Technology

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.

I kind of don't want to send my location to "location sharing" companies to sell to data brokers.

People don't have the emotional maturity to deal with this tool.

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.

‘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?

Sounds like trust issues

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)

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.

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.

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.

Creepy

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

Trust is good, control is not better.

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.

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.

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

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

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.