Technology

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Putting aside how much of a red flag that is,

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

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

Safety concerns aside, you should trust your partner enough to not need to track them

I can’t believe the number of people in here with paranoia and shitty relationships that can’t communicate with their “partner”

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.

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.

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

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?

If you can't trust your spouse without location, tracking, find another spouse.

Sounds like trust issues

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".

If this was demanded of me, I would end the relationship immediately. That's absolutely not worth it.

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

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.

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.

Jesus fuck, what did people do with their spouses and kids before phones? Trust them?

Sounds unlikely.

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.

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.

Of all the dystopian things, this is probably the most dystopian thing I’ve read lately.

This is horrible.

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)

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

That's creepy af

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

If your partner cant trust you not to cheat then work on your relasionship or end it. Dont do this shit.

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