do allow a romantic partner to set boundaries on the potential relationships I could form with others
it also just hurt to imagine him being with someone else and preferring them over me
My problem is exclusivity being the standard or default requirement for almost everyone, in many case just because that's what everyone else is doing.
This deletes, say 95% of the population. It's already a very improbable thing to hook up with someone compatible and have that requirement, unless you have a very high "hook up attempt" rate than you can just forget the whole thing as unrealistic, which I did a long time ago.
It's just not going to happen, no interested, the terms are unacceptable I'm not even going to waste any time trying.
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.
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.
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
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.
The wiping commands probably wouldn't have worked, but a hacker who says they wanted to expose Amazon’s AI “security theater” was able to add code to Amazon’s popular ‘Q’ AI assistant for VS Code, which Amazon then pushed out to users.
The Sapienza computer scientists say Wi-Fi signals offer superior surveillance potential compared to cameras because they're not affected by light conditions, can penetrate walls and other obstacles, and they're more privacy-preserving than visual images.
[…] The Rome-based researchers who proposed WhoFi claim their technique makes accurate matches on the public NTU-Fi dataset up to 95.5 percent of the time when the deep neural network uses the transformer encoding architecture.
The tracking happens even with a big reflector/scatterer on your head, but as long as you dont wear it regularly, the system would have difficulty identifying you from wave propagation alone
I've seen some article recently that the patterns of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (don't remember which one) interference with brainwaves can be scanned to reconstruct brainwave signature remotely, meaning that it might be possible to scan anyone's EEG from Wi-Fi/Bluetooth distance. And there are some AI advancements for reconstructing inner monologue from EEG. So maybe we're not so far from actual remote mind-reading.
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Well they can identify you are the same person but not your identity.. So it's like a disenbodied fingerprint.
I suppose they could potentially make some database and train an AI on it someday to match to actual identities, but usefulness would be pretty limited at only 95% accuracy. That's a false reading 1/20 times, so I suspect it would fail bigly to accurately recognize people from large data sets.
Never said that it wasn’t easy, it’s just harder than with facial recognition. In theory you could do it correctly in a way that it isn’t indentifiable.
Also this works in places where faces are protected
I'd imagine it's like online advertisers: they convert your fingerprint to a token to try to sell you shit, but they allegedly don't know who exactly you are or where you go. So visiting animatedllamaporn.com is still your little secret...
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You'd need fabric with continuous metallic threads that form a complete mesh to actually block the 2.4/5GHz signals - most DIY foil approaches leave gaps that WiFi can still penetrate thru.
I feel like you’re overthinking this. There are people who buy crystal-infused drinking cups to reset their personal feng shui. (Spoiler: it’s just glitter.)
I really wish I didn’t have morals. It’s so easy to make money if you’re willing to fleece people.
I'm generally pro research, but occasionally I come across a body of research and wish I could just shut down what they're doing and rewind the clock to before that started.
There is no benefit of this for the common person. There is no end user need or product for being able to identify individuals based on their interactions with WiFi signals. The only people that benefit from this are large corporations and governments and that's from them turning it on you.
Continued research will ease widespread surveillance and mass tracking. That's not a good thing.
If all you need is presence detection then a motion sensor would be vastly more efficient.
If you actually need identity detection, then maybe, but you'll still have to have a camera or detailed access logs to associate the interference signature with a known entity and at that point you may as well just put an RFID reader under the bowl you throw your keys into or use facial or gait detection.
This kind of thing relies on the fact that the emitter and environments are static, impacting the propagation of the signals in a predictable way and that each person, having a unique physique, consistently interferes with that propagation in the same way. It's a tool that reports "the interference in this room looks like the same interference observed in these past cases."
Search and rescue is a very dynamic environment, with no opportunity to establish a local baseline, and with a high likelihood that the physiological signal you are looking for has been altered (such as by broken or severed limbs).
There are some other WiFi sniffing technologies that might be more useful for S&R such as movement detection, but I'm not sure if that will work as well when the broadcaster is outside the environment (as the more rubble between the emitter and the target the weaker your signal from reflections against the rubble).
Don't think of this as being able to see through walls like with a futuristic camera, think of this as AI assisted anomaly detection in signal processing (which is exactly what the researchers are doing).
Microwave based ground penetrating radar is actually different from WiFi. Also the technology referenced in the link is a motion based body locator, not an identity recognition device.
This is different technology doing different things than what the original article was talking about.
I mean I don't understand this as a lay person, so if it doesn't work then fair enough, but if wifi signals can identify human beings, and pets, when a building collapses better than other methods, or even augment the capabilities already used, then at least there is some benefit from this technique. It's not going to disappear, Genie is out of the bottle now, so why not at least put it to a good use instead of keeping it only being abused by the billionaires and other evil entities.
It's too late now to stop that and I hate that they can do this.
Please don't mistake me trying to find a silver lining as anything other than trying to find a reason that this isn't just another way we are fucked but the science is what it is so out it to better use. It's an interesting capability regardless of how it can be abused, and since we aren't going to stop using the technology we should really understand exactly how this works by using it and making it was beneficial as possible.. Until we were ready to ban the tech, which I have no faith that we will ever.
A bespoke device made to do this, not just your wifi router at home, might as well study it for good praises, or we may if only be abused with little defence against our collective abusers
WiFi uses a subset of the significantly wider microwave band. Ground Penetrating Radar also uses a subset of the microwave band. While there can be some overlap, the frequencies desired for GPR will very broadly based on what you are looking for, what you are looking in, and how deep you are looking for that thing. The wattage supplied can also differ.
WiFi and Microwaves in general are most definitely not the same thing and I will absolutely encourage you to not set up a 1kW 3GHz jamming antenna for your WiFi needs.
Could you use WiFi for search and rescue? Maybe for a narrow set of circumstances, but in almost all situations a dedicated GPR option will be better.
This also won't identify a victim, only revealing that one exists.
First - someone comes up with this. Next, privacy researchers and black/white/grey hat techies come up with methods to defeat it.
Better for surveillance tech research like this to be published out in the open than developed in some secret lab. I figure these researchers are doing more positive than negative by publishing their findings. It's not like if they didn't publish, someone else wouldn't come up with this and possibly use it clandestinely.
When anyone or anything says that their product works "up to x%" I always presume it doesn't really work at all. Christ, 1% is included in that "up to 95.5%" vague bullshit statement.
I believe the reason they had to say "up to" is because the "signatute" will vary day to day ever so slightly (natural weight fluctuation), and if you gain or lose weight it can change dramatically, so the AI would have to constantly consider that and adjust it's records.
Honestly, unpopular opinion, but as long as it isn't very short wavelength RF and they allow for self-hosted/open-source alternatives, I do find it a bit more privacy respecting than cameras, of course they have to say they are using the technology in public places.
It also has it's ways of fooling it, instead of wearing a wig and a false nose, you could wear a carbon-infused silicone fat suit to change the way you interact with RF.
I know people, funded, building WiFi scanners, but for the industry. They are cheap and can scan big stuff but they are quite imprecise, I wonder if you have like to stand in a specific pose on a specific spot for it to work?
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I can imagine this being initially an accidental discovery like oh every time so and so’s body interacts with the WiFi signal it’s the same pattern… until someone starts exploring this further… and then some engineer or their manager started looking for applications for this. In my experience engineering researchers especially are very good with coming up with use cases for whatever tech they’re working with, with little ethical consideration.
I doubt it. You'd need to be looking really closely at the waveforms to notice this, so they were likely already doing something similar, like that research that can pinpoint where people are in a house based on their WiFi. They were probably already doing something creepy before they noticed that this was more straightforward than they expected.
Once you start playing with radiowaves and antenna you start noticing the intricate ways it plays with and around bags of water like bodies. I'm sure the original research on location/movement tracking was due to scientists trying not to get interference, later once they figured it out it was natural to see how much data they could get out of a radio interference profile.
I remember the original tech was going to be marketed as a way to tell if your old person (parent etc) had fallen down and stopped moving. Not the best use case, and then the privacy implications became clear. Once that happens the race begins to exploit the tech.
...But the eventuality here is something like a Star Trek tricorder that can take multiple vitals and detect irregularities from across the waiting room. Sensors that remember who was in a room and what settings they had. Etc. Some cool thing besides the bad stuff (microtarget those ads).
Well I heard about this and thought "this will be great for home automation", but I also know that someone was equally excited about using this to rob people of basic freedoms or being a fucking creep or both.
Cameras require light, while radio waves works almost as well in darkness.
A motion sensor is an extra device that needs to be connected, have power and so on.
There are already radio wave motion- and room occupancy sensors where you can specify zones and so on, but if I could have personalized on top of that I'd take it.
Finally, using a thing for something useful other than its intended purpose is kinda fun.
People willingly provide enough tracking of themselves already
While this could have military applications, the need to generate a profile of the person you want to track makes this less of a concern for your average “carries a phone everywhere” person
Tech companies are always foaming at the mouth to get more data. Yes they know who you are but what do you think, how do you feel, how do you move? The only way to go is to get richer data. This satisfies that addiction. You really think mark Zuckerberg won’t use this against you if he can?
The resulting image must just basically look like a shadow, I can't imagine that they're going to get much internal detail with Wi-Fi considering that my router's signal practically gets blocked by a piece of cardboard.
This research essentially amounts to, humans can be individually identified with nothing more than low quality x-rays. Well yeah, so what, you can also use visible light and in any situation where you're going to use Wi-Fi to detect someone, it's got to be easier to buy a cheap CCTV camera.
First of all: cardboard does NOT block electromagnetic waves. You need a Faraday Cage for that. And even then, it has to have holes of a certain size to block specific wavelengths/frequencies. It’s why you have a mesh on the door of your microwave for example.
Secondly: they’re not attempting to photograph you. Just identifying your unique signature once would allow them to track your location anywhere where they have the gear installed.
EDIT: I suppose your comment is written in a way that it's not clear whether you're saying certain frequencies absolutely require meshes of a certain size to be blocked or if you're just adding that extra detail about the design of Faraday cages for the hell of it. But...
Original comment: It doesn't have to have holes to block radiation. A continuous sheet blocks all frequencies. A mesh is just nice so we can see through the cage or allow air to pass etc.
From the page you linked: "A Faraday shield may be formed by a continuous covering of conductive material." "... if the conductor is thick enough and any holes are significantly smaller than the wavelength of the radiation."
My bad, a Farady Shield works just as well and it doesn’t need holes. But I was thinking about ways to combat this while posting and a solution involving conductive fabric was going through my head during that moment.
They explicitly went into the advantages over cameras: - Any light condition (of course IR lighting with IR cameras are the gold standard so this can argueably be met otherwise) - The ability to cover multiple rooms through walls with a device. A sub-10 GHz signal can penetrate most interior walls. People could be tracked without even being able to see a camera and by extension not knowing where to mess with to defeat surveillance.
So perhaps a building takes a picture of everyone as they come in the front door and also establishes a 'WhoFi' profile for that person. They could keep track of their movement through the building while maintaining an actionable correlation to a photo.
You know, this, and the using wifi to see through walls stuff to me just immediately seemed to fall into "don't research this, it can only be used for evil".
I don't get why we bother studying these types of things.
Yeah, like, why learn how to split the atom if all we can do is splode stuff. It's not like we can cure cancer or power things without emitting planet killing gasses or anything.
And this here folks is the true ending. No one there is going to stop it as always.
Congratulations! You are now fully fucked!
There is the draft dodger, he is located in building #52556 in this city, info updated 125 milliseconds ago. He left his phone at his house 5 states away, go get him.
It was very much not even far fetched at that point. 1984 wrote about the same kind of surveillance, and at that time it would have been pretty far fetched. It was published in 1949; the video camera was only 24 years old at that point.
Привет! Хотелось бы узнать, кто из вас уже пробовал использовать Manus - китайский искусственный интеллект? Если вы уже пользовались этой ИИ, расскажите, пожалуйста, каков ваш опыт разработки приложений для компьютера с её помощью? Насколько удобно и эффективно оказалось использовать Manus для таких задач?
Manus is a general AI agent that turns your thoughts into actions. It excels at various tasks in work and life, getting everything done while you rest.
È ovviamente ironico ma, anche per via del mio nuovo Papiellify che mi sta tenendo letteralmente le mani occupate, adesso sto scrivendo meno papielli della roba mia qui sopra… peccato. Ma va bene, suppongo ci sia comunque tempo per scrivere un piccolo aggiornamento, prima di andare a letto… tanto, se già ieri sera ho ampiamente […]
ripaperamento delle pigne nintendiche per mezzo del cartatore (aggiornamenti Papiellify e usi pratici)
È ovviamente ironico ma, anche per via del mio nuovo Papiellify che mi sta tenendo letteralmente le mani occupate, adesso sto scrivendo meno papielli della roba mia qui sopra… peccato. Ma va bene, suppongo ci sia comunque tempo per scrivere un piccolo aggiornamento, prima di andare a letto… tanto, se già ieri sera ho ampiamente ritardato il sonno perché ho come al solito perso la cognizione del tempo a programmare, e la sera prima ugualmente perché dovevo fare gli ultimissimi ritocchi al progetto per l’esame del giorno dopo (…che manco sono serviti, maremma cara), allora stasera posso fare lo stesso dopo essermi liberata dal giogo della carta. 👍
In mezzo a questa tale mia disperazione, almeno, c’è qualcosa di buono da vedersi in come, piano piano, tutti i miei strumenti lavorino sempre meglio tra di loro, e come io quindi mi stia avvicinando in modo sempre più comodo ed efficace ai miei piani finali (purtroppo, appunto, a scapito del sonno, ma vabbé). Avendo solo dal giorno prima fatto pace con la creazione di fogli sfiziosi grazie alla previa creazione di Papiellify, infatti, sono potuta tornare qualche attimo a Pignio; che, tra i tanti motivi, come accennai, è stato creato anche per permettermi di raccogliere materiale relativo a schifezze da stampare, oltre ai meme da ospedale psichiatrico… 🦫
E quindi, ieri sera, in un attimo (…talmente tanto “attimo” da avermi fatta andata a mimir un’ora più tardi del normale, e il mio normale è già tardissimo), ho implementato una cosa che avevo stranamente dimenticato dall’inizio, cioè il listino di singole directory del file system… e, lasciando stare che pure stavolta mi sono accorta solo la mattina in produzione di un piccolo difetto nella app (e ormai, con questo progetto, questo schemino è una certezza, sigh), oggi ho potuto godere meglio di quelle 91 immagini che ieri ho caricato in blocco sulla piattaforma, appunto in una cartella apposita: tutte (?) le carte da lettera di Nintendo Swapdoodle, rigorosamente ottenute tramite screenshot a manina dalla app sul mio 3DS e qui ricaricate violando il copyright (di software oggi non più ufficialmente distribuito)!!! 😍 Quindi, mi sono poi nuovamente messa all’opera sul fronte cartaceo mediato digitalmente, adoperandomi nel tentativo di trasformare una a caso di queste carte da lettera (di cui una gran parte onestamente molto belle e interessanti, e ne godo che ora siano preservate sul mio Pignio) in dei normali fogli per appunti — a dimensione ISO A6, anziché il quadrato di 250×230 pixel che Nintendo ci ha (in)gentilmente concesso, ma per A4 o altro vale lo stesso — e ci sono riuscita. Ho dovuto implementare ancora qualche altra robetta nel fogliatore per farlo, con non poca fatica (e non ho ancora finito…), ma ce l’ho fatta, e trovo sia incredibilmente magico vedere fianco a fianco l’originale immaginetta di dimensioni micragnose e il mio riadattamento — fatto col taglia e cuci, ma pulito, senza stretching… e soprattutto semi-automatico. 😋
E si, stavolta la questione è davvero tutta qui, scusate se è poco; non sto banalmente cacciando fuori magie, bensì sto poco a poco riuscendo attivamente a combattere il principio di Murphy per cui non si può mai fare niente senza che qualcos’altro vada fatto prima. Comunque sia, i nuovi piccoli aggiornamenti che insomma ho fatto a Papiellify (assieme ai tanti ancora non discussi per il Pignio, ma vabbé) sono già online… e ho aggiunto pure il modello creato stavolta alla raccolta dei file: memos.octt.eu.org/m/gnwNvbS4zv… (dovrebbe essere l’ultimo in lista). Quindi ora, forse, posso dormire… ma domani c’è da rilegare questi 10 fogli in un quadernino da 40 pagine, quindi il grind per me non finisce mai. 😵
With the passing of Chuck Mangione at age 84 today, I’m dedicating this week’s Throwback Thursday to the time I played a Mangione chat, Legend of the One Eyed Sailor, with the Jim Ott Brass Ensemble at the 2015 Drum Corps International World Championships
With the passing of Chuck Mangione at age 84 today, I’m dedicating this week’s Throwback Thursday to the time I played a Mangione chat, Legend of the One Eyed Sailor, with the Jim Ott Brass Ensemble at the 2015 Drum Corps International World Championships Semifinals.
“The family of Chuck Mangione is deeply saddened to share that Chuck peacefully passed away in his sleep at his home in Rochester, New York on July 22, 2025."
Open up developer console (F12) network tab and reload page/play audio. In the list of network requests, look for something that looks like the resource you want (e.g. in this case, filename: "mp3", initiator: "media", type: "mpeg"), right-click and "save response as". This doesn't work on every site, but works on yours!
Fancier sites do not serve media files directly but fetch encoded chunks of data and recombine them using javascript. To get the whole file back you need to re-implement the javascript, which is what yt-dlp does, but only works for sites it knows how to handle.
For this website, it seems the only way is by fetching the MP3 URL from the network tab (or a random JavaScript file) and passing it into yt-dlp like so:
As the other comment said, if you inspect page html source (ctrl-U) and ctrl-F search for "mp3", the URL of the embedded audio file is also right there in plaintext in the middle of javascript code, but it's merely good fortune that the developer left it easily visible and not renamed or obfuscated in some way. Saving from the network tab works in more cases in general.
You don't need to use yt-dlp to fetch files 😁. It will let itself be used as wget, sure, but the browser is already capable of saving files - that's it's job! Paste the link into the address bar.
Thanks for helping me get this far but now I'm stuck. Neither yt-dlp nor pasting the url into the browser works. The latter gets me the image below, yt-dlp says it's not a valid url
Edit: I got it to work with yt-dlp. I forgot the quotes around the url
Yep! The "save response as" works in more cases because it already includes all the correct cookies/referrers that sites use to protect against hotlinking.
One other thing to try: addons.mozilla.org/firefox/add… (presumably also available for other browsers). Then hold shift while you reload the page, and play the media. Chances are extremely good the addon will catch it and start dancing in your toolbar. Open the addon, click the file you want to download, and it should just download.
Israel is paying to have MAGA social media influencers, with millions of followers, visit Israel to learn how to keep US youth supporting Israel, ignoring Gaza.
