The Dangerous Intimacy of Social Location Sharing

The police station having business hours is normal in my country and several other countries that I know of.

If you have an emergency the police will come of course. The patrolling and emergency response is separate from the business hours of the station.

"Sorry, retrieving property is Sgt SoAndSo's job, come back when he's here, which <checks schedule> is 2-10am Tuesday."

I could write a book about this, but to sum it up: It lasted about six months. I felt somewhat too watched and I started changing my behavior. Instead of texts like "what are you up to?" she would send texts like "how many drinks have you had?" Or we'd just stop checking in with each other by text, because we could just see where the other one was. It felt weird to ask "where'd you go after work?" when obviously I already knew the answer. At the same time, I also got a bit too obsessed with checking on her. I started watching for long periods, which got me noticing irregularities. Sometimes at home, her position would move every minute or two, and sometimes it would just stay stuck. Sometimes it showed her battery level and other times not. I started thinking she was spoofing her location. Then I started thinking she'd convinced me to share locations so that she could spoof hers as an alibi. Once, her location jumped to a residential street a mile away from her apartment and then jumped back ten minutes later. Convinced she was cheating on me, I started spoofing my location and driving by to see if her car was at home.

Finally, I showed her the screenshot of the jump and accused her of cheating. Having mostly lost my mind at that point, I went ahead and told her that I'd been spoofing my location and driving by her place.

She swore up and down she'd never cheat on me, she had no idea how to spoof her location, and had no idea what had happened with the jump - her only explanation was that she had been moving her car to park around the corner.

We were pretty much breaking up. I didn't trust her, she was angry that I didn't trust her, and I was angry that she was angry.

We do, however, both have very patient communications with each other. We sat down and talked over the whole thing. She could see why I didn't believe her. I could see why the relationship would not work if I couldn't trust her - and by trusting her, it had to be somewhat blind. That's the definition of trust.

I also realized that, having started sharing locations only a few months into our relationship, I had never developed a sense of real trust for her. We hadn't built that toolkit. Why would we need to? This was like an epiphany. I saw that the trust I needed to work on had been undermined by this technology - and worse, the technology itself was flawed. I came to believe that the jump had, in fact, been a glitch.

I was like - I want to make this work, and the only thing I can think to try now is to turn location sharing off. So we did. And things got a lot better. The last few months have felt like a new, much healthier relationship. Now we call each other, text each other little notes about what we're up to, what we did when we don't see each other. I trust her a lot more than I did before. I have to - there's no choice, other than to break up. One concession we made was to switch on RCS chat, which neither of us usually use, so we could have read receipts. That did more to chill me out than anything.

Anyway, I know this story makes me sound batshit crazy, but all I can say is - maybe location sharing works for some people, but it's not for everyone.

I know people who value privacy because they grew up in small towns. Traffic cameras are used for surveillance also. And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights.

People ditch those small towns for the city to get away from small town busybodies, among other things.

This is true, but it’s also possible to not realize your relationship is unhealthy until it’s too late. Trust should be earned, not given, especially with something as sensitive as location data. It should be years into a relationship before you even consider this unless you have proven yourself to be a truly excellent judge of character.

It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private, allowing intermediaries to get this sensitive information and either sell it or better manipulate you using targeted ads. Location data can be misused in some pretty serious ways, especially if someone wishes you harm, so it’s best to avoid handing it out if you can avoid it.

To avoid some awkward conversations many people would rather avoid, I guess?

"You were nearby? Why didn't you attend blah/come say hi/etc.?"

"You're here? Didn't you say you're going to be out of town?"

"What were you out doing at {time/place}?"

etc.

I'd be fine sharing my location with my immediate family, but they refuse it. When they wonder how close I am to being home, it isn't supposed to be such a serious thing as to have my precise GPS location. It's a reason to think about me or message me.

I've come to think that it's one of the many "problems" that many people don't actually want to solve, and being so heavily connected is taking away some of the "magic" of social behavior and replacing it with efficiency.

As a random example, waiting for a date to show up is probably more exciting than having a precise read of their location. Or, when my parents were visiting, they'd often say they were just thinking about how I'd be getting home soon.

The nice thing is that everyone has the ability to decide if they want to share their location or not. But even on social media, I only reveal my current location when I'm somewhere that I'd be open to running into people. Otherwise I intentionally wait till I'm somewhere else before posting about where I was.

In the past we’d always designate a meeting spot if people got separated. These days, location sharing can solve that and no one is ever really lost.

My sister was chronically late when she was younger. She’s worked really hard to be better, but still holds a lot of baggage from our parents giving her a hard time for most of her life. If one of them calls to see how far away she is, she loses it, because it feels like an attack, even if it’s not. Location sharing solves this, as we can see how far out she is without the call.

Indeed, such as "don't, tf is wrong with you?" People don't need to know where I am at all times. I don't need to know where anyone is at all times. Stop normalizing this insane practice.

I feel like this kind of information can be found out by just naturally talking with others. Viewing your friend's and family's location all the time is just so unnecessary and overkill. If something is wrong, you simply reach out to others, they don't need to be actively checking your location to determine that. Yeah obviously the exception is crazy emergencies, but I think most people would take their chances than be this open to location sharing. Kids too make sense. Other than that, I don't believe location sharing to this degree should be normalized at all.

It can't be the US or EU, that's for sure.

I commonly leave the phone behind and switch to cheap walkie-talkies to lessen the tracking data I produce without giving up the ability to communicate with people nearby but not adjacent.

When you're mentally or morally or -whatever term you want- strong, you might miss that some people have things they want to hide that might not be burglary or trespass or murder, but nonetheless they don't want to be broadcast to their social circle.

Maybe we need a term for the Overton window applied to morality (in social terms). If your lifestyle doesn't fit neatly into the thickest part of that window, you might object to always on location sharing but be unable to honestly and openly admit why, leading to people like yourself being puzzled why others might be resistant.

There is a huge difference between giving Home Depot permissions to know your location while you are in a Home Depot vs giving Home Depot permissions to know your location 100% of the time.

If I was using a Home Depot app and I wanted the app to know my location, I would share location data using the "Allow While Using App" option instead of the "Always" option. I can't imagine a scenario in which I would want Home Depot to a continuous stream of my location data.