The App Store is designed to be a safe and trusted place for all ages, including children. The age rating system for apps and games has been updated in order to provide people with more granular age ratings.
Is it possible to Spoof Android User Agents without rooting? I have found github.com/ray-lothian/UserAge… but it requires rooting. Since I'm using GOS I don't think rooting my device is a good idea.
By android UA I actually meant system wise UA, so that with one spoof all the app installed on the system would recognize my device as the spoofed one, no just the browser
Kessler syndrome is about a chain reaction that destroys everything in orbit and keeps us from accessing space for years.
Ruining your view is not "nearly as bad". That makes you sound like one of those folks on Martha's Vineyard, opposing offshore wind turbines that local communities desperately need, because they'll "ruin the view".
Is that accurate though? Assume a satellite is in a decaying orbit (thus too low to contribute to Kessler syndrome on its own) and another satellite is in a different orbit eccentricity-wise but they both collide. Are we certain that none of the pieces from the collision would acquire enough speed to become boloids that contribute to Kessler syndrome?
Time to go down the rabbit hole that is orbital mechanics for me again. Byeeee lol
Edit: looks like the lowest orbit for starlink's first shell is at 550km which is very much above VLEO and would definitely be a factor in Kessler Syndrome.
Most starlink satellites are set to deorbit themselves upon failure to avoid this. However the de orbiting could still fail and then it should take about a year or so to deorbit itself?
So it looks like there is a low possibility of it initiating Kessler syndrome. But it's not negligible.
A year is actually quite a short time (in terms of deorbiting).
As for your previous question yes a collision at starlink orbit could send some shrapnel to higher orbit planes however a majority would be in highly eccentric orbits that would decay quickly on the low end.
The issue would be a starlink collision then hitting something in a higher orbit causing Kessler syndrome in that orbit. The odds of this are still next to zero but never zero.
For your question, no. There's no way for an object to have an orbit that doesn't intersect the same altitude where an impulse happened. They could be knocked into an eccentric orbit, but it at least has to have the lowest point at the highest point of the Starlink network.
This is not to say it can't hit something else after that changes the perigee at a later point in it's orbit, thus lifting it higher. For a single collusion though, no, at least with the collision alone.
You’re off ten fold. They have thousands. Around 5000 with a planned 12k after gen 3 has been fully deployed. It’s definitely a “let the intern push to prod” type of scenario by numbers alone.
SpaceX sure but Tesla has been in decline for so long that I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the decade it’s either irrelevant or sold off / taken from Musk.
Iris2 and Eutselsat OneWeb are currently massively expanding their network - for European coverage first,though, but with the explicit goal to be a Musk alternative.
I have a place in the boonies and I use starlink. I find it to be vastly superior to the only other semi-viable option, line of site. Speeds aren't as great as they use to be and I'll be happy to change when another better or similar option comes along.
I do experience mico-outages every few days. Like a 1 to 2 second drop that I would only notice with vid chats or gaming.
I do have a media server and surf the seven seas. Starlink is crap for that, so I found a new home for it as I move my residence out here.
I live in a country praised for its IT industry, digital government and whatever
I got off ADSL in 2024. Fucking lol. I don't even live on a farm or anything. Lucky to receive fiber though, now they want to prioritize 5G home connections instead.
My coworkers mom paid $200 a month with a 20GB datacap for HughesNet and couldn't even stream Netflix or Youtube. Their service is completely useless in 2025.
I'm sorry, but not even having a Musk backed product as my only alternative could get me to use HugesNet's antifunctional service. Literally dialup is better.
"I know millions of people use their service because it's the only real option they have, but because it's associated with this one guy I don't like, they can all eat a dick!"
Your options are limited not by random angry dude on the Internet, but by deliberate and calculated lack of development conspired between legislators and telecoms. Starlink will hit the limits imposed by physics and geometry, and then will get worse and worse the more people sign up.
Lemmy is by default a link aggregator which means users who are browsing posts get 2 things only: - Link. - Title.
From my experience, literally those 25 extra characters could just include that word that can be the word that will give a meaning to the previous 200 characters. Especially that the main competitor for Lemmy (Reddit) allows for up to 300 characters titles.
Overall, it seems pretty essential to give people more context about the link they about to click.
New Executive Order:AI must agree on the Administration views on Sex,Race, cant mention what they deem to be Critical Race Theory,Unconscious Bias,Intersectionality,Systemic Racism or "Transgenderism
(Originally posted in response to @how's announced ultimatum wrt the future of SocialHub.)
Unless a community team steps up, SocialHub will cease to be ..
@how is urgently asking members of this community to brainstorm and consider options to keep this community not only alive, but make it thrive as one of the grassroots developer centers that help evolve the fediverse. SocialHub Community Values Policy
Now there’s a deadline: the activitypub.eu domain that hosts this community’s email service expires on September 10, 2025 [..]
So, either way the change is coming. I’d rather have it come in a structured way.
In 2019 @how and Petites Singularités graciously took custodianship of SocialHub, and I for one am very thankful for that! I am sure many in the fediverse developer landscape share that gratitude too.
For people reading this and considering community involvement.. when does P.S. plan to give public announcement / responsible disclosure of SocialHub winding down?
Perhaps it can be hosted in read-only mode for another year or two? That would be nice.
I believe there are ways to export the forum and turn it into a static html site, which could be hosted permanently to keep the information archive intact and accessible. silverpill:
Most developers have already left, so I think shutting the forum down is not a bad idea.
Did they leave or is the forum federated? @strypey did step up, and some time ago there was also interest of other people. Let's see where things go.
Another option is that W3C SocialCG takes over the custodianship role in addition to the activitypub.rocks website, if they are willing.
On a recent episode of the Dot Social podcast, John O’Nolan of Ghost said; “For the size of the group [working on federating long form articles], which as you say is not large, man, we are spread across Mastodon DMs sometimes, an email thread other …
Most developers have already left, so I think shutting the forum down is not a bad idea.
If they've all gone somewhere else, then SH has been replaced. In that case, I would agree it makes sense to convert it onto a read-only archive.
OTOH If they've just scattered to the four winds, and there's no replacement, then this is a collective action problem to be solved. Potentially by a community-driven reboot of SH. aschrijver:
Another option is that W3C SocialCG takes over the custodianship role in addition to the activitypub.rocks website, if they are willing.
That would make sense, given SH sits under a domain they are now managing. I'd be happy to work with SocialCG on this.
Most developers have already left, so I think shutting the forum down is not a bad idea.
If they’ve all gone somewhere else, then SH has been replaced. In that case, I would agree it makes sense to convert it onto a read-only archive.
OTOH If they’ve just scattered to the four winds, and there’s no replacement, then this is a collective action problem to be solved. Potentially by a community-driven reboot of SH.
It seems contentious to claim that "most developers have left" when the forum continues to show activity. In the past month, 44 topics have new posts, the majority of which are not federated topics. Who are these developers, have they really left, and does their leaving justify shutting down the forum? What is the alternative venue or forum for discussing ActivityPub-related topics, community, software, standards, etc? Does such an alternative (if it exists) provide a better experience for discussing these things?
If the answer is "they're on fedi now", then this is what I would categorize as "scattered to the four winds, and there's no replacement". The value of SocialHub is that it is a gathering place for these discussions, and it allows for those discussions to be long-form. There is a world of difference between a forum thread and a chain of replies in 500 characters or less. This has been previously discussed as well: aschrijver:
silverpill:
Most developers have already left, so I think shutting the forum down is not a bad idea.
The value of this SocialHub forum is in bringing people together to discuss things, and the introduction of federation in its current form has been arguably counterproductive to this end. Quite simply, if the discussions about ActivityPub are spread all over random pockets of microblogging, then this is an inferior experience to a proper forum with an actual social context. You can aggregate a bunch of microblog posts, but that's not the same -- the focus just isn't there in the same way that a real thread would remain mostly focused on the same topic. Replying to something is not the same as having a directed discussion. Every new reply is a chance for the topic to drift away from where it started, and if all you have is a reply tree, then you can't recognize these shifts.
What then? Do we converge on the w3c/activitypub issue tracker, or on the SocialCG mailing list? Or is the discussion around ActivityPub dead, and all that's left to do is have ad-hoc communications between various devs without any sort of coordination or commonplace? Maybe that's fine for the developers who have supposedly already left, because what's the point of having conversations when all you're trying to do is fix a one-off incompatibility between two projects? I don't think it's conducive to any sort of broad alignment, though.
At the end of the day, if the financial and organizational sponsor wants to back out, then we can't really do anything to force them to continue, but I think it's more worthwhile to consider the reboot rather than the shutdown. We can't easily fold the scope of this place into the issue tracker, because issue trackers are not general discussion forums. We can't easily fold the scope of this place into the mailing list, because this place was started to avoid flooding the entire SocialCG with ActivityPub-specific matters. So ideally something ought to occupy this niche.
On a recent episode of the Dot Social podcast, John O’Nolan of Ghost said; “For the size of the group [working on federating long form articles], which as you say is not large, man, we are spread across Mastodon DMs sometimes, an email thread other …
The various observations @trwnh makes are spot on. trwnh:
Quite simply, if the discussions about ActivityPub are spread all over random pockets of microblogging, then this is an inferior experience to a proper forum with an actual social context.
"Scattered to the winds" is also my observation. Anyone noted the new HTTP Signatures proposal to the ActivityPub community? Maybe by coincidence or by having a good 'following' collection. Or maybe because I created a cross-reference as a commons janitor. It means now at least there's archive that it happened, though the content of the discussion may already be gone, link-rotted as happens on microblog timelines.
What does it mean to be federated as a forum? That is what I mused about in the fragmentation discussion, and I formulated a Need:
Support the communication and cocreation of all participants in the ActivityPub ecosystem to help foster healthy growth and evolution of the Fediverse.
Note there is not the word "community" here. It is the vaguest term when it is just dropped casually. What is the "FOSS community" for instance? I claim it doesn't exist unless you use "community" in most handwavy terms. Long ago as facilitator I came to the conclusion that SocialHub was not a community, but just a discussion forum. And that though that is a shame, that still is valuable. These discussions are in the archives of this forum.
What should we do?
In order to be able to talk about "community" it has to be well defined what that entails ..
Collect problems that hold the AP dev community back from collaborating and evolve the foundational technologies that the dev ecosystem of the fediverse relies on.
Collect the challenges SocialHub faces to address these problems.
Refine the Need above, breakdown into more granular needs and find other requirements for a prolongation of SocialHub on a healthy trajectory.
Let people and groups thereof, like @strypey before (please boost his call to action), step up and announce themselves
I propose everyone to step up to prepare a Community Plan consisting of ..
Wiki post (such that it bumps the list upon edits) with a summary of the plan.
Separate discussion topic referenced from the wiki post, to discuss details of the plan.
Objective: Convince @how that responsible custodianship is taken care of, and it is responsible to hand over these tasks to the new community custodians.
---
Listing some needs and requirements that SocialHub always had, or for a long time already ..
Reach the AP dev community, connect people for focused discussion.
Provide insight in ongoing discussions such that others can chime in in real-time.
Keep record and archive that can be searched, quoted and cross-referenced.
Provide entry point to the ecosystem where newcomers can discover, onboard themselves.
Become native to the fediverse. SocialHub is to be part of the fediverse via federation.
Be a helpful tool to allow the FEP Process to fulfill its custodianship role for FEP's.
On diversity @jdp23 I would add that point 5 equates to the diversity of the fediverse itself (iff 'federation-done-well') and that point 6 acknowledges the need for a decentralized developer environment, where there can be many independent dev hubs furthering AS/AP et al. This notion promotes diversity in itself, and SocialHub in this setup does not take an authoritative position nor gatekeeper position.
The diversity problem + challenges then boil down to 1) the diversity that the microbloggoverse fedi and its moderation processes gives, and 2) how forum federation / threadiverse is able to forge community on top of that (as a well-defined concept) using the fediverse social graph where ecosystem participants and prospects (newcomer onboarding) engage.
And that brings this to a mighty interesting applied research area, on the basis of which alone a SocialHub reboot might be a very worthy undertaking. As mentioned above both @strypey and me in that fragmentation discussion were wondering:
What does it mean when we say that a Discussion forum has become "part of the fediverse"?
If I might give this a shot to formulate a definition ..
Federated discussion forums are like collaborative gardening centers where a group of fedizens gathers together around a theme and fosters a curated garden of relevant information and connections to other groups and people to interact with, have insightful discussions and deepen relationships, and to enrich the collective knowledge base together.
From a more technical perspective you might consider Federated discussion forum software to constitute a collaborative / multi-user ActivityPub client with dedicated management features for content curation, aggregation and moderation.
You don’t need to be willing to volunteer for anything other than being on the call. I’m just looking for indications that people still think SH is (or could be) a useful community service, and worth rebooting.
Any discussion and volunteer efforts to collect that information is welcome of course. But as I see it (interpreting @how's ultimatum) there's a stark choice within 4 weeks time of:
Either a community team steps up with a Community Plan that @how feels comfortable transferring custodianship to, before stepping away from that role with P.S.
Or there is no viable plan and team, and @how with P.S. is tasked with responsible shutdown.
What is a viable plan, what is a viable community then? Well, again my opinion, but there is no need at all to be broadly interesting, relevant to a large group, or targeting the entire dev ecosystem. A community team may choose any niche area to focus on. It is up to them. Viable in my book means first of all:
There is a team willing to take the commitment, and @how approves on the (transition) plan.
After that happens then I think it is important that the new team has free reign to do whatever they want to forge healthy community in whatever direction, scope and audience they want to serve/explore. They should be able to revitalize, reposition and foster the community as they think is best. They are now sole custodians of that, the ones making the fresh start. The "Why?" and "What to do about it?" may not be all that relevant against their new direction, the mission and vision of this new team.
I'd personally definitely reposition, and can imagine many different directions that might be interesting for a community to explore..
"We want to focus on improving the developer experience for newcomers that is still deplorable to this day. We will dedicate on lowering barriers to entry of the fediverse as much as possible."
"We focus on bringing the qualities and benefits of linked data to the forefront, in ways that still appeals to JSON-only crowds. We'll bridge gaps with other linked data standards."
"We focus on becoming a portal that collects feedback from fedizens, whose voices are insufficiently heard, in the developer-oriented release processes of individual apps."
"We will focus on collecting all the highly innovative ideas around decentralized networking, and give space for people to think out of the box, be creative and unrestricted by what's currently possible."
"We want to emphasize the 'social' in social hub, and give minority group a stronger voice in the developer community. We will actively reach out to developers other than those 'from the West' who dominate the scene."
"We will focus on the C2S side of the fediverse, which we consider to be the path to future of social networking."
"We think it is currently fine as it is, and will gladly support that from now on."
" ... [ add your dream community plan here ] ... "
Thus far 2 people have stepped forward. @strypey and @lullis how do you like the idea to outline thoughts, ideas and plans for the reboot of this community in a separate topic? As a means to excite and attract other people.
It seems contentious to claim that “most developers have left” when the forum continues to show activity. In the past month, 44 topics have new posts, the majority of which are not federated topics.
Great point @trwnh. Here's a recent example of how SH has been used. @claire, a member of the Mastodon team, came here to consult with devs from other projects about plans for federated Quote Posts in Mastodon, with an eye to documenting their approach through the FEP process (created here). The topic was created in Feb this year and constructive discussion is ongoing 5 months later. To me, this alone demonstrates that SH is useful, and worth saving. aschrijver:
do you like the idea to outline thoughts, ideas and plans for the reboot of this community in a separate topic?
Sounds great. I really like all the aspirations you lay out above, although it does make me realise that SH has a potentially huge brief. So it's hardly surprising the forum has only realised a fraction of its potential so far.
Oh and I know @jdp23 and I have a tendency to butt heads (most recently on the SocialMusic forum). But they make some fair points in this thread, and ask a good question here; jdp23:
If you wait until after the new community team is set up, how do you know that you haven’t already replicated the current problems in ways that will be hard or even impossible to fix later?
To me, this is not a 'one and done' process. The nature and infrastructure of SH has been negotiated and altered before, and no doubt will be again.
What we're trying to do right now, under urgency, is to put together a transitional team that can keep the lights on until at least the end of the calendar year. While we figure out more permanent solutions for;
hosting: both admin work and funding for any upstream costs
community management: moderation, outreach, conflict resolution, etc
governance: active stewardship to ensure that both of the above continue to be taken care of. In ways that facilitate the SH mission; being neutral ground for devs to parlay about pan-fediverse concerns
Once we've made arrangements to keep SH from blinking out of existence, I'd really like to see us put together a survey to send out to all fediverse devs. Past and present, of servers, clients and other tools. To find out if they've used SH, whether they still do, what they consider useful about the way it's been operated, and what would make it more attractive as a place for them to interact with other devs.
Hi! As you may be aware, Quote Posts are an often-requested feature for Mastodon, but this is something we are careful to implement properly, offering a proper framework for users to consent to being quoted.
Sounds great. I really like all the aspirations you lay out above, although it does make me realise that SH has a potentially huge brief. So it’s hardly surprising the forum has only realised a fraction of its potential so far.
These are not aspirations for one community, certainly not of SH (though opinions vary here), but ideas for different directions. SocialHub started out in a great position as literally the tool that SocialCG used for communications between the dev community regarding ActivityPub standardization. Then SocialCG went dormant and SH was the only active hub for a time.
From my time and experience as founder of Humane Tech Community I learned that having too large a scope and audience means you can only have a discussion forum run by staff, and not what you can meaningfully call a "community". At SocialHub I made various calls and put much effort into having people state their level of commitment and interest, and the outcomes were very clear: SH for a long time was just a discussion forum, where devs can conveniently read stuff on their subject of interest, and reply to them. That's it. No community at all. And in itself this is a perfect raison d'être for SH to exist. But we should be fair about it then, and accept SH for what it really is.
Later on, if anything, the custodianship of the FEP process is the only well-scoped true 'community-level activity', and that role might be further established (i.e. the "guarantee open ecosystem" mission and "bottom-up standardization process" vision), if there are folks interested in doing so. Yet here @silverpill - the currently only real active FEP facilitator - does not see merit, and is open to do everything in the codeberg issue tracker of the FEP (which I doubt is a good idea, but that's a different discussion).
In any case, in follow-up to @trwnh, looking at the #standards:fep category, a decent amount of good discussion takes place on SocialHub. And it is feedback we can still consult and respond to, contrary to all the FEP communication that shifted to the microblog timelines, where that feedback is all lost unless explicitly linked to. This makes the FEP more of a "do whatever you want" thing for any dev to spec just enough features for their own app, without much rigorous scrutiny from the dev community at large wrt improving general interop in the ecosystem. trwnh:
That’s quite a lot of things and generally enough to justify the forum’s continued existence rather than shutting it down. Of course, that doesn’t solve the (potential?) sponsorship issue being posed here that is necessary to answer for that continued existence.
Generally I'd define viable community as:
A viable community is where enough of its members care enough for its continued existence.
And with that care are committed to step up and help guarantee that existence. Very often this boils down to more or less the 90-9-1 rule, where one percent of members takes that responsibility seriously.
Currently in separate thread(s) and wiki post(s) we can gather what it takes to continue as-is, what problems are that led to current need for a reboot, and what ideas exist for fresh new directions. I'd advise using wiki post to summarize stuff (this thread for example is already 23 posts long and only TLDR's others). And it'd be great if @how could assign forum moderator or even forum admin privilege to some people so they are enabled to organize and steer this thing along efficiently.
Cross-referencing to social.coop discussion on Loomio, where @strypey had the great idea to raise awareness on this topic, and asked if members are interested to help and/or the cooperative to consider taking custodianship. I just added to that discussion myself:
A Fediverse instance for people interested in cooperative and collective projects. If you are interested in joining our community, please apply at https://join.social.coop/registration-form.html.
> I answered this on the forum, but your and mine mastodon thread does not show that
The federation of replies from SH into Mastodon might take some time. Due either to the generally slow performance of Mastodon, or to the issues you've raised with the impacts of AP federation of the SH Discourse instance;
Admittedly I'm only a hobbyist ActivityPub developer, I've been toying with a little implementation on nights and weekends for a few months, but I wanted to chime in on the "None of the developers want this, they've all moved on" sentiment and say:
As a lurker, I've found this forum incredibly useful, and would hate to see it go away.
I know community building is under appreciated, difficult, work. So if you haven't heard it enough, thank you to those of you involved in making this place run.
I'd pitch in what effort I can to keep it around, but acknowledge that I can't offer much.
Thank you @Hanse00, and it is great to hear you get value from SocialHub.
(Generally speaking it matters a lot when people speak out their appreciation for a commons based initiative they benefit from. There's an imbalance in our fediverse culture I think where people, often from the sidelines, are ready to pounce with unconstructive criticism. Leaving little room where fertile seedling can mature into strong trees. I regularly say it leads to an environment where "we divide ourselves to be conquered". We need a more forgiving culture, where there is acceptance that not everyone is as perfectly principled and valued yet, and there are shades of grey through which people can be guided gently into the light.) Hanse00:
I’d pitch in what effort I can to keep it around, but acknowledge that I can’t offer much.
Great! That is three people on the list already.
In a community there are many different tasks that can be where you shine, and also take personal interest in. Despite the challenges and sometimes frustrations being discussed above, there is a lot of rewarding and uplifting experiences too, which make it all worth it. And there's opportunity to learn useful skills that are much in need not just in social impact movements, but anywhere in modern society where we alienate ever further from each other.
I talked to a handful of ActivityPub developers about this over the weekend in Vancouver. All of them turned out to be in the "Most developers have already left" category that @silverpill was talking about above. I don't want to name names -- they can stand up for themselves if they want to -- but I got a bunch of views on why SocialHub has had little net-benefit for them and what they are working on.
I believe it's also true to say that while there are developers new to ActivityPub all the time, who want to build and are building stuff, they generally don't end up as regulars here.
For me, the question of "who administers the server" and "who pays the bills" are minor questions that can be solved without much difficulty. I'd be happy to contribute, too.
However, the real question is: how do we (for some value of "we") meet the needs of our "customers" (for some value of "customers"), so they value it and engage and come back and contribute. Because if the customers leave, clearly the value isn't there -- and to be frank and consistent with what I heard, I don't have the impression that this goal is at the top of mind of too many people here. Some other goals appear to be, and is fine, but we should not be surprised at the above consequences.
From my perspective, I want as many developers as possible build as much open social web software as possible, consistent with the values, and to do that, we need to treat potential developers as customers and understand what they want and need, and address that. Ideally, this would include -- in an nicely designed integrated whole:
An ActivityPub landing page for developers (e.g. a revamped activitypub.rocks -- in progress)
Extensive, maintained, consistent reference material and examples (currently all over the place, hard to use as a new developer)
Places where to ask questions and discuss (e.g. a forum and/or a chat group)
Online and in-person seminars with "howto" demonstrations or discussions of particular issues
Development tools (e.g. debugging, testing) -- some of this exists, also all over the place in various states
The ability to easily find developers of other applications to resolve interop problems with specific other applications.
Beyond that, for "advanced" developers, we also need debate of extensions and mechanisms (FEPs and the process around them) to further the state of the art.
I believe this is the time to design such a "developer journey" to get them to great interoperating software as directly as possible, and I'd be quite willing to help with that. It doesn't make much sense to me to look at the Socialhub forum in isolation and I would not know how to "fix" it in isolation.
Thanks heaps to @lullis and @melvincarvalho for the admin offers. @how said PS want to see 4 admins volunteer before they're willing to pass the torch, so we need 2 more. @nightpool are you still active on admin duty here? Would you be keen to join a new admin team? j12t:
talked to a handful of ActivityPub developers about this over the weekend in Vancouver. All of them turned out to be in the “Most developers have already left” category
Thanks for asking around @j12t. Your point about the need for a more integrated network of dev spaces and tools is well made. It gels with many of @aschrijver's sentiments about social coding design, and to some degree with my push for more forum federation
But that's a much larger issue that needs it's own topic (or several). SH can't be part of any integrated effort if it vanishes beneath the waves in September.
Coming back to the sentiment that SH isn't currently scratching the itch for some devs, there are some insightful examples in @devnull's topic on FediCon. Including;
Thanks, @j12t and @indieterminacy for your help and feedback! strypey:
Thanks for asking around @j12t. Your point about the need for a more integrated network of dev spaces and tools is well made. It gels with many of @aschrijver’s sentiments about social coding design, and to some degree with my push for more forum federation
Generally speaking it is easy to come up with lists of things that would be helpful to the dev ecosystem. Much harder it is to get people to collab and connect their otherwise independent initiatives, and still harder it is to find people doing the chores to maintain that.
As an example is the need for having comprehensive developer documentation. On SocialHub is still a pinned wiki post with an attempt to crowdsource enough notes for such an artifact. Another example is when @gabek started fedidocs crowdsourcing attempt, and I posted about the need for cohesion in Cohesion of FediDevs with other fediverse initiatives. Fedidocs stalled, migrated orgs, became fedidevs and then stalled again (I think). Why? People don't like to write techdocs in the best of times, and are happy when they have things well in order on their own project. Even less people want to arrange the crowdsourcing process, and editing/publishing chores.
Generally speaking one should not fool oneself talking about "community" when there isn't one. The AP ecosystem is characterized by fiercely independent people who opportunistically come together to talk about subjects of shared interest.
The general tendency in this thread is that SocialHub better offer a broad range of services to become a relevant community again. And I think people underestimate how hard that is, in this environment of individuals.
Positioning advice: Choose between 'community' and 'cohesion'.
My strong advice to any community team stepping up is to first choose between 2 options:
Wanna be a community? Better cover only a comprehensive niche then, with a well-defined audience and scope. See my list with some quickly brainstormed topics as examples. Then foster community.
Otherwise best be a loose collective. Fit for a grassroots environment. On any broader scopes + audiences forget "community", it herding cats lost cause. Find ways where people while working on their own initiatives still combine that into a larger, more valuable whole. Then foster cohesion.
“Any decentralized [ecosystem] requires a centralized substrate, and the more decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system.”
when does P.S. plan to give public announcement / responsible disclosure of SocialHub winding down?
We are not planning anything. We've been announcing that we'd like this community to self-manage for years. We're now 'giving an ultimatum' as a last resort because supporting work does not seem to be taken into account as long as things run.
I've read elsewhere that I am "dropping". This is not the case. But if you've been here a long time you must have seen that my participation here has faded away, so I want other people to take over before you're all left with a down server and nobody to turn it on again. trwnh:
Why does the forum need to shut down just because an email domain expires?
It doesn't. But notifications and registration confirmations go through the activitypub.eu domain since we could not get access to the activitypub.rocks domain to manage email there. So if there's now control on activitypub.rocks domain, we could as well move the email there for consistency. aschrijver:
I consider it to be a matter of custodianship responsibility for P.S. to manage the shutdown in a responsible manner.
We're not shutting down. We want other people to take over. If other people do not take over, then it means nobody wants to take responsibility for it, then it should die. aschrijver:
mho it would be better to be open for any proposals
No: there is something very political in the way the SocialHub was organized, that fosters collective work and limits to what is acceptable for a community. If fascists want to take over, or people who do not care about privilege and solidarity, then you'll be left with a backup and we'll go away for good. That's the deal IMO. We don't work for years to let this community fall into preying hands. trwnh:
The value of this SocialHub forum is in bringing people together to discuss things, and the introduction of federation in its current form has been arguably counterproductive to this end. Quite simply, if the discussions about ActivityPub are spread all over random pockets of microblogging, then this is an inferior experience to a proper forum with an actual social context.
aschrijver:
Collect problems that hold the AP dev community back from collaborating and evolve the foundational technologies that the dev ecosystem of the fediverse relies on.
If fedi devs are scattered to the winds, then they did not realize that the SocialHub has been part of the Fediverse for some time, and they should be reminded. aschrijver:
Objective: Convince @how that responsible custodianship is taken care of, and it is responsible to hand over these tasks to the new community custodians.
I'll be convinced when:
I'm not the only one keeping the server up-to-date
We're clear about X, Fakebooz (including threads), and other centralized surveillance systems that the Fediverse is not aligned with them, and strives for other forms of online social relationships not based on domination, nudging nor abuse.
The keys are yours. aschrijver:
Become native to the fediverse. SocialHub is to be part of the fediverse via federation.
Most of it is part of the Fediverse. The #software category is lacking fediversity because software owners didn't federate! lullis:
I’d also volunteer to host this server if needed.
It's not a hosting issue, and it's not an individual issue. Handling the hosting from a non-profit organization to an individual would not make sense. But thank you for volunteering. strypey:
@how can you please confirm that we’re understanding this correctly, or correct us if we’re not, so we’re all clear on what the situation is.
I hope this answer is clarifying my position. In other words: either there is a community here, and the community is taking the engagement to take care for itself, and we're good; or there's no community, and this forum is just a drag on my back, and you can do without, so I can shut it down.
The way the community is taking over, is up to you, but my preference would be as stated so far. jdp23:
On both the “why?” and “what to do about it?”, getting the perspectives of people who aren’t currently here seems key.
We need to federate more, and include the SH groups in the interesting fedi discussions, so that they can be archived here, and not lost in the Fediverse. SH is an archipel, a navigation tool: not a centralizing place. It's easy to add @fep@socialhub.activitypub.rocks to a federated discussion and have a topic created here that includes the ongoing discussion (and there are more AP actors!) aschrijver:
A viable community is where enough of its members care enough for its continued existence.
aschrijver:
And it’d be great if @how could assign forum moderator or even forum admin privilege to some people so they are enabled to organize and steer this thing along efficiently.
Oh yes, that would be great. aschrijver:
Yes, the #fediversity::category channel is where one might ponder if it doesn’t make the audience of the community too broad.
I'm very surprised to read this. I really do not understand why the audience would be too broad. I mean, really. Why? aschrijver:
It is nice to offer dedicated forum space, but most FOSS projects don’t use it.
Indeed. With more people invested in it, they would use it, either from here, or from the Fediverse. strypey1:
that Loomio thread too.
Isn't Loomio federated? Then why is it not common? silverpill:
I doubt that things can be improved if the forum changes ownership (the opposite seems more likely)
Can you elaborate on this @silverpill? strypey:
Given how often PS admins have been incommunicado when thing need fixing or tweaking, and doing facepalm-inducing stuff like threatening to delete most SH accounts
I really do not appreciate your simplification of the situation here @stripey. I find it unfair and quite disrespectful actually. I have been calling for help for years and had to change teams several times over because people actually did not help at all. So putting this on either me or my organization is simply not acceptable. melvincarvalho:
CPU and RAM requirements. Perhaps someone could tell us the spec of the current server?
For me, the question of “who administers the server” and “who pays the bills” are minor questions that can be solved without much difficulty.
Well, I tried solving these questions collectively since 2019, so I'm very open to concrete steps now
I skipped the last two posts because tl;dr, and had to catch up on the whole discussion at once. Sorry for that. BTW, thank you @aschrijver for standing up again and making this discussion happen.
The refutation is way earlier… You can read the whole development in Policy Proposal: SocialHub Community Values. It was a long and hard discussion. And the conclusions are here: So you see, even I did not remember that @kaniini finally agreed.
SocialHub admins can federate categories, making categories accessible in the fediverse. This is an overview of current ActivityPub actors that you can follow and participate in from the Fediverse.
|SocialHub Category | ActivityPub Actor @socialhub.activitypub.rocks | Settings||--- | --- | ---||#activitypub | @protocol@socialhub.activitypub.rocks | Full topic as Notes||#activitypub:s2s | @proto-s2s@socialhub.activitypub.rocks | Full topic as Notes||#activitypub:c2s | @proto-c2s@socialhub.activitypub.rocks | Full topic as Notes||#standards:fep | @feps@socialhub.activitypub.rocks | Full topic as Notes||#community | @community@socialhub.activitypub.rocks | Full topic as Notes||#fediversity | @fediversity@socialhub.activitypub.rocks | Full topic as Notes|
You may find federation information in each federated category on the tools line:
Continuing the discussion from SocialCG should consult SocialHub before appropriating tasks: I’m a bit behind on how AP federation works between forums, so I’m not sure what this means.
I doubt that things can be improved if the forum changes ownership (the opposite seems more likely)
Can you elaborate on this @silverpill?
That's because I don't know anyone who is both interested in running this forum, and is qualified to do that.
First of all, I think it shouldn't be handed to someone who is not an active forum participant.
But in this thread? Many share a strange patronizing attitude towards developers. Like we're sheep incapable of self-organizing that must be herded to some website in order to be educated by wise community managers and spoonfed with linked data slop. Thanks but no. This attitude is absolutely the last thing we need on a developer forum.
In theory, the place can be run by developers themselves, but nowadays most of us use our own software, and we can talk to each other directly without SocialHub in the middle, or via other forums and groups.
At this point I am fairly convinced that shutting down the forum and publishing a static archive is the best option.
we can talk to each other directly without SocialHub in the middle
The SocialHub is not exactly in the middle: it's part of the Fediverse. So it would only be normal that discussions relevant to everyone would be archived here, since they would be transmitted here as well.
But most discussions about fediverse development elsewhere on the fediverse aren't transmitted to SocialHub as well. There's a lot that factors into this, including:
technology limitations. Kudos to the work that @devnull et al are doing on that front, and there's steady progress, but are there any forum-based spaces that are well-integrated in this way with the broader microblogging fediverse today?
awareness; some devs don't know that they can tag communities here to create a thread on SocialHub, others know in principle but (since it requires an extra step they don't do on most posts) just don't remember to do it in situations where it would make sense.
on topics other than FEPs, it's not clear what the value is -- and there are also costs to take into account
One way to look at this is that the initial attempts at SocialHub federation were a prototype that wasn't as broadly useful as hoped but has succeeded in revealing issues that need to be addressed. In another thread you mentioned that right now SocialHub "feels like a failure" because it hasn't able to keep a stable and growing and rotating team of responsible people in general, although the FEP team is going well ... looking at it as a prototype, though, it's not a failure: it's identified a use case that's a good match for the current state of the prototype, as well as a big challenge to address to extend to other use cases.
In terms of the overall reboot or shutdown question ... those aren't the only two options. Another possibility is to take a hiatus, putting the community into read-only mode for a while; or, narrowing of focus, at least in the short term, for example keeping the FEP discussions going and shifting other stuff into read-only for the time being (if that's possible in Discourse). Both of these keep open the option of moving SocialHub forward (potentially in a different form). They also create an opportunity to see what alternatives evolve on their own -- and the space to come up with proposals and plans for moving forward that identify and address the underlying challenges.
Then again, sometime the takeaway from a prototype -- even one with valuable learning -- is that this isn't a direction you see as practical to pursue given the overall constraints. If SocialHub shuts down, people who see value in some or all of what happens here will start up other mechanisms; to the extent that there's currently a community here, it can migrate. As long as there's an archive, or the site's available in read-only mode, history isn't lost; and everything here is CC-SA-4.0 so new sites can take whatever subset is useful. All of that's true whether or not you officially pass the torch to somebody else.
But in this thread? Many share a strange patronizing attitude towards developers. Like we’re sheep incapable of self-organizing that must be herded to some website in order to be educated by wise community managers and spoonfed with linked data slop. Thanks but no. This attitude is absolutely the last thing we need on a developer forum.
Where are you seeing this? From what I'm seeing, the discussion is not about any of those things, so this is quite the bizarre statement. I also don't think this is strictly a "developer forum", as there are several different sections dedicated to software, spec work, interest gathering, and so on -- and participation is welcomed by anyone. silverpill:
In theory, the place can be run by developers themselves, but nowadays most of us use our own software, and we can talk to each other directly without SocialHub in the middle, or via other forums and groups.
If there are "other forums and groups", then no one is being made broadly aware of them. If the answer is "we can talk to each other directly", then this is essentially abdicating any sort of collective communication -- if you don't follow a bunch of the people involved, you won't see the conversations.
As it stands, SocialHub is the most prominent place to go if you want to see discussions about ActivityPub and related topics. I'm not aware of any more prominent venues. This isn't to say that anyone is being "herded to some website" or that SocialHub must be "in the middle", but it is generally valuable if the discussions end up being collected somewhere in aggregate, and it is generally convenient if the discussions can be carried out long-form with all the creature comforts of forums and none of the limitations of microblogging. What's the alternative being posed here? Where do people go for this stuff?
> I also don't think this is strictly a "developer forum", as there are several different sections dedicated to software, spec work, interest gathering, and so on -- and participation is welcomed by anyone.
Fair, there is space for all of these discussions, but considering that of a given set of ActivityPub developers, only a small subset of those developers contribute to SocialHub.
That may be a signal that either the existing space is not suitable for AP implementors, or a new space may be a welcome addition.
of a given set of ActivityPub developers, only a small subset of those developers contribute to SocialHub.
That may be a signal that either the existing space is not suitable for AP implementors, or a new space may be a welcome addition.
I would pose this question in two parts:
What are developers doing that could be brought to a forum like SocialHub?
What makes SocialHub specifically not suitable for bringing those topics here?
The existence of any forum implies an opportunity for collaborative participation rather than a mandate. It would be helpful to have explicitly identified examples of discussions that could be brought to a forum, and explicitly identified sentiments of why those discussions weren't brought to this forum.
So far, the most clearly articulated objection seems to be advocating for bypassing forums in favor of ad-hoc communications or backchannels. Perhaps this is adequate for fixing one-off bugs as compared to creating a topic in that software's category. Perhaps that bug was filed on a project's issue tracker instead. But for having sustained conversations over the course of days or weeks or months or even years about meatier topics, I can't imagine much effectiveness in a scattered diffuse set of posts only living on people's profiles if you scroll back far enough.
Personally, I bring such conversations here because I don't want them to be lost to the timeline and I don't want character limits or a lack of blockquotes to impair my communications. I also know that there is an audience here for ActivityPub-related special interest topics, whereas there is no such expectation for my hangout spot where i go to check in on what some friends are doing. the context matters a lot.
Great questions @trwnh, relevant not to just SocialHub but also to alternatives. trwnh:
What are developers doing that could be brought to a forum like SocialHub?
Here's some examples of some of the conversations happening now or over the last couple of weeks that fit in SocialHub's scope (as I understand it) and seem relevant to developers (they all relate to limitations and/or potential improvements in the software).
the Dropsitenews report about Meta's scraping
starter packs and consent (sparked by the Mastodon announcement)
A New Social's post on crossposting vs bridging that also led to discussion of federation in the client
Fedi clients (sparked by a request from Laurens and a couple of discussions in Fediverse Report)
the Online Services Act / EU and Australia age verification and their implications
the "verify your account" spam/scam
Ghost's ActivityPub support (including their currently-proprietary client)
trwnh:
What makes SocialHub specifically not suitable for bringing those topics here?
In a nutshell:
people who are active on SocialHub don't bring those topics here when they see them, presumably because they don't see value in doing so. You mentioned that you personally bring conversations here because you know there's an audience here for the ActivityPub topics you focus on, but that's not necessarily true for topics like these. You also cited character limits and a lack of blockquotes but other than vanilla Mastodon most fedi software supports that pretty well, so again that's not relevant for a lot of people.
people who aren't active on SocialHub generally have no incentive to bring discussions here
even if people who don't have accounts here want to bring discussions here, it's not in general obvious how. I experimented with trying to bring the bridging / crossposting / federation in the client post here. The first dilemma was not knowing what account to tag for a given post; even once I found the list, should it be fediversity, software, or ... ? I chose Fediversity, and replied to the thread tagging the category actor ... but nothing showed up here. So I started a new thread, tagging the category actor ... but once again, nothing showed up here.
Of course these aren't only challenges for SocialHub. A few of these discussions are on piefed.social/c/fediverse and lemmy.world/c/fediverse but most aren't. That said, I do think the specific dynamics of who's currently active on SocialHub and what they're interested accentuate the problems. A reboot could offer opportunities to make progress on those, but if it's being driven by the people who are currently active here I'm not sure how likely that is.
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(In a discussion on SocialHub, @trwnh asked what kinds of developer-focused discussions were happening elsewhere on fedi and what the barriers were to bringing them to SocialHub. This is certainly a good example! So, as an experiment, I'm going to try tagging @ fediversity @ socialhub.activitypub.rocks to see how that works.*)
I certainly agree about the connections and (where feasible) interop across networks/protocols as being critical. From a terminology perspective it might be better to come up with another term that includes server-based federation (via a same protocol), cross-protocol adapters (server-side connect across protocols), and cross-posting with client support for merging discussions.
* EDIT: it didn't work. In fact it may well. have caused a load spike on SocialHub that made SocialHub unavailable for a few minutes, although it's possible that was just coincidence. In any case I edited this post to remove the tag to keep anybody else from unintentionally also temporarily crashing SocialHub!
It goes both ways. There are a lot of interesting discussions started here and not elsewhere. It all contributes to the grassroots ecosystem at large and helps evolve the fediverse. The AP dev community has a broad range of opinions, ideologies, values, things they find important. And all across the ecosystem there are various independent initiatives where people can find their peers, and join groups they feel most comfortable to be with. It is a good thing, that. It helps stimulate the overall diversity of the ecosystem, and resilience of the fedi movement as a whole. If there's sustained custodianship of SocialHub, and a dedicated community team, then SocialHub is viable.
Damn what's with the crazy Corbyn hate boner? The one politician trying to stand up for the people but instead everyone wants to slobber off Keir Starmer.
Jeremy Corbyn has just announced he is launching a brand new left-wing party – but it already sounds very similar to the Green Party’s proposals.
Together with fellow former Labour MP Zarah Sultana, the ex-Labour leader promised a “new kind of political party” which “belongs to you”.
They said they would call for a wealth tax, champion an NHS which is free from privatisation, stand up for Palestine and challenge the fossil fuel giants “putting their profits before our planet”.
These policies are not dissimilar to those backed by the Green Party, which many former Labour supporters, now disillusioned, have flocked to over the last year.
That could therefore put the two parties at odds with one another.
Zack Polanski, the frontrunner in the ongoing Greens’ leadership race and the party’s current deputy, told HuffPost UK shortly after Corbyn’s announcement it is clear the parties have plenty in common.
He noted: “I’ve read the statement and I can’t see a single thing in there that’s not Green Party policy or doesn’t align already with the Green Party.”
He said: “I really like Jeremy and Zarah both as people and also as politicians. I’m supportive of anything they’re setting up.”
But the London Assembly member also made it clear they would be “welcome” in the Greens, which he called a “movement for change”.
He said: “I think it’s a positive thing that they’ve recognised that the Labour Party as a vehicle of progressive change that utterly collapsed, and it’s time to abandon it. They’ve not left the Labour Party, but Labour Party has left them.”
However, he noted that – unlike Corbyn’s new group – the Greens do not need to have a conference in the autumn to decide their name.
“Maybe that conference should decide actually, the Green party exists and is doing really well,” Polanski said, pointing to the nearly two million votes they secured in the general election. “It kind of makes sense to join the Green Party.”
Bit of a bummer about Ozzy, but not exactly a shocker. Hulk Hogan was a celebrity? He starred in one of the 3 Ninjas movies, but that's the only time I've ever heard of the guy.
Secondo Capasa, Presidente di Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, lo sfruttamento nella moda è un fenomeno limitato.
Ad ora sono stati indagati:
• Alviero Martini
• Armani operations
• Dior Manufactures
• Valentino Bags
• Loro Piana
Fenomeni isolati o sistema strutturale?
Si tratta davvero di fenomeni isolati? Oppure la moda è totalmente nella mani della finanza, dei grandi fondi - del lusso (LVMH, Kering, Richemont) e del fast fashion (Shein, Zara, H&M) - espressione del capitalismo puro?
Spazi di resistenza:
🔴 Slow fashion, piccoli brand indipendenti.
🔴 Comunità che rifiutano il consumismo (es. DIY, swap parties).
La domanda vera è: Possiamo immaginare una moda davvero libera dal capitalismo? O è un’utopia?
Decifrare le antiche iscrizioni romane con l'AI è possibile
Google DeepMind, il laboratorio di ricerca sull'AI di Google, ha presentato Aeneas, un modello progettato specificamente per aiutare gli studiosi a comprendere, attribuire e persino ricostruire i testi antichi.
Decifrare le antiche iscrizioni romane con l'AI è possibile
Google DeepMind, il laboratorio di ricerca sull'AI di Google, ha presentato Aeneas, un modello progettato specificamente per aiutare gli studiosi a comprendere, attribuire e persino ricostruire i testi antichi.
The games were mentioned in a 2024 report and are now part of a new lawsuit in which a 11 year old girl was allegedly groomed and sexually assaulted after meeting a stranger on Roblox.
An error message appears saying "The following are not allowed: no zionist, no zionists" when users try to add the phrase to their bios, but any number of other phrases about political and religious preferences are allowed.
Trump’s bitter dislike of renewable energy first erupted publicly 14 years ago in a seemingly trivial spat over wind turbines visible from his Scottish golf course. As Trump returns to Scotland this week, though, he is using the US presidency to squash clean power, with major ramifications for the climate crisis and America’s place in the world.
Although Trump failed in his legal attempt to halt the Scottish wind farm, an enduring scorn towards renewables appears to have been seeded that now has global consequences.
As president, Trump has declared wind and solar projects unwelcome in the US, barring them from federal lands and signing a vast spending bill that demolishes support for a nascent industry that held the promise of revamping the American economy while cutting dangerous planet-heating pollution.
It's so wild. I vacationed in Northern England, about an hour south of Scotland, in Tynemouth, and our whole family found the offshore turbines to be magical.
There's ruins of like a massive 4-6 story monastery from the 15th century, and it's wild because the remnants of the one wall are the tallest thing in town, and have been for centuries. There's literally paintings and drawings going back centuries showing it, and centuries and centuries of people living in the shadow of this partial massive monument that no longer exists.
It's super interesting, but there's also something kind of inherently scary and depressing about feeling like you're seeing ancient remnants of some massive great thing that can no longer be done.
But then at a foggy sunset we saw the off shore turbines and it was genuinely uplifting and magical in a solar punk way. Just the blades peaked out of the fog, and similar to the monastery ruins, they looked too big to be created by humans, but these were actually still working. It felt like it was providing a glimpse into our future massive endeavours, and was one of the most magical moments of the whole trip.
Cibo, buon vino e musica si fondono per il ritorno, sabato 2 agosto, della rassegna "Calici sotto i tre colli". Il borgo medioevale di Brisighella si trasformerà in una cantina a cielo aperto per poter gustare buon cibo da strada e i calici delle migliori produzioni vinicole del territorio. Il tutto accompagnato da spettacoli di musica dal vivo nello splendido scenario del 3 colli.
Dalle ore 20:15 in Piazza Marconi va in scena l'esibizione di "Encuentros – Live tra Flamenco e Pop" con Carlo Calderano alla chitarra flamenca e Valentina Rambelli alla voce. Sul palco la formazione di flamenco pop che unisce gli studi classici e la sonorità flamenca che restituiscono un mix di accorgimenti armonici e sonorità per nulla scontati.
Dalle ore 21:45 in Piazza Carducci è il turno dei “7SevenUp" con loro carica esplosiva, dettata anche dalla giovane età, nella migliore esplorazione delle hit degli anni ‘90 e Duemila.
Durante la serata, passeggiando per il centro storico, si potranno inoltre assaggiare gli ottimi vini delle cantine del territorio: Baccagnano, Cantina Bulzaga, Ca’ Barchi, CAB Terra di Brisighella, Cantina Casadio, Conte di Val D’Amone, Gallegati, Le lagune Terre Antiche, Loiano, Tenuta Uccellina, Terra e Sale, Terrabusi, Vespignano, Vigne di San Lorenzo, Villa Liverzano, Zinzani.
L'ingresso è a offerta libera. Per informazioni www.brisighella.org.
Nel centro di Brisighella torna “Calici sotto i tre colli” La musica sotto le stelle si fonde con il buon cibo e le degustazioni di vino Cibo, buon vino e musica si fondono per il ritorno, sabato 2 agosto, della...
Torna anche questo agosto il festival che regala due giorni magici nel bellissimo borgo marchigiano di Ripatransone con spettacoli di grandi artisti, laboratori, street food e visite guidate al Museo della Matemagica e alle sue incredibili illusioni ottiche.
Il cuore della nuova edizione di RipaMagic batte forte nel nome di Mattia Flip, al secolo Mattia Bidoli, mago, fotografo e operatore umanitario che da oltre quindici anni porta la magia nei luoghi più feriti del mondo: ospedali da campo, carceri, campi profughi, zone di guerra.
Oltre allo spettacolo che aprirà la prima giornata, Mattia sarà protagonista di un incontro pubblico in cui condividerà esperienze, immagini e storie dai conflitti in Siria, Libano, Iraq, Ucraina e nella Striscia di Gaza, dove ha trasformato le sue esibizioni in gesti di cura, resistenza e umanità.
Accanto a lui, un cast ricco di artisti italiani e internazionali: dal cubano Ernesto Planas Roldan - maestro mondiale della comedy magic, Luca D’Avvero – definito “giocoliere della magia” e “comico del pericolo”, Manuel Guarnori - specializzato in grandi effetti scenici; Tino Fimiani - già protagonista a Zelig Circus e in tournée con Arturo Brachetti - Madame Rebiné, Daigoro e Giacomo Seri.
RipaMagic Magia, illusionismo, comicità e incontri straordinari tra le piazze e i giardini di Ripatransone. Due giorni gratuiti con grandi artisti, laboratori e museo interattivo.
Il 2-3 agosto a Sefro (MC) torna “La Trota e il Verdicchio”, evento tra natura, gusto e racconti, nel cuore dell’Appennino marchigiano. Sabato 2 si parte con la finalissima del social contest dedicato alla trota: tre content creator presenteranno le proprie creazioni alla giuria composta dalle chef Serena D’Alesio e Maria Rita Spoglia, dal prof. Giovanni Caprioli (Unicam) e da Manuel Saraceno, ambassador di Giallo Zafferano.
La serata proseguirà con l’inaugurazione del Parco Sensoriale e con “Sorgenti d’eccellenza”, una cena evento che celebra l’incontro tra trota e Verdicchio, arricchita dalle testimonianze di imprenditori come Lanfranco Beleggia (Brosway), Domenico Guzzini (Fimag) e Antonio Centocanti (Cantine Belisario), intervistati da Erika Mariniello.
Domenica 3 si apre all’insegna del benessere con il Forest Bathing drammaturgico a cura di Barbara Migliorelli. Nel pomeriggio spazio ai bambini con “Il baule delle storie” di Roberta Mora. Alle 18:00 presso la Torre da Varano, Natasha Stefanenko presenterà il suo libro “Dalle Marche con amore” in dialogo con la giornalista Sara Santacchi.
Gran finale serale con l’Aperitrota: clubbing, sperimentazione gastronomica e trota d’autore con gli chef Marta Pierozzi e Paolo Pistola. Alla consolle DJ Jacopo Jajani e il violinista Andrea Casta.
“La Trota e il Verdicchio” è promosso dal Comune di Sefro con il cofinanziamento della Regione Marche nell’ambito del programma FEAMPA, e fa parte del Grand Tour delle Marche, circuito di eventi firmato Tipicità e ANCI Marche. Due giorni per scoprire un borgo che si propone come capitale del buon vivere nella Regione del benessere.
Il 2-3 agosto, a Sefro (MC), torna “La Trota e il Verdicchio”. Sefro: elisir di benessere! Due giorni tra natura, gusto, racconti. Un programma ricco di esperienze per ogni età. Il primo week end di agosto, nell’incantevole borgo di Sefro...
LOS ANGELES — Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slid in June to the slowest pace since last September as mortgage rates remained elevated and the national median sales price rose to an all-time high of $435,300
Same here. I also kept ignoring my window ac units alert about cleaning the filter until it just stopped working. I cleaned the filter and it magically works a lot better.
The layer of dirt on him was the only thing keeping newer forms of germs from infecting him simce his skin couldnt do it anymore. They washed him and killed him.
A motor that runs at a constant speed all the time can last basically forever. Starting and stopping puts way more stress on the mechanical parts.
Same reason I hate how modern hard drive enclosures force the hard drive to shut down after a period of inactivity. With a lot of workloads it will keep spinning up, stopping, and spinning up again which is a great way to kill the motor.
Well I'm pretty sure my grandpa bought this thing at walmart for like 10$ so idk about a 100 year warranty but it outlived him already. Now it's on to me.
No More Forced Restarts: This is a huge relief for many!. Firefox on Linux no longer requires a forced restart after your package manager applies an update. This means smoother, uninterrupted browsing, even during system updates.
Reduced Memory Usage: ForkServer leads to a significant reduction in memory consumption for content processes. The base resident memory for a content process is now around 50% lower. This helps Firefox run more efficiently, especially if you have many tabs open.
Faster Process Startup: You'll notice that content process startup times are reduced by approximately 35%. This translates to snappier new tab openings and overall improved responsiveness.
I have currently 13 tabs open and I don’t see the issue. RAM is there to be used. I actually expect my programs to extensively cache stuff and use the RAM.
(The other Firefox processes for the individual tabs are cut from the screenshot.)
Absolutely, it's only about convenience. I often miss the fact that firefox is in the list of all the packages that are getting updated and realize it only when I open a new tab and I get the error message, and that's annoying. Very much a first world problem for sure!
Per tutti gli amanti della corsa, ecco un evento a cui poter partecipare.
Nella meravigliosa Val Camonica, un posto unico, dove ci ho lasciato un pezzo di cuore.
[url=https://citiverse.it/category/running@lemmy.world]@running@lemmy.world[/url]
:link: [u
Per tutti gli amanti della corsa, ecco un evento a cui poter partecipare. Nella meravigliosa Val Camonica, un posto unico, dove ci ho lasciato un pezzo di cuore.
Il 31 agosto a Capo di Ponte si terrà la Run Aragosta, corsa non competitiva che promuove salute, divertimento e solidarietà. L'iniziativa gratuita, ma tutti contribuiscono
Oracle and OpenAI expand Stargate project with 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity, part of a $500 billion U.S. AI infrastructure investment creating over 100,000 jobs.
Microsoft is also involved in Stargate as a tech partner. So are Arm and Nvidia. Middle East AI fund MGX will join SoftBank in its investment; MGX’s first public deal was an investment in OpenAI.
SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle are also listed as “initial equity investors” in Stargate.
It's interesting that FoxNews omit that the source for big part of that funding is coming from Middle East.
The LinkedIn post about the AI deregulation announcement was a who's who of assholes bleating about how great it would be; CEOs, COOs, from Open AI, Duke Energy, Fascists Anonymous.
The Open AI persons comment was such sausage it had to be his own shitty AI
The joke of Roko's Basilisk is that we really do have a group of people who seem to subscribe to it, often with dogmatic religiosity.
I can't help but wonder if these spoiled rotten dipshits have fully turned their brains over to the bot-farms and LLMs and are now living out the fantasy of a Killer Robot From The Future dangling heaven and hell over their heads until they build this impossible machine.
Most of them are accelerationists. They want the world to collapse, because they want to be kings of their own little nation states and they all think that they’re going to come out ahead simply because they have money and because “if I’ve been so successful up until now with pesky governments just imagine what will happen without them.”
Epstein is a great example. Literally months ago, you had the hogs all hooting over "Lock Hillary Up!" wrt to Bondi's teasing of a secret list of criminals and crooks. Now we're supposed to pretend Jeffery and his Lolita Express flights are all Fake News?
Reminds me of the first few days after the J6 riots, as AM Radio talking heads scrambled to figure out whether they were Based MAGA Champions or Fifth Columnist Antifa Infiltrators trying to make Trump look bad.
Basically they'll allow the use of LLMs in decision making even more. The chatbot kills people? Oopsie, you can't sue us, or you're breaking a federal law!
*Whew* I was just starting to feel anxious that this administration was grossly incompetent and painfully ignorant, but this new approach to *checks notes* . . . letting AI companies steal data so that “we” “win” the “AI race” has really turned that around
It’s unlikely any of this will ever be profitable, the only one making profit from this right now is NVIDIA. Everyone else’s costs dwarf revenue, even just operational costs, not even counting capital expenditure to set this stuff up. None of these companies have a path to profitability, and most of the little revenue is coming from services burning investor money built upon other services that are also burning investor money, or temporary shenanigans like Microsoft trading OpenAI free compute time at their data centers in exchange for IP, or coreweave using their GPUs as collateral against loans to buy more GPUs that get collateralized in turn.
At best the deregulation makes things less unprofitable and drags the bubble out a little longer.
thats why they are trying to cram AI into whatever services they have, google on pixels, micrsoft on its various services,,etc, i think they are just trying to stem bleeding by cramming it in to everything they can.
Which is an absurd thing to do! Getting it in front of more people just increases their costs by creating more load on their data centers. At best it juices investor confidence by pushing up user numbers. It’s not converting people to payed subscriptions at any significant rate, and even then people paying the subscriptions are losing them money because they’re creating way more load than their subscriptions pay for.
What a bunch of fucking idiots. They could be increasing grants for AI research, offering fast-pass visas & citizenship paths to AI experts/PhDs from other countries, and working to increase the availability of necessary resources such as data centers and power. But nope! We're just letting the commercial businesses cut corners so they can profit off of it faster.
Pretty much sums up this administration in a nutshell.
The plan is to win a race for the best auto-correct and predictive text generator? What's the trophy? And how is this being measured, by how much money or results? Because China has DeepSeek and it's already better on both results and cost - so is there a plan?
These fucking idiots never think of the immediate next line of questions and always fail to be ready for basic details or follow ups. They just say whatever they think it takes for people to like them.
Uuuuh Bush wants a word. He may not be THIS stupid but he earned being called stupid a long time ago.
And I maintain, idiots are in power for far longer than you claim. Just because now there's a competition, it doesn't diminish how useless other administrators were.
Exactly what we need in a bubble. There is no there there.. okay, no profit there; just a big bottomless money pit and a bunch of tech edgelords fantasizing.
The only "wins" for this current US regime are negative records: most cruel, most degenerate, most stupid, most racist, and so on. And the "grand prize" for these wins will be war (civil or conventional) plus a spot in history among the worst people ever to destabilize and rule a country.
The race to develop uncontrollable superintelligent processes for which the goal of maintaining Earth’s biosphere is a competitive disadvantage? No humans win this race.
So what you're saying is only the right kind of people should be allowed to vote?
I do think though that there should be some sort of basic test to prove that you actually understand the various policies an administration is pushing, not at a deep level but just the most basic surface level that you could get from a 10-minute Google search or by watching a single video. Just prove that you actually know what you're voting for because otherwise why even vote?
Well you'd have to strip out most of the history books then, oh and anything to do with social science, also get rid of all of the biology textbooks because they explain where babies come from and conservatives don't like that sort of thing.
Basically it's just going to be sports statistics and gun manuals. There probably isn't enough information in there to build an AI, as you need quite a broad base of input for it to work.
I was trying to read the EO last night and unless I'm fucked up I thought the EO pertained to just stuff the government has anything to do with? AI they would fund or aquire etc please correct me if I'm wrong I got lost in the sauce last night
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
its less hyper intelligent machine overlord exterminating humanity, and more chatbots that cannot run a lemonade stand being tasked with managing the economy, freaking out and filling their digital diapers, and deleting everyone's social security numbers
The creators of an AI tool and Discord community that allowed people to create AI videos of NBA stars says that it got a cease-and-desist letter from lawyers representing LeBron James. This marks one of the first known times that a high-profile celebrity has threatened legal action against an AI company for enabling the creation of nonconsensual AI imagery of their likeness. It is also one of the first times we’ve seen a celebrity take legal action against a type of nonconsensual but not strictly sexual type of AI-generated content, which is rampant on Instagram and other social media
*This graphic is free of copyrighted third-party elements and is released under the Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0. Please attribute as: “skeptical-squirrel-series, 2025.”
So unfortunately websites routinely and carelessly lie about basically everything related to data protection stuff. This already begins with the term "technically necessary cookies". No cookie is truly technically necessary. What they usually mean by that is "we really really want to put this tracking cookie from our ad partners like Google into your browser, and we don't care whether you want that or not so we just claim it's technically necessary". But even if you refuse a cookie prompt, often your choice isn't respected at all and cookies are created regardless. In fact, many cookies are already created at the very beginning before you make any choice in any sort of cookie banner. Basically this whole ad/tracking industry is a complete mess and no one really cares and it's just best to completely ignore what sites claim and use technical means to protect yourself at least a little bit because you cannot trust ANY site's claims regarding that. Most of the time, even the phrase "we value your privacy" is already the very first and biggest lie. Don't trust what websites claim. It's pointless, and nothing happens when they violate their own rules or data protection laws anyway. Which they do almost all of the time anyway. This illegality is routine and almost omni-present. Cookies are also far from the only thing that sites can use to track you. They're just the most well-known method, which is probably why we have these near-pointless laws requiring sites to put up near-pointless banners to annoy visitors with.
So as a user, you should just ignore any of that and completely rely on technical means to protect yourself from any or most kinds of shenanigans websites can do to you. Most privacy-respecting browsers have features that limit what sites are able to do with you, such as cookie isolation which prevents other sites from being able to read the contents of cookies belonging to other sites. Or more general, isolation of any website data, not just limited to cookies. But not every browser has these types of protection. If you use very common browsers like Chrome, Edge or Opera, then it's likely that you have none of that because the developers of those browsers are companies which profit from the user being more easily trackable through the web.
So the easiest solution as a user is to use a privacy-respecting, well-pre-configured browser like Librewolf or Mullvad Browser, and use uBlock Origin as the only extension with several enabled filter lists. This alone makes you a much harder tracking target. And of course you can safely ignore or block any cookie notices, it doesn't really matter what you select in them most of the time anyway. Although your IP address is still always a liability with ANY browser, because it can be fairly easily linked to your person and you will expose your IP address with any regular browser, so if you want to browse anonymously you should use the Tor Browser (with mostly default settings and no additional extensions). That means that you won't have ad blocking protection, but at the same time the site and any ad servers don't know who you are anyway (you're just some random person from a random country for them), unless you make a mistake and log into a personally-identifiable account or so. The Tor Browser also contains the most amount of anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting techniques possible. For casual anonymous browsing you should absolutely use the Tor Browser, because with it it's highly unlikely that a website is able to identify you. Its main disadvantages are that it's slower, some sites block that kind of browser, and since you shouldn't add any other extensions you will see ads with it, but your identity still remains protected unless you make a mistake. Still, it should be your go-to browser for anonymous browsing. Switch to your regular browser for when you want to log in to an account with personal details.
The easy way for iOS users (to which I count myself) is not to exchange Safari for worse like Big Data Chrome or Chinese Opera, but simply activate the Private Relay in the settings, so you are safer and more comfortable on the road.
It would be better to take another browser, even if they are all WebKit here at the moment.
My tip right now is to use Orion, for screwing, but also in the basic settings, with Kagi (if you are willing to pay for searches) or Startpage as a search engine. Or DuckDuckGo Browser as a no-brainer.
A chic VPN like the one from Proton or Nord and the party should be safe for now.
There are plenty of older documentaries, mostly mainstream posted on Youtube about this case. Here are a couple to view, one by an influencer, the other a mainstream media with interviews, dubbed in English.
I am fine with yt links. I believe is up to us to install libRedirect or Redirector and configure alternative instances or even local stuff to treat it as we prefer...
TLDR; notorious pedophile murderer Marc Dutroux claimed he actually worked for "certain people in the government" when procuring victims. It was never proven in court, but I'll believe it.
Marc Dutroux is a Belgian serial killer whose case provoked outrage at the lax response of law enforcement agencies. So intense was the public’s reaction that more than one-third of Belgians with the surname Dutroux changed their names.
I just dgaf anymore. I'll still vote blue every time, but I just DO NOT GIVE A FUCK. ABOUT ANYTHING POLITICAL. Fascist can have it, they keep getting voted in
If you don't give a fuck, maybe prove it by ignoring it and moving on, instead of DECLARING IN ALL CAPS YOU DONT CARE ABOUT IT
Because otherwise, how it comes across as is "I find politics highly annoying/uncomfortable for some reason, but I also want people to know that about me!"
In Poland we even have the term for that "Serial suicider" though in Poland people end up dead like that usually because they have some evidence about what current politicians of PiS and PO and their business patrons did in 90's and how they ended up rich back then.
PattyMcB
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
dcpDarkMatter, Maeve e DaGeek247 like this.
socialsecurity
in reply to PattyMcB • • •Patriot act, Snowden, Cambridge Analytica
we already done sacrificed freedom. This is the FO stage
Auth
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
dcpDarkMatter, Azathoth e giantpaper like this.
Tanoh
in reply to Auth • • •Humans are awful at accessing risk and chance, one of the reasons casinos and lotteries thrive.
Look at fear of flying for an example, all statistics say you are many many many times over more likely to get into a car accident on your way to the airport, than during the flight. Even when the ride to the airport is usually short and the flight very long. Yet people are afraid of flying, but not going by car. By percentage, there are of course those, rightly so, afraid of cars as well.
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giantpaper likes this.
0x0
in reply to Tanoh • • •IIRC most accidents happen during take-off/landing.
Once you're up there it's chill.
Tanoh
in reply to 0x0 • • •Yondoza
in reply to Tanoh • • •Risk assessment is probability and severity. The probability can be vanishingly low, but if the severity is astoundingly high then acting like a high risk situation could be appropriate.
Take asteroids. The last planet killer to hit us was 94million years ago. A rudimentary estimate could put the probably as 1:94mil. The severity of an asteroid impact of that magnitude is off the charts, so it is reasonable to consider it a risk and act accordingly to spend resources to search for and track asteroid trajectories.
The severity of abduction, murder, and rape is probably pretty high for most people, so considering it a risk even with a very small probability is not unreasonable.
yetAnotherUser
in reply to Yondoza • • •Location sharing doesn't prevent any of that though?
Like, no criminal who would want to rape/murder/abduct you knows whether you are sharing your location with anyone. They would do so regardless before anyone can arrive to help you.
Also, no kidnapper on this planet is stupid enough to take your phone with them. You have a slightly higher chance for authorities to be alerted sooner but that's about it.
Yondoza
in reply to yetAnotherUser • • •Oh yeah, location sharing will have almost no effect those risks. Totally agree.
Just disagreeing that low probability of occurrence automatically means the risk assessment should be low.
0x0
in reply to Auth • • •Which is the only thing the news shows them to begin with.. almost as if they cherry-pick stuff.
nous
in reply to 0x0 • • •LillyPip
in reply to return2ozma • • •Of all the dystopian things, this is probably the most dystopian thing I’ve read lately.
This is horrible.
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Blisterexe
in reply to LillyPip • • •like this
DaGeek247, Azathoth e giantpaper like this.
Senseless
in reply to Blisterexe • • •ZeroOne
in reply to Senseless • • •Deebster
in reply to Senseless • • •I'm assuming this is a young group, and they've grown up in the always-connected, always-surveilled modern world.
I've met plenty of people that are surprised or even suspicious when I say that I try to avoid corporations and governments tracking me. I guess the Overton window has shifted so that people expect and accept constant surveillance.
Cethin
in reply to Deebster • • •Deebster
in reply to Cethin • • •When I say I don't accept, I don't mean I live in denial, I mean I don't acquiesce; I resist it, whether that be by avoiding services/products, paying for premium, installing ad blockers or modding things to remove telemetry.
I am aware that my phone company knows where I am and I'm on cameras, but I'm not going to make it easy for the next Cambridge Analytica.
blargle
in reply to Senseless • • •Übercomplicated
in reply to blargle • • •I've actually done a little to combat this, in my personal life (apart from ordinary privacy stuff like librewolf und Linux). I got so sick of the majority of my friends expecting me to reply to every text message within 30 minutes, and then getting extremely offended when I didn't (simply because I don't look at my phone that often), that I turned off read-receipts on all my messaging apps, and set my notifications to only arrive in groups at specific times of day.
Then I made a habit of not answering unimportant messages for a few days, until I got the reputation that I pretty much don't use my phone (I also don't use conventional social media, and none of my friends even know I'm in lemmy). This worked like a charm! My social life much, much less stressful.
I've broken the absurd contract that so many people seem to think they have a right to. My time is now my own. I can highly recommend this system! Of course, I can't do it for work-related stuff, but it still really has reduced my stress by a lot.
MunkysUnkEnz0
in reply to Blisterexe • • •Blisterexe
in reply to MunkysUnkEnz0 • • •Like 16-17, I don't talk to the people that do that too much because they're not the type of person I like hanging out with, so I don't really know why they do it.
It's like an extension of their group chats, on snapchat.
Empricorn
in reply to Blisterexe • • •twikz
in reply to Blisterexe • • •PerogiBoi
in reply to LillyPip • • •RaivoKulli
in reply to PerogiBoi • • •Cethin
in reply to PerogiBoi • • •MrLLM
in reply to LillyPip • • •Here’s something even worse, IMO, if you’d like to check it out.
hisao
2025-07-25 02:21:11
besselj
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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John Richard
in reply to besselj • • •like this
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HaveMeOnYourPodcast
in reply to John Richard • • •Ebber
in reply to John Richard • • •Psythik
in reply to besselj • • •like this
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hornedfiend
in reply to Psythik • • •greybeard
in reply to Psythik • • •Psythik
in reply to greybeard • • •Cethin
in reply to greybeard • • •0x0
in reply to besselj • • •Surely you jest!
happydoors
in reply to besselj • • •moistclump
in reply to happydoors • • •HalifaxJones
in reply to happydoors • • •Same. We both follow each other and neither of us care. We mostly have it enabled for the “just in case” scenario that anything happens to one of us. We can make sure that we know of our last known location.
I’ve also had her use it one time I was away from home in NYC. And I was too drunk to figure out which subway to take to get back to my hotel. So she walked me through step by step while on the phone with me. It fucking rocked.
Zachariah
in reply to happydoors • • •Clent
in reply to besselj • • •NoiseColor
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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Dozzi92
in reply to NoiseColor • • •I have my mom's location, and it's good because she just turned 64 (I think) five minutes ago, I need to wish her a happy birthday, appreciate the reminder. But when she travels out alone, sometimes it's nice to know she got back to her hotel without having to bother her about it, so we do the sharing thing. And for hiking alone, sharing your location with someone beforehand just seems like a good idea.
This article is dumb. Location sharing is silly. People will abuse it, and those same people would've found some other way to abuse the trust in their relationships anyway. I had girlfriends as a kid who'd demand calls when I was at a party they weren't at. Dealing with a lack of trust in a relationship is a growing pain.
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0x0
in reply to Dozzi92 • • •done by leaving said relationship.
supersquirrel
in reply to Dozzi92 • • •The WHOLE point of this thread is that NO this is a new entirely more persistent tool of abuse.
paraphrand
in reply to NoiseColor • • •like this
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supersquirrel
in reply to paraphrand • • •artyom
in reply to NoiseColor • • •like this
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supersquirrel
in reply to artyom • • •artyom
in reply to supersquirrel • • •supersquirrel
in reply to artyom • • •artyom
in reply to supersquirrel • • •then_three_more
in reply to NoiseColor • • •Midnight Wolf
in reply to then_three_more • • •then_three_more
in reply to Midnight Wolf • • •ØR10N5B3LT
in reply to Midnight Wolf • • •NoiseColor
in reply to then_three_more • • •Empricorn
in reply to NoiseColor • • •NoiseColor
in reply to Empricorn • • •commander
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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Jeena
in reply to commander • • •like this
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0x0
in reply to commander • • •Dozzi92
in reply to return2ozma • • •This is dumb. Young couples have been plagued by insecurity long before location sharing. Dial the clock back 20 years and I'm your typical high school boy worried about his girlfriend.
I share my location with my wife, and even some buddies of mine. My wife has seen my location when I was at someone's bachelor party. It has nothing to do with sharing location and everything to do with trust in your relationship. I don't have her location to keep tabs on her. I have her location so we can better figure out how to get our kids from places. I have my buddies' locations so if I end up grabbing a beer, I know who's out and about, or when someone goes to Tanzania, I can say, Joe, what the hell are you doing in Tanzania?
Before location sharing you texted, or you called, or you hit me on my pager, or sent me a letter. Technology isn't the problem, it's -- once again -- just us dumb people being dumb.
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Ibuthyr
in reply to Dozzi92 • • •like this
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acosmichippo
in reply to Ibuthyr • • •Seaflea
in reply to acosmichippo • • •Ibuthyr
in reply to acosmichippo • • •Dozzi92
in reply to Ibuthyr • • •Ibuthyr
in reply to Dozzi92 • • •supersquirrel
in reply to Ibuthyr • • •paraphrand
in reply to return2ozma • • •I do this location sharing with someone.
The only time it crosses my mind to check it is when they are coming to visit or we are otherwise traveling or meeting up.
I thankful for whatever makes it easy for me to just be chill about it. It’s nice to not have to manually mess with an app when needed. And it’s there in an emergency.
Edit: oh shit. This reminds me that I saw one of those 360 something ads recently. I usually avoid tv ads, but happened to see one. It was unhinged in how it was stoking paranoia to sell the tracking. It was targeted at parents.
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Midnight Wolf
in reply to paraphrand • • •paraphrand
in reply to Midnight Wolf • • •omniman
in reply to return2ozma • • •MunkysUnkEnz0
in reply to omniman • • •like this
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NuXCOM_90Percent
in reply to return2ozma • • •I am of multiple minds on it.
I very much do like the idea of sharing your location (once you are in a committed relationship). Knowing when your partner is coming home or stuck at work or at the grocery store is useful. Same with knowing that someone can check in on you if something horrible happens. And I have 100% shared my location temporarily for that.
The problem is that... you don't always want to do that. And explaining that becomes a mess.
At its core it is opt in versus opt out but it also can trigger the kinds of conversations that are really better suited to a lot later in a relationship. Like with prenups. There are a lot of REALLY REALLY REALLY good reasons to have them but it is the kind of topic that you can't even raise without having the implication of "I don't trust you".
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ObsidianZed
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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tal
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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Fondots
in reply to return2ozma • • •My wife and I work different schedules. on the rare day off that were both home, she's often out of the house when I wake up. She's not great at replying to texts. I never know when she's going to be home, and usually have no clue what she's out doing or where.
But I know who she's doing while she's gone- no one. Because I trust my wife. I know who she is as a person, I know what our relationship is like.
I have no particular desire to know her location at all times. I'm sure if I asked, she'd share it with me, and I'd do the same for her. I might occasionally do that when I'm off hiking or something in case there's an emergency, but half the time I wouldn't have a signal anyway.
We are two humans with our own lives. Those lives are very intertwined, but we're both allowed to go off and have our own adventures, occasionally some secrets, and we don't need to know where each other is 24/7
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CookieOfFortune
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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supermurs
in reply to return2ozma • • •We only share our locations when for example my wife is coming home from shopping groceries so that I know when to go out to the parking lot to help carry the groceries home.
I had no idea people share locations constantly.
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Alexstarfire
in reply to supermurs • • •like this
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detren
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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Evotech
in reply to detren • • •Yeah I know many who just use it as a practical tool in the day to day.
Even know friend groups who use it between themselves (they all live close together)
SnapMap is also very popular, obv less accurate but nice to see who is in town
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slaacaa
in reply to detren • • •Same with my wife. I even have it set up for my mother, so I know she’s safe. I don’t understand what the big deal is, as you say it’s a safety and convenience feature, it doesn’t mean you spend the day looking at the app to see where the other person is.
It’s not something I would do in a casual or new relationship, but if I’m with somebody for years, I value their safety over my (perceived) privacy.
And for the people who think this would prevent or bust cheating: lol. They can just turn it off and complain of bad reception, or leave their phone in their car, while they “shop at the mall”. Or just get a second phone. This app is not a substitute for trust
Regarding tech privacy: it’s not like
other apps on your phone are not already tracking, I doubt anybody has their GPS constantly turned off. They already know your location, this one feature doesn’t make a difference.
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Count042
in reply to slaacaa • • •For one, it wrecks your battery life.
Secondly, everyone I know my age keeps GPS off unless using a mapping program.
Finally regarding app privacy, people do care about that which is why grapheneos and other privacy focused OS's exist.
The fact that you don't care about privacy and want the government and corporations to have every sext you've ever received or sent doesn't mean that others don't care as well.
cole
in reply to Count042 • • •twikz
in reply to cole • • •Shocking Truth: Does Sharing Location Drain Battery Life?
Jennifer Elliott (Geofinder Blog)cole
in reply to twikz • • •twikz
in reply to cole • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to detren • • •She could text you, no? It seems like getting her to be better at that is better than opening the can of worms involved with location sharing. For example, here's some bad stuff that could happen:
Etc. Those probably aren't super likely, but being able to avoid it all entirely with a little better communication sounds a lot better.
Sometimes it's worth it, like you're going hiking alone or going to a bad part of town.
Clent
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to Clent • • •MunkysUnkEnz0
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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ThatWeirdGuy1001
in reply to MunkysUnkEnz0 • • •thenose
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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grue
in reply to return2ozma • • •The main reason my wife and I don't have location sharing set up isn't because of trust or lack thereof between each other, but because I don't trust proprietary/commercial location-sharing services.
I've been meaning to set up a self-hosted system (mainly because it seems like Home Assistant could do some neat automations with that info), but haven't gotten around to it yet.
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Munkisquisher
in reply to grue • • •CosmicTurtle0
in reply to Munkisquisher • • •Munkisquisher
in reply to CosmicTurtle0 • • •We have it hidden in the letterbox. The mobile app has a Bluetooth beacon setting where you can have it report either specified beacons to HA, or all of them and you can filter for the ones you want at that end.
The automation looks for the beacon to be reported from either of 2 devices and then switches the lights on, quite basic.
We have a separate automation that turns the scanning for beacons setting in the phone app on at dusk and off at 3am. And another that turns the garden lights off after 10 min triggered by them being switched on
alias: "ibeacon lights on " description: "" mode: single triggers: - value_template: >- {{ state_attr('sensor.phone1_beacon_monitor', 'b5b182c7-eab1-4988-aa99-bd9_1_2') != None }} trigger: template - value_template: >- {{ state_attr('sensor.phone2_beacon_monitor', 'b5b182c7-eab1-4988-aa99-bd9_1_2') != None }} trigger: template conditions: [] actions: - data: {} target: entity_id: - switch.garden_lights - switch.deck_light_table - switch.deck_light_bbq action: switch.turn_on - event: beaconDetected event_data: {} - if: - condition: numeric_state entity_id: zone.home below: 1 then: - data: {} target: device_id: - b5c12ce8343fda7810b69c24f - a71515f86d7d34ef570acbe8 action: light.turn_ondeafboy
in reply to Munkisquisher • • •Make sure it defaults to OFF after power loss. My colleague had a close call when the smart plug with the infra panel plugged in decided to turn on after the power outage.
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Munkisquisher
in reply to deafboy • • •Kr4u7
in reply to grue • • •fmd-foss / FMD Android · GitLab
GitLabManalith
in reply to grue • • •Count042
in reply to grue • • •cole
in reply to grue • • •grue
in reply to cole • • •cole
in reply to grue • • •Vinstaal0
in reply to return2ozma • • •Me an my GF have been sharing location for years now, it has never been an issue and often been handy to see if one of us is driving from work to home or finding each other in a festival or theme park etc.
But well I kinda wanna surprise here and for that I need to drive somewhere where I normally don't go, so now I gotta find an excuse just incase she checks my location. Or I just turn of my Phone for an hour or two
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0x0
in reply to Vinstaal0 • • •Blackout likes this.
Vinstaal0
in reply to 0x0 • • •like this
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WhyJiffie
in reply to Vinstaal0 • • •well you can call it a surprise too
/s
0x0
in reply to Vinstaal0 • • •Vinstaal0
in reply to 0x0 • • •There is no chance she is going to believe that I drive 40-60min without my phone dor mysic lol, but I could try it.
Or I just say that I have an appointment with a client of mine (if she asks), that also works
supersquirrel
in reply to 0x0 • • •panathea
in reply to Vinstaal0 • • •In my 8-or-so years of using it with my partner, close friends, and some family, the only occasion where I turned it off was when visiting a jewelry store for an engagement ring.
I know I have less privacy in principle, but I've never had an issue crop up so far.
supersquirrel
in reply to Vinstaal0 • • •Eww this is just weird you have to think about that.
chronicledmonocle
in reply to return2ozma • • •My wife and I have had our location shared with each other for years, but it's not a "Are they cheating?" thing. I have been married for 14 years and never wonder if my wife is cheating on me. It's just incredibly useful for seeing how far away one of us is from home to do things like plan dinner prep times, know where to look for a lost phone, etc. If you can't trust your SO, there is something wrong that you need to address and micro-managing where they are is toxic.
Also, do yourself a favor and use something open source and/or self hosted. Home Assistant, for example, has the ability to track location data for iOS and Android devices and pin that location to a map. Don't give your location data to corporations to be used for data mining.
Call me old fashioned, but I put it in the same bucket as a prenup: If you're always prepping your heart and mind for a split, you'll always have one foot out the door. Not everyone will agree with me, but that's how I feel and it's why I don't have one. Find yourself someone who is ride or die, if you are looking for a lifetime partner. Don't settle for someone you can't trust with your life.
That said, not everyone is looking for monogamy for the rest of their life, either, and that's OK, too.
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WhyJiffie
in reply to chronicledmonocle • • •I don't agree. Prenups are passive, they don't do anything until not needed. all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust.
lucidinferno
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •Legally and practically, prenups are anything but passive. They’re proactive tools. They’re usually dormant, but they’re ready to be called into action.
Marriage is different things to different people. Some have every intention to make it work, no matter what. To them, a prenup is an anti-“burn the ship”. It’s a statement.
Also, tools like “find my” are not major breaches of privacy if both parties jointly agree to use them. For me and my family, it’s the ultimate expression of trust. I’m never somewhere I shouldn’t be, and I like my family knowing where I am, for a multitude of reasons.
There are two types of people who a tracker wouldn’t be effective for: those who are in an inappropriate location, and those who are constantly questioning why someone is in an innocent place, regardless of where it may be. However, at that point, the issue isn’t the trackers; it’s the people.
Count042
in reply to lucidinferno • • •lucidinferno
in reply to Count042 • • •erin
in reply to Count042 • • •WhyJiffie
in reply to lucidinferno • • •that's what I meant by passive. they don't do anything until invoked, once.
It's like comparing a personal forcefield with an always worn camera and mic that streams your life to google's personal security subsidiary, if I want to magnify the differences.
I don't see why what you said makes it not passive. maybe we understand that term differently.
that's how abusers learn they can do whatever they want
I don't necessarily mean breach of privacy that way. if everyone voluntarily agrees, without "problems", that's good. but more that the service provider has access to a fuckton of sensitive data! I can imagine people who accept that.. and then who also condemn others for wanting to escape shit privacy invading services
LilB0kChoy
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •How? My situation is similar to the person you’re replying to and I’m curious how two consenting adults sharing their location with each other is “a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust”.
Maybe if one party is unwilling or has no say/control in location sharing but specifically in the scenario at hand I don’t see it.
WhyJiffie
in reply to LilB0kChoy • • •because you are not sharing your location with each other. you are sharing your location with a greedy company that also lets your significant other, and then the highest bidder access this information. they are doing whatever they please with it to make (even more) money.
see, I was so into google's timeline feature years ago. but soon after I realized privacy is a thing I was disgusted of it and turned it off. if you run nextcloud and that addon I don't remember, or reitti, at home and use that, and you keep is somewhat safe*, then it's fine, and I could imagine using that, even just for myself.
I should have explained that. for some reason I tend to assume that lemmy users are privacy conscious, but that's probably not true.
* don't expose the services because your data will get stolen and you'll get hacked by automated systems. run a VPN on the server, only expose the port of that. then you can access the services through a VPN. wireguard is relatively simple, and it's secure.
LilB0kChoy
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •I get that it’s not privacy focused; so much these days isn’t, but I’m still not understanding how two adults knowingly enabling location sharing via a 3rd party service is “a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust”.
I’m gathering that your intent was more along the lines of “it’s not very privacy conscious since you have no control over how the 3rd party uses that data or any way to control it”, would that be accurate?
WhyJiffie
in reply to LilB0kChoy • • •its not "not privacy focused", but it is completely against it. there's almost zero things private about it, only that it's not entirely public. but tbh, at that point that difference would not matter to me
well, for the most part yes, very mildly
LilB0kChoy
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •Got it. Seems like you’re applying your preference to the original commenters situation; that’s where I was getting confused.
WhyJiffie
in reply to LilB0kChoy • • •I'm not sure I understand you, but my point is that I strictly don't want my location history to be known by such a company. if it somehow still happened, I wouldn't care if only that company or anyone from the public would know, because those who really want to know can get access anyway.
another way to put it: I don't care that my neighbor can have a look at it, because I know they don't care at all, and have better things to do. but in my opinion, if someone cares to check it any time, there's a high chance that their intentions are not good or neutral. of course differences like family, maybe coworkers in very soecial jobs, but otherwise.
LilB0kChoy
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •The original commenter explained they and their spouse share their location.
You said it was a breach of trust and privacy.
My question was “How? My situation is similar to the person you’re replying to and I’m curious how two consenting adults sharing their location with each other is ‘a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust’.”
I understand now that you didn’t mean that it was a breach of trust and privacy literally, obviously they’ve both opted in, but you used that to express your own preference.
WhyJiffie
in reply to LilB0kChoy • • •well, it depends. I still think they are breaching their own privacy, but they just don't care.
LilB0kChoy
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •Privacy generally means the ability to control your personal information and how it's used, as well as your freedom from intrusion and observation.
If you knowingly opt in it’s not really a breach of privacy. They’re choosing to allow a 3rd party access to that information which doesn’t fit with your preferences but it’s not really a breach of privacy or trust.
WhyJiffie
in reply to LilB0kChoy • • •they have control over giving that information to the 3rd party, but they don't have any control after that, over how the information is used. with that in mind, do you think they have control over their information?
that's right, allowing that 3rd party. but did they choose to share it with the business partners of that 3rd party too? are they aware of what is happening in the background? even if they didn't just register-accept-next-next-finish it, most people have no idea about it, because there's so little discourse about it.
like, when I registered to facebook many years ago I had no idea what I was doing. I was using their services a lot for years, blissfully unaware that facebook is a shit company. and what control did I have at the end? the illusion of deletion.
LilB0kChoy
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •It’s not about what I think, they have control over whether to share their location data with a 3rd party or not. By definition that is control. They also have control to stop sharing that data at any time.
Do you have anything to support that the specific system used by the original commenter is using that data in a manner not agreed to when they shared it or in a way that the original commenter doesn’t agree to?
Or are you applying your own personal preferences and beliefs to someone else’s situation?
WhyJiffie
in reply to LilB0kChoy • • •well if you think your opinion does not matter in a discussion, I may as well just stop responding. especially since with every response you sound more and more hostile.
the point with that question was to ask if you disagree. you don't have to say you do, it's clear as day
you are asking for the impossible as they did not disclose what service do they use. but one of the most popular of such services is life360, which has been known to be doing this for a long time
relic4322
2025-06-29 20:48:53
LilB0kChoy
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •So you’re applying your own personal preference and beliefs. Saying “all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust” is just you applying your preferences and beliefs to someone else’s personal decision.
Do I? How so? You made a statement of fact (all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust) about someone else’s choice and situation without any information to directly support it (you are asking for the impossible as they did not disclose what service do they use).
Calling my questioning and pushback “hostile” seems like bad-jacketing to me. Maybe you’re getting defensive?
erin
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •WhyJiffie
in reply to erin • • •I was unclear on what I meant by the breach of privacy. there's another comment chain discussing that but tldr: it's not about sharing your location with your SO, but entrusting profit driven careless companies with both of your sensitive information.
Additionally, there's something I haven't written in that other thread. It's not only about the both of you. I as a host (in my house, this does not apply to public places) don't want to have guests who's phones are uploading their visit at my place to any such services, because that also affects my privacy. but it's also a bit weird, because I don't feel I have the right to ask if they have such an app, let alone asking them to turn it off.
so, my point is not about not trusting your SO, but about not trusting random companies, because they are repeatedly showing both neglect and a big tendency to sell user data and lie to their benefit.
erin
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •WhyJiffie
in reply to erin • • •what is "this"? location sharing apps? if yes, why do you think these are unrelated?
I don't care about a random person having location turned on. why should I? there's plenty of offline uses for that function, I use it regularly. maps, sports tracking, reminders, ...
that's ok, when it only affects you. but when you are navigating to a friend's place, with this thinking you are just ignorant about what is actually happening. I'm genuinely sorry to point this out.
this is a bit similar to when people refuse the fact that by uploading a picture of someone to facebook they might be violating their privacy.
or when people haphazardly allow contacts access to random apps, or to apps like facebook messenger because it asks so nicely, and then disclaim responsibility over where does that contact information go.
not just the corporations, but the tech hygiene of the average person. I am aware that it sounds bad, and I hate it that it is warranted.
erin
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •𝚝𝚛𝚔
in reply to chronicledmonocle • • •My wife and I are the same. Shared location means rather than a message saying "are you on your way home?" you can just check where they're at. If I'm out on a late night callout she can see where I am instead of worrying or constantly pinging for updates. Meeting somewhere? Live updates keeps everyone in sync, and let's you know if you've got time to do something on the way or if they're already waiting or whatever.
People must be in some super unhappy relationships if they see location sharing as nefarious.
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expr
in reply to chronicledmonocle • • •This is like, the opposite of old-fashioned. Calling your wife when you're on the way home is old-fashioned.
This article is the first time I'm actually hearing about this idea because it never even occurred to me as something people would actually want to do. I frankly don't see the point of this nonsense. I would much rather talk to my wife on the phone and communicate with her about plans. It's much more human and normal, and facilitates good communication habits. It takes 2 minutes to give my wife a call and, you know what, I get to talk to my wife! We don't need technology invading absolutely every aspect of our lives. We don't need to be constantly plugged in and attached to our phones at the hip.
It also has other downsides, like making it hard to surprise your partner, constant battery drain from the constant location chatter, etc. In fact, it seems like all downside with no actual benefit (setting aside the trust stuff, because it's pretty irrelevant either way).
chronicledmonocle
in reply to expr • • •Clent
in reply to expr • • •Calling each other is technology. It's simply a technology you've normalized
Dataprolet
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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Grizzlyboy
in reply to return2ozma • • •Isn’t it strange that “trusting” someone now, means letting them constantly spy on you?
I talked to some late teens about it some months ago. They see it as an “I give you permission to see my every move” kind of thing, as in they have nothing to hide. And they do it pretty early on in relationships, as a show of commitment.
I got my SO to turn off location tracking on Snapchat because I got a message from a family member about his location. She had screenshotted his location from the snap map, searched the address, found the person living there, searched him up, found out he’s also gay, and wondered if I knew he was out with another man?! FYI we attended a dinner party at the guys home.
That’s the level of insane some people get. Constant surveillance, mixed with insecurities and stories of cheating, and you’ve got a shitty ass cocktail.
Me having location shared with my partner of 20 years is one thing. But sharing it with anyone else? Fuck no.
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sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to Grizzlyboy • • •I wouldn't even share my location with my SO of 10+ years. Why? They don't need it, and there's tons of potential negative things with that (phone manufacturer sells it, gov't takes it w/ backdoor deals, breach reveals it, etc).
I don't want my SO's location information, and they shouldn't want mine. If I'm doing some high risk activity, like doing a long hike alone, sure, but it's going off immediately after.
wrekone
in reply to return2ozma • • •the_riviera_kid
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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uhmbah
in reply to the_riviera_kid • • •This. If your partner is jealous, you're not the problem. If they can't work through it with you, walk.
People with trust issues are exhausting. Make sure they're worth it without losing yourself.
Signed,
Experienced
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sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to uhmbah • • •My SO gets super jealous/anxious, probably because of all the horror stories in the news. Having access to my location would only make that worse, because then every time I drop a coworker off at home or something and forget to tell my SO, they'll get super suspicious.
I'd much rather work off trust than need to explain every little deviation from my normal schedule just to avoid some anxiety.
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innermachine
in reply to the_riviera_kid • • •like this
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the_riviera_kid
in reply to innermachine • • •like this
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HobbitFoot
in reply to the_riviera_kid • • •like this
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groet
in reply to HobbitFoot • • •like this
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the_riviera_kid
in reply to HobbitFoot • • •HobbitFoot
in reply to the_riviera_kid • • •douglasg14b
in reply to HobbitFoot • • •For real and there's so many people in this thread who have only had toxic relationships or are in toxic relationships, projecting insecurities and lack of trust onto others who may not have these problems.
I don't think this is a good idea for most people, but for some it makes sense and we need to remember that everyone is in different situations.
When you have a spouse that travels a lot, anxiety can get pretty high.
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Dozzi92
in reply to HobbitFoot • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to innermachine • • •Sure, then maybe enable it before those rides and disable afterward, and send her a text when you'd like her to keep an eye on it.
Keeping it on all the time has tons of potential privacy-related problems since phones a aren't perfect.
innermachine
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •Surp
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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theangryseal
in reply to Surp • • •I can’t imagine having something like this.
You know what kind of couples I have known who use it?
Yep. That kind. The constant accusation, constant fighting, constant chaos kind. The same kind who share a Facebook account and all that.
I guess my bias there would be that those would also be the kind of people who advertise it.
I was standing beside an old coworker one time when her husband called, “babe, don’t freak out when I start moving. The boss is sending me to harbor freight to pick up some things.”
I got a call from her in the middle of the night one time, “I’m sitting by the lake and I’m about to drive my car in and kill myself.”
She knew her husband didn’t like me so she thought I wouldn’t call him. Well, I called him. “That bitch is lying. Life 360 has her sitting at her mom’s house right now. She just fucking wants attention!”
Still, I called a friend and asked them to drive by and see. Yep. She was at her mom’s house.
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FishFace
in reply to return2ozma • • •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.
BigPotato
in reply to FishFace • • •I trust my family. Trust them enough that they have the passcode to my phone and can easily open it at any time.
But I'm not sharing location. How will I sneak out to buy gifts if they get a notification when I leave work? Nope.
ArcaneSlime
in reply to FishFace • • •No. But it isn't about that, anyway. Those apps sell your location data to advertisers and governments, and I'm not installing that bullshit on my phone after I kicked google off of it with grapheneOS.
ayyy
in reply to ArcaneSlime • • •ArcaneSlime
in reply to ayyy • • •supersquirrel
in reply to ayyy • • •rozodru
in reply to FishFace • • •FishFace
in reply to rozodru • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to FishFace • • •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?
groet
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •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.
sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to groet • • •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?
groet
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to groet • • •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.
ArcaneSlime
in reply to groet • • •-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
-
lightnsfw
in reply to groet • • •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.
FishFace
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •It is enough. In fact, it's better than the "you should trust your SO" argument which doesn't make any sense.
Lka1988
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •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.
sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to Lka1988 • • •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.
Lka1988
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •I ride motorcycles. So I just leave it on by default because my wife worries when I go out. Rightly so. Cagers can be absolute fucking morons.
Our two eldest kids have Pinwheel phones. I was very up-front about what we can see from their devices on the parent portal side, and what they are and are not allowed to do with them. Their mom (my ex) doesn't like it, but as I'm the one with primary custody and the one who pays for the devices, and the fact that the kids know I'm open about the phones' capabilities, her opinion doesn't really matter. I'm not malicious about it, either; she's just a cunt.
sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to Lka1988 • • •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.
Bubbey
in reply to FishFace • • •Had to stop and tell her "For the past century, if most people wanted to contact their kids they waited months for letters to go back and forth. No need to panic over not talking for a day."
brygphilomena
in reply to FishFace • • •Privacy is something that I think needs to be actively encouraged. It is a right, and thinks like location tracking are creeping their way into daily life and eroding that right.
No one should have the ability to violate that. And we shouldn't be making it easier to.
shortwavesurfer
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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SlartyBartFast
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •like this
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shortwavesurfer
in reply to SlartyBartFast • • •Well then that's just too bad for me, isn't it?
Obviously I have my phone on me so I could just dial 911. If your phone breaks when whatever occurs to you, then your spouse or whatever isn't going to be able to track your location and you're not going to be able to call 911 either. So either way you're fucked.
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SlartyBartFast
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •like this
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Kacarott
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •like this
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BeeegScaaawyCripple
in reply to SlartyBartFast • • •brygphilomena
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •Yep. This is one of those hard lines for me. And I feel like it's a red flag for anyone who demands it from a partner.
I trust my partner and they trust me. I actively encourage them to do things without me, because I want them to be an independent person. I want them to have friends that I don't hang out with.
panicnow
in reply to brygphilomena • • •Digitalprimate
in reply to return2ozma • • •Man I took my kids off location sharing when they got their first phones at 12. Shit is creepy.
Just communicate!
sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to Digitalprimate • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to return2ozma • • •This is a huge no from me. My SO doesn't need my location, and sharing it has a lot of potential downsides, like:
There's a lot of potential downside and the upside is... my SO knows when I'm almost home?
Yeah, no. Maybe I'll share if I'm doing something risky like hiking alone, but that's never staying on constantly.
coolmojo
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to coolmojo • • •My route has pretty much no stoplights, so there's not really an opportunity to text. But I send a text when I leave and if I'm delayed (i.e. I'll have an opportunity to text).
It works well.
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Semperverus
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •I don't agree with the practice but I do see the point - it reduces anxiety and gives your partner a sense that you're okay for relationships where trust is strong. For toxic relationships this should absolutely not be a thing.
As far as governments or companies selling the data... You can use some self-hosted services on a de-googled GrapheneOS or LineageOS install and use sattelite location only. Then, pipe that to said self hosted solution that doesn't sell your data like homeassistant or whatever.
sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to Semperverus • • •Idk, I think it would increase anxiety for my SO, and we have a lot of trust. For example, if I take a coworker home, go out to lunch, etc w/o telling my SO, and they see that deviation in my routine, they could start doubting that trust. But if they just don't see it, they just rely on what we tell each other, and if it's not important, it doesn't need to be communicated and can't create that anxiety.
At least that's my take. My SO is really trusting, but also quite anxious because of nonsense they read on SM and whatnot, so a deviation can create a lot of unnecessary concern.
But yeah, I wouldn't be completely opposed to a self-hosted solution here. I use GrapheneOS, and if the UX isn't too terrible (i.e. easy to toggle off and on), it could be really useful for something like going hiking alone or whatever.
douglasg14b
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •This means there are still significant insecurities in the relationship that can bubble up and become problems, and you know about these.
You do not trust your spouse to trust you and not misinterpret your intentions.
Paradoxally You can defeat some of this insecurity by being transparent and welcoming misinterpretation if you believe you both have full trust in each other.
As a high anxiety person myself, this works to defeat the anxiety which is often feared of the unknown. By proving that deviations to your routine are not something they should feel anxious about, then that anxiety can melt away.
sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to douglasg14b • • •It honestly hasn't been a big problem, but my SO for some reason invents a bunch of unlikely stuff they have to consciously ignore.
Do whatever works though.
PumpkinSkink
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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ikidd
in reply to return2ozma • • •Jesus fuck, what did people do with their spouses and kids before phones? Trust them?
Sounds unlikely.
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burgerpocalyse
in reply to ikidd • • •like this
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Lka1988
in reply to return2ozma • • •NeilBrü
in reply to Lka1988 • • •like this
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PMmeTrebuchets
in reply to NeilBrü • • •Lka1988
in reply to NeilBrü • • •Those people are free to not use the tech. Being forced to use the tech, however, is absolutely a problem.
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douglasg14b
in reply to NeilBrü • • •like this
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w3dd1e
in reply to Lka1988 • • •It sounds like you and your wife have a healthy relationship. That’s awesome! But, for possessive and controlling relationships, surveillance can be harmful.
Personally, my location is shared with my sister. I’d share it with my partner but he is a bit of a Luddite. I wouldn’t be sharing because he asked, I would be doing it so he could find me easily in an emergency.
And, I wouldn’t ask him to share his. If he turned it on and wanted me to have it, that’s cool. And if not, that’s cool too.
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Lka1988
in reply to w3dd1e • • •Absolutely. My previous marriage was like that. Luckily the topic of location tracking never came up.
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RBWells
in reply to return2ozma • • •Not just couples. I was aghast to learn that my fellow parents at work track the location of their teenage kids. All of them, except me. What the fuck? If I want to know where they are I text and ask.
What's more - half of them also have it turned on in the other direction.
This is crazy to me. I want my kids to grow into adults and I'm not going to surveil them all the time. I think a kid of teen age has some reasonable expectation of privacy. We are close, I have a good relationship with my kids but not THAT close, I don't need to know if you stopped at Wawa on your way home.
flop_leash_973
in reply to return2ozma • • •We have location sharing enabling via Find My since everyone but me uses Apple. I don't think my wife ever uses it and I only use it as a means of checking they seem to still be alive when they are otherwise late to somewhere they planned to be if I get worried about them.
In years past I would just call them, but this way is less actively intrusive. But people that use it as a spying tool have issues.
sugarfoot00
in reply to return2ozma • • •After 30 years of marriage, my wife floated the idea of turning this on. I looked at her like she had two heads.
Why would anyone be willfully surveilled? You know its not just your partner that has access to that data when you have location services enabled.
Fenrisulfir
in reply to sugarfoot00 • • •MellowYellow13
in reply to Fenrisulfir • • •Dozzi92
in reply to MellowYellow13 • • •MellowYellow13
in reply to Dozzi92 • • •Lovable Sidekick
in reply to sugarfoot00 • • •ilinamorato
in reply to return2ozma • • •like this
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douglasg14b
in reply to ilinamorato • • •This is how it works with us too.
I'm kind of neurotic and get worried that something may have happened to her while she's traveling, which she does a lot. If she's supposed to arrive somewhere and hasn't I start pacing and biting my nails thinking of all the bad things that could have happened.
We shared each other's location and the peace of mind has helped a lot.
We don't keep secrets from each other. Some folks in this thread see location sharing as a threat, I assume because they are uncomfortable or have existing trust issues with their relationship that are yet to be resolved?
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bthest
in reply to ilinamorato • • •ilinamorato
in reply to bthest • • •Dozzi92
in reply to ilinamorato • • •ilinamorato
in reply to Dozzi92 • • •bthest
in reply to ilinamorato • • •ilinamorato
in reply to bthest • • •Lovable Sidekick
in reply to ilinamorato • • •ilinamorato
in reply to Lovable Sidekick • • •Novaling
in reply to return2ozma • • •Starting this by saying: Using tracking apps to see what someone's doing 24/7 or worrying about them cheating is insane and is a solid NO, full stop.
But I do understand why people use tracking apps, and I wish we had good FOSS alternatives. A tracking/location sharing app where the trackee can turn it on/off anytime they want (after using a password/biometrics, to prevent others from messing with it), so loved ones can be sure you made it to your destination.
I don't want people stalking their kids, judging their friends for the places they go, surveiling if someone's a cheater, or worst of all, having their data be sold by the shitty companies that run these services.
I've read stories that have scared me and made me wish I could do something like that when I'm out late. I had to (unfortunately) use Live360 during a field trip in another country cause the teachers needed to keep track of us. I understand safety-wise that these apps are vital
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ryathal
in reply to Novaling • • •Derpgon
in reply to Novaling • • •I've setup Hauk for my dad to broadcast his location while delivering. It is only activated when he activates it, but it also works if you want to share location with a specific group of people. It has an app and a website, and can be password protected. It also records history and speed, but history can be turned off.
It is not very robust or particularly well coded, but it is a nice little FOSS app that works, but has to be self hosted.
naevaTheRat
in reply to return2ozma • • •Vile.
I trust my wife, and she trusts me. We trust each other not to ask for stupid brain-poisoning shit that humans weren't meant to have access to that could one day blow up horribly.
I don't have her passwords, she doesn't have mine. Our phones are locked. I could technically see what she's doing online I suppose via traffic snooping in the router logs but the day I feel the urge to do something like that is the day I kill myself for having abandoned basic moral principles.
We're apes, we have brains built for avoiding snakes in tall grass and finding water and berries. You poison yourself with surveillance, you feed your worst and most destructive impulses. Practice keeping secrets, practice being okay with not knowing. Trust isn't surveillance, trust is knowing that if something fucking mattered you'd be told.
edit: I want my wife to be able to break my heart because if she does she'll have a good reason for doing so. That is what trust is.
douglasg14b
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •It's only vile when you project insecurities or bad intent...
We both know each other's passwords for everything. We use a shared database for it. We both know each other's phone, unlock codes and often through laziness will just use each other's phones for shit. We shared the same bank accounts, we don't have separate money. We share the same vehicles....etc
What's mine is hers, what's hers is mine. Except literally.
We also both have each other's location. What do we use this for? Essentially nothing except when one of us is traveling, or someone is feeling neurotic/worried. The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn't just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.
We don't hide things from each other, we've explicitly built a relationship of openness and trust, brought on by us actually_not_ trusting each other for a long time. We are completely transparent, and you know what this has helped build? Trust. Know what it has torn down? Insecurities. It's been great.
Would recommend.
naevaTheRat
in reply to douglasg14b • • •Therapy would be better for you than a panopticon.
What if your partner wants to run away from you? Do you not trust that they would have a good reason?
dreadbeef
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •Evil_Incarnate
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •naevaTheRat
in reply to Evil_Incarnate • • •YerLam
in reply to douglasg14b • • •panicnow
in reply to douglasg14b • • •I’m in the same place as you with my spouse, but we didn’t start with not trusting each other. I just never worry about my spouse knowing things about me—I cannot imagine what I wouldn’t tell her anyway.
My spouse has (multiple) physical journals lying around the house. I would never read them—she doesn’t worry about hiding them.
Dozzi92
in reply to panicnow • • •bluesheep
in reply to douglasg14b • • •Bless you but the moment I start being afraid of my partner dying everytime they leave the house will be the moment I'm getting back in touch with my psychologist.
beastlykings
in reply to bluesheep • • •Never went to work in a snowstorm? Or heavy rain?
I'm not OP, but my wife and I share locations, it's endlessly convenient for coordinating. Never abused.
yeahiknow3
in reply to bluesheep • • •douglasg14b
in reply to bluesheep • • •You're kind of putting words in my mouth here.
I didn't say that I'm afraid of him dying every time they leave the house, you said that.
I'm afraid of them dying when they're traveling 20 hours. Or over a mountain pass. Or various other reasons. They travel a lot and I get worried that's just how it is.
When calculating travel costs, I also dug up some statistics and figured what the chance of crashing, injury and death were based on how much driving we do on an annual basis based on national averages.
I actually thought knowing that would make me less stressed about all the travel but it didn't help because the numbers are kind of depressing.
Dozzi92
in reply to douglasg14b • • •These same people who are suggesting you live in fear of your partner dying are also afraid their partner might find their porn collection. It's staggering. To describe location or password sharing as "vile" just puts into perspective the kind of people you're talking to.
I knowy wife's phone password, must have trust issues. Or we go on car rides and her phone is connected and the kids want me to put a song on. Should we pull over so she can unlock her phone? Vile.
Too many folks think it's to keep tabs on people, because that's presumably how they'd use it, they'd sit there and watch it.
douglasg14b
in reply to Dozzi92 • • •psivchaz
in reply to douglasg14b • • •I'm exactly the same. I get that it's not for everyone. I understand that, and respect it. But I hate people framing this as you having a trust issue.
It's the opposite of a trust issue. I trust my wife to be responsible with my bank accounts. I trust my wife to see my location because I also trust my wife to only bother checking if she has a reasonable reason to do so, and to not be a weird paranoid freak if I'm somewhere she doesn't expect. I trust my wife with the password to all my online accounts because it's easier to just share a Bitwarden than it is to segregate everything, and I completely trust her to not invade my privacy.
The thing is, our lives are online. If I get hit by a bus or something, I don't want her to have to deal with my death while ALSO figuring out how to convince banks and insurance companies and whatnot to let her in. Much easier to just share my Bitwarden with her.
I'm not in some panopticon, worrying "Oh no, what will my wife think about me being within 500 yards of an ex's house" or whatever because I totally trust her to trust me. It's just not an issue.
HoopyFrood
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death. It's good to have some way for someone you trust to get your online accounts when you pass away so that everything can be concluded and canceled and sentimental content preservation and all that.
For my relationship the means to gain access to my password manager are available in the case of an emergency. Maybe shove the credentials in a bank security box and put access to it into your will if you don't feel you can trust your partner with the knowledge while you are alive.
naevaTheRat
in reply to HoopyFrood • • •Bytemeister
in reply to HoopyFrood • • •I wa actually thinking about this. After I had a password breach, I wanted to setup a password manager. I wanted something. That I could host locally and access across my VPN. I also thought it would be neat to have a Deadman switch built in to it, where it pings you at set intervals and asks you to just hit a button to confirm you are alive. If you miss a certain number of pings consecutively, then it emails your specified backup contacts and has allows them to access your passwords.
Is this anything anyone here is interested in? Or does it exist already?
Old_Bald_Bloke
in reply to Bytemeister • • •yeahiknow3
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •Uhhh, I trust her which is precisely why she has my passwords. Are you guys teenagers or something?
Also, location sharing is literally a form of communication. What if there’s an emergency?
naevaTheRat
in reply to yeahiknow3 • • •Yes we're teenagers. We've been married 15 years, ceremony was when we were three.
Privacy is important, have you never kept a diary? Do you film therapy sessions lest your partner not know what you discussed? Shit with the door open? You don't need justification for wanting privacy, you need privacy so when you have a good reason for it nothing looks different.
What if there is? Get help, that's an insane fear to live with. If I am unconscious there's nothing to do anyway, the hospital or whatever will find her details in my purse and call. What the fuck am I going to do, sit there watching the dot on the map and calling 000 if it stops moving? You are a lunatic, we have society to take care of us while we're out and about and emergency beacons if you're like camping beyond the black stump or sailing the Pacific.
Usernume
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •I imagine this form of abuse is done by sociopaths that convinced their traumatised partners this is actually a good thing.
All the people in this thread that they do it for years and it's normal? Sociopaths.
naevaTheRat
in reply to Usernume • • •My wife has done courses on warning signs for abusive relationships as part of some mental health first aid certification stuff.
2 biiiiiig red flags are insisting on surveillance and not letting people have separate finances. We have a combined account sure, and also pocket money accounts and whatever else. For all I know she's set up a trust. I mean I don't think she has because she'd probably tell me but she has the freedom to do so.
yeahiknow3
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •No, I’m not worried about my wife reading “my diary” because I’m not a child.
It honestly sounds like you need to work on your marriage and are projecting. Maybe try a couple’s therapist?
naevaTheRat
in reply to yeahiknow3 • • •yeahiknow3
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •I seriously doubt any of the losers in this thread have been in a loving relationship before.
SonOfAntenora
in reply to naevaTheRat • • •If there's an emergency it will be known regardless. Levels of paranoia that are not justified; how many emergencies have you been in where an Internet connected device is so important in the shortest amount of time? Or at all. No. You might need a phone. But not an app in particular.
And for long term emergencies an fm/am radio is a better tool than the Internet.
MellowYellow13
in reply to yeahiknow3 • • •yeahiknow3
in reply to MellowYellow13 • • •MellowYellow13
in reply to yeahiknow3 • • •yeahiknow3
in reply to MellowYellow13 • • •Dozzi92
in reply to yeahiknow3 • • •I really think you nailed it and that folks here are either kids or never grew out of the high school mentality. It seems like they conflate trust issues with openness, and that you would only share with your spouse because your spouse doesn't trust you.
My wife has my location. My wife has had my location when I've gone to bachelor parties and done bachelor party activities. I doubt she looked at it. When I came home, I told her about things we did because we take an interest in one another's lives.
It really all comes down to efficiency. She's an hour from home and I need to start cooking dinner soon? I'll go grab the kids now and come home and get going. It just helps plan days and nights.
bthest
in reply to return2ozma • • •Fake GPS location - Apps on Google Play
play.google.comGreenKnight23
in reply to bthest • • •ILikeBoobies
in reply to return2ozma • • •jjjalljs
in reply to return2ozma • • •I don't want to share my location nor have anyone else's shared with me.
Friends and partners can text "I'll be there in 5"
My friend shares her location with her mother. Her mother then nags her with like "Are you seeing someone new? You're spending a lot of time in north brooklyn now." Like, who needs that, or even the temptation of that?
A tech solution is not going to fix a social/mental problem like fear of cheating.
captainlezbian
in reply to jjjalljs • • •Evil_Incarnate
in reply to captainlezbian • • •Constant Pain
in reply to return2ozma • • •cheese_greater
in reply to return2ozma • • •Dozzi92
in reply to cheese_greater • • •TwoBeeSan
in reply to return2ozma • • •Routinely seen this cause drama between people with poor communication.
Nosy friend with it? Get ready for I'm coming by or what are you doing there texts.
know some people who use it to pick up drunk friends just in case. For emergencies. Do they use it like her? Noooooooopeeeee
Most people lack the maturity for this. It skeeves me the fuck out.
beastlykings
in reply to TwoBeeSan • • •Been sharing with select friends and family for years now, zero issues. And if we did have an issue? I'm turning it off for you 🤷♂️ pretty simple. Frequently extremely convenient.
A friend of a friend of mine is sharing with a friend of theirs. And it's a crap show like you said, coming over, inviting themselves to events, why were you there, etc. Everything you said. And it's still a problem, to the point where they leave their phone at home if they are doing anything sensitive, because they are afraid of hurting the person's feelings by turning it off 🙄
I think the key is having a backbone, and also not having crap friends 🤷♂️
TwoBeeSan
in reply to beastlykings • • •Oh 1000%
Id tell someone to fuck off so quick.
Some people are enablers for those kinds of friends. Others have no problem with it. Ex and family all shared. They'd all be in each other's shit and were a ok with it. Was so odd to see being the polar opposite.
MellowYellow13
in reply to beastlykings • • •beastlykings
in reply to MellowYellow13 • • •MellowYellow13
in reply to beastlykings • • •beastlykings
in reply to MellowYellow13 • • •Fenrisulfir
in reply to return2ozma • • •tarknassus
in reply to Fenrisulfir • • •yeahiknow3
in reply to tarknassus • • •MellowYellow13
in reply to yeahiknow3 • • •aphonefriend
in reply to MellowYellow13 • • •MellowYellow13
in reply to aphonefriend • • •yeahiknow3
in reply to MellowYellow13 • • •MellowYellow13
in reply to yeahiknow3 • • •Usernume
in reply to Fenrisulfir • • •FuckFascism
in reply to return2ozma • • •Lyrl
Unknown parent • • •moseschrute
in reply to return2ozma • • •beastlykings
in reply to moseschrute • • •ChexMax
in reply to beastlykings • • •How old are you guys, if you don't mind me asking? It seems that generally younger people don't see this as an innate violation of privacy, where older people feel quite surveilled and even like they're being viewed as untrustworthy for someone to ask this of them.
I've never cheated on my spouse (not even close), I've never felt any inclination to lie about my whereabouts. I can see the safety aspect of this, logically. I would feel offended if my spouse asked me to be a dot on his phone, as if he was asking to own me. We share a home, a child, a bank account, a car, but we don't share location. I don't even keep my location activated for my own use unless I'm actively navigating somewhere new.
We've got plenty of "normal" problems, but none of them lead me to want his location. I simply trust him enough. It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems
Pup Biru
in reply to ChexMax • • •but what people are saying is it has little to do with trust: it’s a utility… in fact, the trust is flipped: i trust my partner to have my location, and only look at it for things like checking how far away i am for my benefit
you’re allowed to feel that, but that’s absolutely not true. given the safety and utility aspect, it FEELS to me like if you don’t trust your partner to have and not abuse your location data then you must have other problems
_g_be
in reply to Pup Biru • • •Seems like the underlying tension is wether being surveiled at all is inherently a violation.
If it is, then your partner doing it might feel like a lack of trust.
If not, then it's just a practical tool, might as well use the data if it's getting captured anyway.
Pup Biru
in reply to _g_be • • •surveillance implies active, constant, and surreptitious… i would not classify mutual location sharing as any of that: it’s passive, occasional, and well-known and consented to by both parties
_g_be
in reply to Pup Biru • • •If you're doing this through Google or whichever company is facilitating, then I would say that's the party doing all of the things listed.
But yes, I presented it in the context of just the two parties, so your point is still valid
supersquirrel
in reply to Pup Biru • • •TeddE
in reply to ChexMax • • •I'm 40 and have done this with partners.
But also, they and I have an open relationship. If they found me in the bed of another, the reaction would an excited inquiry of if I had fun.
beastlykings
in reply to ChexMax • • •I'd rather not disclose my age on this account, but, let's just say we're not newly married.
I will admit my statement about location sharing only being a problem if you've already got problems was a bit too binary. The issue is more nuanced.
I see you're focusing on the cheating aspect, which to your credit is what the OP is all about. But from our perspective, that's not even an issue or a use case for the technology. We have full trust in each other. The technology is simply useful for other reasons.
Did she make it to work in the snowstorm or rainstorm?
Huh she's usually home by now, is she unconscious in a ditch or just stopped at the store?
Dinner is almost ready, I just need to put this in the oven so it's ready to come out the second she walks in the door, let me make sure she's actually on her way home. Oh, she must have gotten held up at work, I'll wait a few more minutes.
Stuff like that. Yeah there's other ways of solving those problems, and that's fine too, we just prefer the convenience.
We don't share locations because we don't trust each other, we share because it's convenient. I guess you could say we trust each other not to go crazy with it 🤷♂️
We have married friends who won't share with each other, and that's fine too.
I'll retract my earlier statement. Location sharing is a sensitive subject, with lots of facets. Sharing or not is a personal choice. And while there can be practical benefits, I think most people would agree that using it for cheating prevention is.... Unhealthy.
Echo Dot
in reply to ChexMax • • •supersquirrel
in reply to Echo Dot • • •This is precisely the insidious part. This is how an innocent self censorship of your privacy begins, with a harmless anecdote like this.
Dozzi92
in reply to ChexMax • • •I'm 37 and share my location with my wife. We have kids. It is an efficiency thing that we use to help decide when to begin dinner, who's grabbing the kids, etc. The whole idea of trust issues is just very high school to me.
I have my mom's location. She lives alone. She works in the city. Sometimes I like to just be sure she got home but don't need to bother her about it, or I'm at work late and can't be making phone calls.
Folks with privacy concerns, I guess I accept that. But if you think the only thing stopping the government from snatching you is your location services being off, you're sorely mistaken.
turtlesareneat
in reply to beastlykings • • •limelight79
in reply to moseschrute • • •Yeah, exactly. So great to be able to say, oh, she's about 15 minutes away, so I'll start making dinner. Much easier and safer than texting while driving, too.
We originally set it up so she could make sure I wasn't laying in a ditch somewhere from a cycling crash.
Harrk
in reply to moseschrute • • •gangdinesout
in reply to moseschrute • • •RagingRobot
in reply to return2ozma • • •To share my location with my partner I need to share it with a third part also and I'm pretty selective about that so I never even signed up for this kind of thing.
I use location services but just leave them off until I need them. I'm not super hard to find anyways
some_guy
in reply to return2ozma • • •If my partner could check my location at any time, how would I keep bday and anniversary gifts secret? The places where I go to buy things for her are not places I would normally go. She only has to randomly check one time when I'm at an unusual location for her to ask why and then I have to lie. Not worth it.
We use temporary sharing (can limit to one hour) when meeting somewhere. Beyond that, it's a potential liability.
Example: she once got upset that I wanted to go to the mail room (apt building) alone and didn't want her to go with me. She wanted to know what I was hiding. Turned out to be her bday gift and it was just in the commercial packaging with a shipping label. I let her go get it and she's never been suspicious of my motives since (this was at the very start of our relationship and we hadn't established the level of trust that we have now).
Anyway, again, the one-hour sharing is all we need.
surph_ninja
in reply to some_guy • • •some_guy
in reply to surph_ninja • • •EnsignWashout
in reply to return2ozma • • •My partner and I used to use location sharing pretty much 100% of the time. We just felt better knowing we could find each other.
But today, we do not, because the trust is shattered.
Google just cannot be trusted with our locations.
markko
in reply to EnsignWashout • • •bystander
in reply to markko • • •invincible
in reply to bystander • • •„Zood Location“ – IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository
IzzyOnDroid Repo Browsermarkko
in reply to bystander • • •Locus Live Tracking - Locus Live Tracking
Asamm Software, s. r. o.Joeffect
in reply to EnsignWashout • • •Appoxo
in reply to Joeffect • • •Same for any other phone manufacturer. I won't trust Apple any more than I do with Google.
The only ones I'd actually trust to keep it somewhat private and probably LineageOS and GrapheneOS (no experience with gOS)
Liberal_Ghost
in reply to EnsignWashout • • •Bluewing
in reply to Liberal_Ghost • • •Liberal_Ghost
in reply to Bluewing • • •Routhinator
in reply to EnsignWashout • • •suodrazah
in reply to Routhinator • • •Seconded.
And having each other's location is really helpful. I'm nervous if my partner doesn't know where I am.
Routhinator
in reply to suodrazah • • •Appoxo
in reply to Routhinator • • •Routhinator
in reply to Appoxo • • •Ada
in reply to EnsignWashout • • •MellowYellow13
in reply to return2ozma • • •Mangoholic
in reply to MellowYellow13 • • •diptchip
in reply to return2ozma • • •Obi
in reply to diptchip • • •Appoxo
in reply to Obi • • •So essentially very good friends that chose to live together + benefits of being in a deeper relationship?
Sounds healthy indeed! Wish you the best to keep that bond 😀
Obi
in reply to Appoxo • • •smiletolerantly
in reply to return2ozma • • •When we need to know each others location, we share it via element / matrix. Our own server, so no third party.
Happens maybe four times a year.
(Also, do you just always have location services enabled?? IMO it's a battery drain, I pretty much only enable it for this and while I need to navigate)
Appoxo
in reply to smiletolerantly • • •Nobody to answer to (and share my location).
Despite being somewhat aware of the privacy concerns of having location services always enabled, the potential of having access to finding my phone based on the service to find it (Apples and Googles feature) is more important (to me).
Same reason I have cellular always enabled.
Main reason I keep location services enabled is for geo-tagged photos.
At first I always kept it disabled because of privacy trust issues (e.g. sharing a picture might not always strip the geotags) but since going on a vacation in sri lanka and being able to trace back a picture to a location it became a very useful feature.
Example from my vacation in Sri Lanka:
Redex
in reply to Appoxo • • •GreenBottles
in reply to return2ozma • • •kepix
in reply to return2ozma • • •pyre
in reply to return2ozma • • •Demdaru
in reply to return2ozma • • •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.
IsoKiero
in reply to Demdaru • • •And provider of whatever service you use to share your location. Being a bit paranoid about your privacy in this day and age is not just fearmongering and tinfoil-hats.
Or communicate in advance that it'll take 30 minutes for you to find your shit and then meet up at a cafe, by car, at lobby or whatever. Live location doesn't add anything to that, assuming it even works reliably enough inside buildings.
Steve Dice
in reply to Demdaru • • •outhouseperilous
in reply to Steve Dice • • •For me, privacy is safety. The thing im most worried about is the government snatching me up in the night.
Yay, threat profiles!
Steve Dice
in reply to outhouseperilous • • •outhouseperilous
in reply to Steve Dice • • •supersquirrel
in reply to Steve Dice • • •Demdaru
in reply to Steve Dice • • •Steve Dice
in reply to Demdaru • • •outhouseperilous
in reply to Demdaru • • •But that data gets created, so it's vulnerable. Commercial aps on your phone, sketchy apps youve never heard of like facebook, google services, and potentially something from your carrier, plus the government in mosy cases, will have access, phone home, record it.
Then it gets transmitted to your partner somebody('s code) does this. Even if it's e2ee, you need a program to do that, abd the general rule with phone apps is that your data is being sold.
Then it gets to your partners phone, where it is again vulnerable to third parties their apps etc.
Rob T Firefly
in reply to return2ozma • • •Taleya
in reply to Rob T Firefly • • •MashedTech
in reply to return2ozma • • •Rose56
in reply to return2ozma • • •Why you stay with partner that do not trust you?
Yea not everything works perfect inba relationship, but people should allow some space.
UnderpantsWeevil
in reply to Rose56 • • •Because the dating scene sucks.
That's sort of the irony of it all. People are terrified of being cheated on, because it implies their partner has an attractive alternative they found with mysterious ease. Meanwhile, they're stuck trawling for singles in the gutter.
But it's illusionary. Hot MILFs are not, in fact, In Your Area Waiting To Fuck. Being single, particularly when you're older, is miserable for a lot of people.
SonOfAntenora
in reply to return2ozma • • •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?
PieMePlenty
in reply to SonOfAntenora • • •Fuck me. I dont even share my first and last name with any social media site, much less my photo. My current location? The fuck is wrong with people?
SonOfAntenora
in reply to PieMePlenty • • •Having public social media can be useful. And it was always possible even before (oh yes MySpace). My issue is having this eternal access as a proof of existance on you all the time. I am fine with the idea of having a public life, what triggers me is the normalisation of surveillance from subjects who never had the concept of being surveillance actors in the first place.
Not to mention, how many abusive partners are already using this feature already? I guess many more than just jealus couples. Airtags had the same problems, but thera are apps to let you spot them, even than they're an invasive technology. Position sharing can be invasive too. Even voluntary sharing is probably worse than we think.
There are few cases where i can think this as a useful feature, like incidents or other unspecified situations.
The one thing that stands out is that this is active constantly. It's not situational. The article doesn't do a good job at detailing the possible abuses of the function but they're there, they were the same with gps trackers and airtags. Gps devices are notoriously expensive relative to these alternatives so nowadays only a certain person would use them.
supersquirrel
in reply to return2ozma • • •Do we all really think this is a great idea when fascism and toxic masculinity are catastrophically growing globally like a late stage mestastized cancer?
Do you think enabling all those men to abusively control their spouses is just the forward march of technological progress?
yermaw
in reply to supersquirrel • • •TheHiddenCatboy
in reply to return2ozma • • •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.
Mark
in reply to return2ozma • • •bigbabybilly
in reply to return2ozma • • •interdimensionalmeme
in reply to bigbabybilly • • •And archaic leftover of a more dependant age.
Now it's just handcuffs with no upside
Ending cheating is as easy as ending "being in a couple"
and for people who can imagine life without this crutch
it becomes more and more foreign why anyone
would ever accept such an oppressive custom into their household
rat
in reply to interdimensionalmeme • • •interdimensionalmeme
in reply to rat • • •It's hard for me to express it clearly but you description doesn't seem to include an overwhelming sense that being in any kind of relationship like that MUST also mean a exclusivity of intimacy. Complete with paranoia over whether you will ever violate this hard line and become a cheater.
And I'm not against some people wanting that. I'm against that being the default understanding for almost all sexual relationships, even when the sexuality part dies and then you become a prisoner of the relationship, torn between convenience of staying together and being sexually unfulfilled, forever.
Not to mention all the policing that comes around hunting violators of these pacts. And worse, the societal skewing pushing everyone into these exclusivity arrangements. Where I work, just 20 years ago it was well known that married people favored each other and the promotion were far more likely for married than the celibates. There are often many other forms of incentives, a lot of them financial, disfavorable toward celibates.
These types of arrangement used to be inescapable literally, to the point of many killing their spouses and elites having wars over the right to escape, and still we barely are able to escape the oppressive institution and its demands.
rat
in reply to interdimensionalmeme • • •This makes sense. I'm completely on board with ethical non-monogamy. To me, cheating is just when you betray your partner's trust to engage in sexual/romantic behavior with someone else, and what actually count as cheating depends on an agreement between you and your partner(s).
I did see OP respond to my comment and edit it away. If I recall, they said something along the lines of 'it's oppressive for someone to restrict your freedom in forming relationships with other people." And I do understand that point. Like, if my friend tried to tell me I couldn't be friends with some other person, I'd be pretty mad. So why do allow a romantic partner to set boundaries on the potential relationships I could form with others that have nothing to do with them?
Well, personally, I'm monogamous, (although I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of an open relationship in some form). I have no desire to be with anyone but my partner, and my current partner feels the same way. I've also been cheated on before, and it felt absolutely terrible. A lot of the pain came from my ex's lies and betray, but it also just hurt to imagine him being with someone else and preferring them over me. Those emotions of possessiveness and jealousy, even divorced (pun intended) from the betrayal element of cheating would still upset me, I think. Maybe these feelings are just a result of a combination of insecurity and my societal upbringing towards monogamy, but they are still very real to me. So I want a relationship with a partner who will respect my feelings on this matter and do their best to avoid causing me strong emotional pain, just as I would do for them.
To me, it feels more freeing to just not have to worry about my partner getting with other people, and it's well-worth the trade-off of not doing something I had no desire for anyways. I see nothing wrong with this type of relationship as long as everyone involved consents to it. But if others want relationships with complete freedom on what they do with additional partners, more power to them.
interdimensionalmeme
in reply to rat • • •My problem is exclusivity being the standard or default requirement for almost everyone, in many case just because that's what everyone else is doing.
This deletes, say 95% of the population. It's already a very improbable thing to hook up with someone compatible and have that requirement, unless you have a very high "hook up attempt" rate than you can just forget the whole thing as unrealistic, which I did a long time ago.
It's just not going to happen, no interested, the terms are unacceptable I'm not even going to waste any time trying.
Barbecue Cowboy
in reply to bigbabybilly • • •Jerkface (any/all)
in reply to return2ozma • • •Chaotic Entropy
in reply to Jerkface (any/all) • • •"I trust you enough to let you monitor me at all times. 😀"
"I don't trust you enough not to. (:"
Chaotic Entropy
in reply to return2ozma • • •qyron
in reply to return2ozma • • •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.
Portosian
in reply to return2ozma • • •JackbyDev
in reply to Portosian • • •starman2112
in reply to return2ozma • • •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
JackbyDev
in reply to starman2112 • • •Oof, iSmoke. Don't breathe this!
VisionScout
in reply to return2ozma • • •JackbyDev
in reply to return2ozma • • •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.